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Mac, if you are referring to the ability of our auditory sense ability to replace missing information, I understand about all of that...it is what the mp3 format is based around, this ability for our systems to replace the missing info.



The human voice simply does not contain much if at all above the 17KHz mp3 brickwall xeiling. Not hardly approaches it. That is the first physical hurdle I referred to above and the largest. It has nothing to do with psycho=acoustics, which is what you are referring to here. It is above 17KHz mark where the "losses" are most in an mp3 file.

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I have taken "blindfold" tests along with some other friends who wanted to try it out, and yes, we were not perfect. But when I can here the difference around 70% of the time (some were better, some where worse) then it is unreasonable to say it is all in someone's head, and that they "think" that they can tell a difference.



As an engineer, I cannot make a call on that either way. It could happen 70% of the time when throwing random answers at it also. Comprehensive testing might involve multiple, repeated tests, but really, unless you could nail it *every* time, then it is either not as apparent as you may think it to be or nonexistant. BTW -- when referring to auditory response, it is spelled, "hear" and not "here"...

If you can't identify it 100% of the time, be prepared to find out that it really isn't there to hear.

And -- be able to say out loud exactly what it is that you are listening for. Not in layman's terms, but in terms of the exact component or components.

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It is like the arguments about how a DAW sounds, "Do the null test!" is the cry, but it is funny that folks can usually pick their favorite DAW from a list of tracks that have been played back thru several DAW's, when they all use the same Master track for all of them.



Hear we go with that "usually" again...

Usually doesn't make it. Either you can hear the difference, ALL THE TIME, or you can't.

Example would be Absolute Pitch. Proven, by those who have acquired it, to be 100% accurate, 100% of the time.

The human ear system is actually quite infallible. It is that gray stuff in between that often blurs the issue.

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It's all horses for course really, and something that will always have folks on both sides going "Oh Yea?!"



And such is why companies can sell ridicuously priced "Audiophile grade" speaker cables that tout ridiculous things like the Oxygen Impregnated Copper for the high frequencies to travel on the outside of the conductor "better". Um, first of all, we are talking AUDIO frequencies here, the skin effect would not apply until the frequencies got MUCH higher than that. Physics.

There still exist a few codecs for mp3 that make hearing that it is mp3 readily apparent, though. The old "swishy" and "phasey" sound. That, too, is a dead giveaway and one should be able to nail its use 100% of the time, double blindfold or no.


--Mac

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