Should I get over my prejudice/ignorance/snobbery for WAV and change to mp3?

[SirReal]

Misinforming? Psycho shell game? Dude, all anyone has to do is put on a wav and put on an mp3, simple as that. I already stated that just by the post itself its obvious what the anwswer is. You can get on your audio high horse all you like but I know from experience in both audio and video that the mind and eyes and ears play tricks on people when they know that technically something is superior. If you think you can hear a difference because you're an audio pro, you're the man.

I never said that the "eyes & ears" won't/can't play tricks, especially to the inexperienced, which it sounds like you take advantage of by "faking" a change. All I've stated is that there is a definite and discernible difference between 320 MP3 and wav and if you can't hear it then I wouldn't want you mixing or mastering for/with me. Does that difference mean ANYTHING to the average punter at a club trying to get laid? I doubt it but there's still a difference and that's the point.

[dj matt blaze]

I never said that the "eyes & ears" won't/can't play tricks, especially to the inexperienced, which it sounds like you take advantage of by "faking" a change. All I've stated is that there is a definite and discernible difference between 320 MP3 and wav and if you can't hear it then I wouldn't want you mixing or mastering for/with me. Does that difference mean ANYTHING to the average punter at a club trying to get laid? I doubt it but there's still a difference and that's the point.

Spoken like a true snobby audio guy. I saw it the first time when you said you wouldn't want me mixing or mastering, no need to repeat, its OK though, I have mixed and or fixed plenty of audio for tv and radio that has aired with no complaints....if a tree falls in the woods with no one around does it make a sound?? If I know that a wav is a better quality format than an MP3 does it sound better? Sure it does....until you listen to it.

oh yea, and PAL blows...

[sarasin]

My ignorance and prejudice is largely due to a vinyl background (as a listener, rather than as a DJ) - something that I still indulge in. And no, I won't initiate the vinyl vs digital debate. I have no prejudice against mp3 and grew to accept it as the industry standard when converting to portable (mp3) players. As for snobbery - that's what I'm accused of because I choose to use the 'technically better' (sic) format.

@ Mostapha - thank you - look forward.

Nothing wrong with being a Wav snob. I refuse to play anything but Wav's on an outdoor sound rig.

[M.Beijer]

I, also, am in the "field" and while I won't get into territorial pissing match, I will say that if you really can't tell the difference between 320MP3 and wav then I know I'd never use you as a mixer, editor or mastering engineer. While you mention "tricking your clients" by adjusting some placebo fader/eq/button/switch and telling them you did what they asked may work with people who don't come from an audio background, I can guarantee that people who do have an audio background will call you on your shit. While being able to "fool" the general populace is definitely possible, the OP wanted to know about there being a difference between 320MP3 and wav and there DEFINITELY is a difference. Just because you can't hear it, don't misinform the people on this forum who want to learn by saying there's no difference and backing it up with psycho-acoustic shell games.

I'm jumping into this thread now too.. regarding your statement about a guy who can't tell the difference should not be mastering and stuff. I got a close friend, examined sound engineer from a respected academy, the studio blue(stockholm).
The group of studio blue and their studio is regarded as one of the best in Europe. http://www.studioblue.se/studion
He and the others at the studio all say you can't hear a difference between a GOOD mp3 320kb and WAV, remember some mp3s sucks even if its 320kbit due to made in a shitty software.
I have been there too, doing blindtest and got the same result, could not pick out the wav.

[mostapha]

The test is pointless with 2 files randomly assigned....you have a 50% chance of getting it right or wrong. There has to be 5 files, 4 mp3 and 1 wav, you have to pick out which is the wav.

My test is valid. If some of your experience in TV qualifies you to speak about research statistics, I'd love to hear it. 10 trials each of 10 songs. The 'score' for each song is averaged and a Student's T-Test is applied looking for significance at the .05 level. Meaning that if your T-Score is above the T* critical value, there's less than a 5% chance that you did better than random based purely on luck. That's good enough for me. I can do the test at .01 if you prefer.

I haven't scored my answers yet (because I haven't committed to them semi-publically) but I'm supremely confident that I got 100% on at least one of the songs (as in 10 out of 10 correctly identified as wav or mp3 for that song clip). But, after doing the test completely blind, I'll agree that the difference is smaller than I thought it was. I probably did no better than random on a couple of them, based solely on my confidence. I'll PM my answers to JohnathanBlake after this post, since he seems answered and then score them…which will probably take a while.

Think about all the DJs on this forum who claim to know it all and act like their word is law in their condescending snobby way....now multiply that by 10 and welcome to the world of television.....

That hasn't been my experience on set. But, I've never worked in post.

I have worked in a recording studio before, and I'll agree…clients can be kinda dumb when they think they know everything. The sad thing is that it's really easy to act superior in that context…and it's never the professional approach. If nothing else, everyone is a slave to confirmation bias. It doesn't take long working in anything like that to adjust an EQ or some color correction or timing or something until you get the effect that you want…only to realize after the fact that you were adjusting a bypassed effector. It happens.

That doesn't mean it's okay to do it intentionally without a really good reason (like saving the client embarrassment by tweaking an EQ on a dead channel instead of adding a 10dB boost at 192k or something else based on them misunderstanding jargon). Then again, doing whatever you were going to do next anyway would also work and not specifically insult them if they catch you

Misinforming? Psycho shell game? Dude, all anyone has to do is put on a wav and put on an mp3, simple as that.

That's why I put together that test. Statistics don't lie.

I'm jumping into this thread now too.. regarding your statement about a guy who can't tell the difference should not be mastering and stuff. I got a close friend, examined sound engineer from a respected academy, the studio blue(stockholm).
The group of studio blue and their studio is regarded as one of the best in Europe. http://www.studioblue.se/studion
He and the others at the studio all say you can't hear a difference between a GOOD mp3 320kb and WAV, remember some mp3s sucks even if its 320kbit due to made in a shitty software.
I have been there too, doing blindtest and got the same result, could not pick out the wav.

Based solely on the experience of the song, I'll agree it's small. But the difference is there.

And, uhh…I don't read/speak Sweedish…but that looks like a recording school. Full Sail, Berklee, and SAE are well-regarded in the US. And I've spoken to graduates of all of them that thing DATs are analog or don't know that MIDI isn't Audio.

Recording schools are a joke. I'll agree for lay people, but if you know what to listen for and it's in the song it's obvious.

[mostapha]

The test.

Okay, so the test is online (or will be shortly) at www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg054r/soundtest.wav. It's a ~500MB wav file, so bear that in mind if–like our friend from S. Africa–you have to pay for bandwidth. I'll probably create a FLAC or ALAC copy as well (which will be the same, but .flac or .m4a instead of .wav) if people ask for it.

It's about 45 minutes long. You'll be listening to 140 audio clips, plus some explanation of what's going on (yay…i found a mic on the floor), plus a section of pink noise to set your volume to a comfortable level. Please avoid changing your volume during the test (certainly only even think about changing it between songs, not between individual trials). Every clip was normalized to the same volume and played with just a bit of headroom. So you shouldn't have to touch your volume control after you start.

After a citation (artist, title, etc.) you hear 4 audio clips in this order: wav, mp3, wav, mp3 to orient you to what you're hearing. Some of them are introduced, others aren't. I just forgot to copypasta all the regions and was too lazy to fix it. If it bothers anyone, I'll fix it.

And no, they're not full songs. They're 15-second clips. If I used full songs, the test would take around 12 hours to complete. The songs are mostly modern dance music leaning towards techno and house.

Please format your responses thusly:

Song[tab]Trial[tab][USERNAME]
1[tab]1[tab][guess, m for mp3, w for wav]
1[tab]2[tab][guess, m for mp3, w for wav]
1[tab]3[tab][guess, m for mp3, w for wav]
1[tab]4[tab][guess, m for mp3, w for wav]
…
2[tab]1[tab][guess, m for mp3, w for wav]
2[tab]1[tab][guess, m for mp3, w for wav]
…
…

Doing so means I can easily use a spreadsheet to do the analysis instead of doing it by hand and potentially making a transcription/computation error. Any text editor will work (or you could use google docs or excel or numbers…whatever) just make sure that you send me just that text and not other formatting information if you can.

Please PM me your results. I'll do the analysis and keep the actual answers secret (though I'll respond with them once you've done it) to avoid people cheating. After a few people have done it, I'll post a description of the results (without revealing anyone's identity…so there's no potential for embarassment if your ears aren't as good as you think they are……except for me……'cuz I'm a boss). I'll be publishing my results right after I generate a key.


I know it's hard to trust, but I assure you that the test is double-blind. I created wav and mp3 versions (then converted the mp3 back to a wav) and in addition to naming them 1wav.wav and 1mp3.wav, they were copied to 1A.wav and 1B.wav…then, using a shell script, I gave each file a crap ton of chances to switch names (back and forth) based on random number generation…and kept track of it in a text file that I didn't read. So, when I was flipping coins to decide whether each trial was going to be the A file or B file, I didn't know which was the wav and which was the mp3 (they were both referred to wavs inside Logic). And yes, I know how to swap things (using a temp file) so they're not the same file.

I look forward to seeing the results and hope I didn't waste all that time.

If nothing else, I got to do the test at least…and we'll see if I've been sticking my foot in my mouth.

[Xonetacular]

This should be interesting I'll do it when I get home today, although I don't expect to be able to really tell the difference.

[photojojo]

Can we do the test multiple times with different listening devices? Maybe picking just one to count to the overall result, but I would be curious what the results would be using my ipod headphones, my MDR7506's and my HD25II's

[TCMuc]

I know it's hard to trust, but I assure you that the test is double-blind.

Just on a side note: a double-blind setting is only necessary in situations where the person being tested can acutally observe the tester. If the tester knows the results he can (unconciously) influence the person being tested, e.g. through his body language.

As noone in this test can observe you there is no real reason to do a double-blind test. Anyway, making it double-blind at least guarantess a true randomisation of which track is A or B and gave you the chance to take the test as well.


Thanks a lot for taking the time to actually putting together this test!!!!

I don't know yet if I will find the time to participate, but if so I surely will send you my results!

[MaxOne]

Can we do the test multiple times with different listening devices? Maybe picking just one to count to the overall result, but I would be curious what the results would be using my ipod headphones, my MDR7506's and my HD25II's

Thing is, if there is no difference then you should be able to listen to it on the best gear in the world and not hear a difference...