Interesting article, and not surprising to any human who has ever seriously listened to music in the company of other humans. Our powers of discrimination are pretty highly developed.


What I wonder about is other species who have (or at least we suspect they have) way better hearing than we do. Bats can echolocate with their hearing, for crying out loud. Wonder what their Fourier score is?

:-)

David

Cool article and I write this as I'm listening to 192/24 ... I always felt that I could hear a difference between mp3 and flac as well as redbook and higher res files ~ however, I'm not sure if it's all in my head and I seriously doubt I could tell the difference between 96 or 192.  

Lately what I have been finding interesting is that needle drops (vinyl rips) compared to the actual vinyl are very hard to distinguish (they almost sound identical to me).  Vinyl still has its cool factor and appeal as I find it rare that when I play a vinyl album that I don't actually stop and smell the roses compared to when I listen to digital ... I still enjoy digital and the majority of my listening is digital, but I feel that I listen more critically when I take the time to put a vinyl album on.  

Does anybody else feel that way?

It's been a long while since I've heard a nice turntable setup through a good amp. I'm purposefully not looking that way. I have listened to some 24/96 needle drops and really enjoy them (assuming the system is nice and the record is relatively pop-free.

I was reading a PS Audio article now that I'm signed up for Paul's blogs - and he pointed something out that's been bugging me for a while and he completely cleared it up for me:

With digital finally getting near the resolution of analog, why do records still sound different? Why are some of these blu-ray remasters including needle drops? Well, the gist of it is that a record has a limited dynamic range, which somewhat compresses the overall tune. So the subtle room-acoustics and micro details are more apparent, bringing the room and performers more forward.

I've heard this before, even on a typical consumer table, when comparing CD to record of supposedly the same pressing - I've always just chalked it up to the magic of analog, now I understand it as a dynamic range/compression thing!

So, back on topic, I'm thinking I need to have a friend setup an ABX test between Original CD, FLAC, and MP3 320/240/190 and see if I can tell the difference. I know back in the day the owners of a used CD shop put me to the test when I said I could hear the difference between original pressing and BMG music club pressings - 3 different albums, 3 copies of each album (so 9 total recordings), and I picked out the BMG 3 out of 3. And that was on their budget CD players and their (gross) demo headphones.

Granted, that was 15 years ago, I know I don't have the hearing I did then...but I'm up for the modern version of this test!

My Oppo BDP-105 can do that if the files are on hard drive, connected to USB.

I just need to find some files.

Any suggestions?