Digital Audio Pepsi Challenge
OK, here is the link: Proper Discord
It is a classical music site that has 3 clips of a piece of classical music recorded at various fidelities.
Now, we are supposed to listen to all 3 and see which one has the highest fidelity.
OK.
And we are listening to the on…. what?
A. The speaker built into our laptop or computer?
B. The $10 out-board speakers that we ordered with the computer [my default setup]?
B. Perhaps by routing the signal out the earphone jack into a Lexicon surround processor into a couple of active Yamaha speakers? [my other setup]?
The point is that the vast majority of people will answer A. Then take this test and will not be able to tell which is the highest fidelity. And this is supposed to show that people have no ears?
What it shows is that the people running the test have no concept or respect for the quality of audio playback equipment and what it means in terms of being able to hear the music with greater ability and insight.
Anyway, there is also a part 2 to the article, which I have not read – but the test is meaningless IMHO.
The test isn’t meaningless at all. It shows that most people can’t tell. It doesn’t show why, but that wasn’t the question. If you’re interested in selling recordings, the why doesn’t matter anything like as much as it does if you’re interested in selling hardware.
I really object to the [I would say sloppy, definitely insulting, but all too common] marketing ploy that says people have inferior [hearing, taste, sensibilities, whatever] and therefore it is OK to sell an inferior product.
First, people, off the street, CAN hear the difference on suitable equipment. There is nothing wrong with people and their hearing [unless they have a specific disability].
Second, from a marketing perspective, it depends on what playback equipment the average purchaser, presumably of 99 cent download, uses to listen to their purchase. If most people pay a buck and listen to the music on their PCs, fine. The test works for that kind of demographic. If instead the songs are purchased and loaded into an iPod or iPhone, well then the test is meaningless. If they listen to it in the car, the test is meaningless. Etc.
There are also 2 other aspects to having a product that is successful in the marketplace that are ignored:
1. Long term listening, say more than a half hour, to inferior fidelity music becomes irritating to many people – even tho on a conscious level they can detect nothing being overtly bad about the fidelity.
2. Some music genres are more ‘listenable’ at lower fidelity than others. For example, pop is [often] already compressed and the simple melodies often only get casual attention from a typical listener [say], but genres like classical, the music is much more involved and subtle, and reduced fidelity significantly reduces the ability to appreciate it.
In fact, there is a school of thought that blames the reduction in the quality of media [the switch to CDs] and playback equipment [switch to solid state] for the decline of classical and opera – that listening to them can be difficult and annoying compared to listening to, say, Dianna Krall or Michael Jackson, where the reduced complexity of the music requires much less from these technologies and less listener focus to enjoy.
[hey everybody: that is our explanation for the increased interest in classical and opera by people with decent playback systems. Anybody else have a different explanation?]
Anyway, if the marketer hopes to sell inferior quality downloads of classical music to a customer base which will play the music on their home stereo, then I think they are going to have some problems. If they are selling mellow 4-piece jazz and simple pop songs to people who play music only on cheap PC speakers – then they are good to go.
Take care,
Mike
Hi Mike,
You make some really interesting points here.
It would be sloppy and insulting to deliver an inferior product if a superior one could be delivered at no extra cost to the customer, but the truth is that while it costs little for a big company to store and deliver big files, they take twice as long to download, you can only fit half as many on your computer or portable device, and the battery doesn’t last long when you play them back. Mass market stores deliver compressed downloads because that’s the compromise that suits most customers.
A potentially flawed assumption behind my test is that people would listen to my music download on the same system that they’d use for all their other downloads. Clearly, if they mostly listen to their downloads from their iPod on good headphones but have bad speakers connected to their computer, that’s not the case. One thing that surprised me about the feedback on this was the number of self-proclaimed audiophiles that have really terrible speakers connected to their computers.
I was only really interested in the classical music market – I think the customers (and a great many commentators) have spoken on pop music – but you’re right that long-term listening can’t be covered by a 3-minute test. I haven’t thought up a way to measure it without spending a lot of money. If you have ideas, I’d be interested to hear them.
The vast majority of classical downloads sold today are compressed, and the compromise of convenience vs. quality seems to suit a lot of people. It’s obvious, though that there’s a segment of the market that isn’t happy to listen that way.
I plan to do more research tailored to the audiophile end of the market in future. I’d value your input there too, when the time comes.
Best,
Proper Discord
I think quality is in opposite of market target.
they have fundamental conflict even at high price policy of many company we see quality is not as you expect.
digital, solidstate, low res mp3 and … all introduced to us because market had more benefit on them.
maybe there is a better world , i do not know but some people think we could live better.
regards
Amir
I think much of what people choose to buy has to do with marketing…
Here in the U.S. we are very susceptible to the ‘discount mentality’. But not always: CDs are more expensive to buy than LPs.
People are susceptible to the ‘Its New’ mentality – which, for me, explains much of the move to CDs and solid-state. But they also have a lot of inertia, which is why CDs and solid-state are still being used.
I am not sure what the average difference in file sizes are between Lossy and Lossless compressions, but pointing out the negative issues associated with listening to the ‘rot gut’ stuff would go a long way towards making it a valid business model to offer a ‘premium’ service.
But instead – and this is what I think is a real problem with our society as well as high-end audio, is that people are lied to often enough that they believe the lie for decades and decades. “Perfect Sound Forever”. Freq above 20K Hz don’t matter. THD is all there is to measure in equipment. People can’t hear the difference between Lossy and Lossless MP3s.
All lies to further someone’s agenda – an agenda to sell an inferior product at a price at or above the price of an obviously higher quality product. Obviously, that is, until the marketing campaign slogans kicked in.
IMHO it is OK for businesses to offer free 128K MP3 ‘rot gut’ 🙂 downloads – and other sites to offer free FLAC etc. downloads. They just shouldn’t lie about the difference. Let people decide for themselves. And size differences: disk space is cheap and bandwidth is cheap until you get to be the size of hypem or AMZN or something – and they can hopefully afford the extra millicent difference per download.
[obviously this comment is a little bit rambling this morning. this obviously strieks at the core of audiophiledom and at a lot of quality of life issues – both on and off the internet – that we each must choose to help/hinder/accept]
Take care Amir and PD,
Mike