This is an old article from NPR but I've only just now come across it so I thought I would share. I'm on my computer right now and couldn't hear too much of a difference between the different samples. Can you all hear the difference in audio quality?
Rusty Messages: 1148 Registered: May 2018 Location: Kansas City Missouri
Illuminati (3rd Degree)
There was a post for this on vinyl engine. Like you, it was difficult to hear a difference. With the sound quality of a laptop though I got 2 out of the 6. But I was pleased to not have picked any of the lowest quality digital.
gofar99 Messages: 1939 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi, There are a lot of factors involved. How good is the sound coming from the PC? Standard built in sound systems are not top notch usually. Actually pretty dismal in many cases. What are you using to hear the sound? Premium headphones would be the top of the heap, built in speakers the bottom. How familiar are you with the music sample and what type of music is it? I personally find that anything encoded at 24/96 or above with no compression is impossible for me to tell from the source. For low res stuff like MP3 those encoded below 192 are audibly deficient and even 320s are easy to spot from the true source. Fortunately most of the time such files are listened to on the run, in autos or as background music and the deficiencies (as there is no true source to compare to) are generally acceptable to most listeners.