High bitrate MP3 vs. Lossless ABX Tests?, Are there any studies...? Options

[Street Samurai]

Hi All,

I've been corrected before on this site for making the statement: "I can tell the difference between an MP3 and lossless". I've never ABX'ed myself but I was wondering if there has been a statistically significant (with regard to population) ABX study done with (say) Lame insane vs. Lossless?

Clearly for myself it makes more sense to do a personal ABX but I was wondering in general about the population.

I searched manually through the posts in this forum (since search seems useless for the term 'mp3') and didn't see anything.

Thanks for help,

ss.

This post has been edited by Street Samurai: Jun 2 2005, 01:02

[Woodinville]

Hmm, there's a bit of confusion in this thread.

All of the MPEG verification tests were made against the original, which is the same thing to compare to as a bitwise-exact coding method.

All of the MPEG verification tests I'm aware of, which would include MPEG-1, MPEG-2 BC, MPEG-2 NBC, various and sundry MPEG-4 verification tests, have shown that at least some listeners appear to distinguish between the original and the coded at the test rate, even for rates like 256 and 192 for layers 1 and 2, and for 192 as Layer 3, if I recall correctly.

The CRC test for the american DAR project, the one done a long time ago when the audio quality was of the 160kb/s variety, also showed that 160kb/s PAC and some higher rate of (I think it was AC3, but I frankly don't remember) could be distinguished from the original.

So, I think it's confirmed via some very sophisticated tests, done by world experts, that the usual rate of most codecs is not "transparent" in the ABX sense, although MPEG has used a standard wherein anything above the 4.0 CCIR scale mark is considered 'acceptable'.