Oh man, I hate to admit this, but I just failed to ABX a WAV against LAME MP3 at 128 CBR.

And so I hang my head in shame.

Then again, that means lower bitrates for me!

Thats pretty much normal. Most people seem to find 128k LAME transparent according to the last listening test.

Yay for ignorance

Welcome to the real world!! I reached here some time ago

audiomars
(He who has given up ABX testing, leaving it to the golden ears at HA)

Try ABXing some of the easier samples (search for some killer samples) or look on FF123's site for samples that are fairly easy to ABX. These will teach you what to listen out for and will make your more successful on real-world samples. I'm not saying that you'll suddenly be able to ABX preset insane versus the original (or FLAC versus WAV, for the audiophiles in the audience ) but you will find it easier to recognise artifacts that others hear.

On the other hand, learning to recognise the artifacts will make them jump out at you from radio and TV all the time, which might not improve your quality of life.

Gee, cabbagerat, you're leading people straight to hell...

j/k bro!

Before anyone thinks of learing the artifacts, he/she should really learn "Unlearning" techniques first.

I can just barely ABX 128kbps CBR for most material, provided I concentrate really hard. It's difficult, I guess I just need more training.

Artifact training does suck though, it makes your ears BLEED when you hear songs with obvious artifacting. And you start hearing it everywhere...

Despite how controversial it may look, but being able to spot pretty much every artifact to some significant extent has lead me to appreciating good quality much more than before. The same with mastering: once I learned how wide the dynamic range could be, I started appreciating the less compressed music much more than before (and at the same time, found an answer to why modern music may sound like crap even though it may be good per se at the same time).

So I guess the positive outcome can even outweigh the negative, or at least be on par with it.

Heh I agree with you entirely on the whole dynamic range issue.When I speak to friends and tell them that modern CDs are too loud and such, nobody agrees. Perhaps that is one factor in my being more interested in 80s era music lately.

Which music do you consider as good to get that dynamic range experience?

Some types of classical music have very large dynamic range. For something you'll find easily, try the "Lord of The Dance" bit from Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring or listen to the whole of Ravel's Bolero from start to finish. Though there are better examples than these, it's likely you will be able to find a good recording of one of these for very little money.

Thank you.
Do you know some good non-classic explicit examples too?
I'm just not familiar with classical music at all, so I fear it will be difficult to grasp the point.