3 Apr
2013
3 Apr
'13
2:17 a.m.
I guess I _never_ failed a blind test, but that's not important. Most
people are comfortable with MP3s, but if I talk to them and point them
to the lossy parts, they're able to notice the loss too, they are
usually not annoyed by the loss.
Tests with uneducated people are useless, those tests just should ensure
how far the industry could go.
Most people of my generation know how milk does taste and some people,
e.g. me, are unable to drink the heated piss they sell as milk today.
In the first tests they found out that heated milk does taste equal to
real milk, after a while they noticed that too many people of my
generation still remember the taste of real milk, so the next claim was,
just some people are able to taste a difference, but only when comparing
it. My claim is that everybody > than 30 years is able to taste a
difference, without the need to compare milk A and B.
Back to audio ;), if you aren't accustomed to MP3s, but accustomed to
listen to productions in good audio studios, than you can't stand MP3s.
If something is good enough for averaged consumers, it doesn't mean it's
good. Sure, at home perhaps most of us don't have good audio conditions
by their flats. Inexperienced people might think that standing waves and
all the issues we are accustomed to, from our homes, are "normal" = ok,
but it isn't ok, it's crap, just hard to avoid at home. What happens to
the stereo impression of MP3s? Keep those high quality MP3s microphony
for headphones, for speakers as it was done by the engineer? What kind
of audio material is tested in what way? Is it a room with less stimuli,
IOW a completely unnatural situation? Etc. pp.. many people won't notice
if one speaker is out of phase, other people might not only notice it,
but keel over, caused by the acoustic impression, when walking through a
room with wrong connected speakers. Some people see colors when
listening to music, other people have no connections amongst the senses.
But ok, a soccer player should be asked, if he is able to hear loss or
not and the audio engineer than has to fix all the issues of all the
possible medias/codecs. It already is hard to mix music in a way that it
does sound good on most stereo equipment, it becomes harder, if you need
to take care about issues caused by all codecs that possibly could be
used or when mixing for more than 2 channels.