- A Redditor Created a Tool That Lets Blind Ears Test FLAC and Different MP3 Quality Levels
- The most important thing is that you use your own music, rather than samples you don’t know well.
- It’s humbling for many audiophiles.
In an attempt to determine if they had the hearing ability to distinguish between FLAC and MP3, one Redditor recently created a tool that allows you to perform a “blind” listening test. It’s not the first tool for this, but it addresses the common weaknesses of these tools, making it easier to compare and contrast songs directly, and most importantly, you use your own songs, so you’re testing with tracks you know inside and out.
You upload a FLAC and the tool will create MP3 copies of 16, 64, 128 and 320 kbps. You’ll then be able to seamlessly switch between the lower bitrates and the original, with random tags that won’t tell you which version you’re listening to. When switching, you won’t go back to the beginning of the song, so you can listen to excerpts in different streams.
The tool does the rest and everything is processed in your browser, so your data won’t be uploaded to the cloud or anyone willing to sell it. Just keep in mind that you’ll actually need a lossless file to test, and for best results you’ll want to send the output to a good DAC, either a hi-fi system or powered speakers, or one of the best portable DACs and some of the best wired headphones.
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But why am I talking? You can try the tool yourself by accessing it here. It’s free to use, although there is a donation link for the creator if you find it useful.
Hear a difference?
Most audiophiles will probably claim that they can always hear the difference between lossless and lossy, but this test may make some doubt their own ears. The owner himself quipped “turns out I’m deaf, I guess,” when describing how they can’t hear the difference between 128kbps, 320kbps and FLAC.
The original poster is not alone, as other users confirm that they had a hard time telling the difference. One poster simply said “this is very humiliating,” communicating in four words what many other respondents took paragraphs to say.
Another commenter described testing on $25,000 monitors and not being able to distinguish 320kbps files from lossless files.
As many point out, MP3 takes up less space than FLAC, making it ideal for space-conscious listeners.
This isn’t exactly breaking news. Sound engineers have long said that it is impossible to distinguish the differences between higher quality compressed audio and lossless audio. Famed producer Steven Wilson, who recently admitted that he can no longer distinguish between CD and high-resolution audio (although I should note that none of the options in the comparison tool are as high quality as CD, which is around 1,400 kbps).
However, there are many defenses to lossless beyond audio fidelity. The posters point out that storing higher quality FLAC files means you can easily convert to other file types without introducing artifacts, because while you can convert lossless MP3 to lossy MP3, you can’t convert back and recover the information you lost.
So for audiophiles, having your music collection in FLAC is still a safer option, even if it eats up that storage space. But this tool is a reminder that a good MP3 can still sound great, and even lossless in real terms.
And at the very least, he claims that 16kbps and 64kbps MP3s still sound garbage.
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