What does ABX really prove? Options

[audioslut512]

I recently did some ABX tests of music encoded in FLAC levels 0-8.

To my surprise I could tell the difference more often than not.

Yet I couldn't help but wonder, what does this really prove?

It seems that if an audible difference exists between two tracks, that difference wouldn't necessarily indicate anything as to which track is of higher quality, but rather, that those two tracks are merely different from one another...

Am I missing the point in all of this?

[greynol]

You chose not to accept the fact that you couldn't ABX substantial chunks and you did not take the proper steps to ensure that there wasn't an error in the encodings or that they used the exact same source.

Some good may come out of this discussion after all since you may have identified a problem with the way foobar2000's ABX test. Too bad it took all the way to the 34th post for some useful albeit still qualitative information to come out.

You are aware that foobar2000 decodes the files you wish to compare to wave and places them in a temporary directory? Being that these were all lossless encodes, you could have done a binary comparison as a simple sanity check.

It's quite possible that subsequent rips of the same track can produce different results, even under seemingly similar circumstances; and yes, these would have been revealed with a binary comparison. A ripping error is the only logical conclusion if a binary comparison revealed differences. Lossless is lossless after all!

This post has been edited by greynol: Nov 12 2007, 00:06

[audioslut512]

You chose not to accept the fact that you couldn't ABX substantial chunks and you did not take the proper steps to ensure that there wasn't an error in the encodings or that they used the exact same source.

Some good may come out of this discussion after all since you may have identified a problem with the way foobar2000's ABX test. Too bad it took all the way to the 34th post for some useful albeit still qualitative information to come out.

You are aware that foobar2000 decodes the files you wish to compare to wave and places them in a temporary directory? Being that these were all lossless encodes, you could have done a binary comparison as a simple sanity check.

It's quite possible that subsequent rips of the same track can produce different results, even under seemingly similar circumstances; and yes, these would have been revealed with a binary comparison. A ripping error is the only logical conclusion if a binary comparison revealed differences. Lossless is lossless after all!

It's not that I chose not to accept that I couldn't ABX substantial chunks, it's just that I didn't know any better, and for that matter still don't.

Now that you mention binary comparison, I will look into it. That is yet another thing I am trying to understand...