Methodology (Destiny)

by Funkmon , Saturday, March 21, 2015, 18:12 (3783 days ago) @ marmot 1333
edited by Funkmon, Saturday, March 21, 2015, 18:18

The purpose of this experiment was to test my hypothesis that MP3 and CD were functionally indistinguishable, and vinyl is not superior.

First, 9 varying tracks (from my library) were acquired in lossless format. One was jazz, five were rock, one was a hip hop song, one was Bach, and one was an acapella group.

These were transcoded to MP3 via LAME at approximately 200 kilobits per second, then played on a Macintosh using VLC through the speakers in my friend's studio. No deets on that, but they're fantastic.

These were also ripped to a CD and played using VLC on a Macintosh.

Then, 3 of the rock songs, Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, All The Girls Love Alice, and Harmony were on my friend's brand new reissue of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road on Vinyl. He would get the track to start, then play it. We also ripped this audio as the highest quality FLAC, and I suggested we use this as the vinyl sample, but my friend wanted to use real audio from his turntable.

He has a great needle and a balanced turntable. No warping of sound at all.

In testing, he would test me and I would test him. We played 2 minute long intervals of each song starting at the tester's choice, except for Funeral For a Friend, where we listened to the whole thing minus a few seconds at the beginning at random. For vinyl the sound would be muted until a second after playing so as to not influence us with the needle drop

EDIT: Blinding:

We were in another room from the computer and closed our eyes on the honor system. This was only single blinded.

I was able to correctly identify vinyl, but could not tell CD from MP3, getting it correct 10/18 times, and him getting it 9/18 times. I think. I would need to look to find the exact numbers for sure, but I am almost positive this is correct. Vinyl he got correct every time.

We discussed quality of sound, and I agreed that I liked the vinyl mix more, so that aspect of my hypothesis was wrong. The vinyl was better, qualitatively. It sounded different, probably because it was slightly imperfect, as all vinyl is in the real world, which was pleasing.

However, we agreed to our rock musicians' ears, we can not tell the difference at 200kbps target bitrate VBR and CD.

Our conclusion is that while it is technically possible that CD is distinguishable to people with exceptional hearing and exceptional audio systems, for a 57 year old man and me, a 20 something, who both play guitar and listen closely to music, there is no need to use FLAC or 320kbps MP3.