2013/4/5 Thomas Vecchione <seablaede(a)gmail.com>om>:
So here is the thing, it makes a large difference what
the source is as to
how obvious it would be. Case in point, I found the v6 difficult on the
files in the thread, but I toss in one of my recordings(Using lame with v4
and v6 as above) from a live concert and holy crap is there a difference,
obvious right from the get go in the hiss in the track on v6. v4 on the
other hand was very difficult to tell on that track to where I don't think I
could hear a difference. But that only makes me wish I had some decent
recording of full orchestral classical at my workstation to listen to as
that is my goto material for a source. Or irish folk music, which can do a
decent job as well causing problems of more than one sort:)
Some things to keep in mind, I am listening over studio monitors, not
headphones, but still much better than the average listening environment.
It would likely be even more obvious over headphones to tell the truth.
Second it always makes a difference in the second generation encoding, which
is why I tend to use FLAC for archival and master purposes, and use OGG or
otherwise for listening, so that I never risk a second generation
compression, which becomes more obvious.
Via abx, there wasn't ever a question with v8 really. v6 as I mentioned on
the sources mentioned above were much harder, but if I tossed in my own
acoustic/folk recording it became very blatant. Again source makes all the
difference. v4 I couldn't tell over speakers, but I also don't have most of
my music collection here either, so I really should come back to it with
some decent classical and irish folk tracks and see what happens.
Seablade
Right, as I said in a previous post ABX test is "statistics
pornography", allow me this metaphor :-)
It relies on weak assumptions (thomas just explained) and hence a
bunch of variables which variance can't be somewhat controlled
(statistically speaking) to isolate the dependent variable, ie the
real ability to discriminate (golden ears)...
I would say that it's good to state that with higher bitrates there's
actually no difference, with low bitrates outcomes may change a lot.
Nevertheless it's very educational in terms of understanding what we
perceive from our beliefs.
/r