- A Redditor built a tool to let you blind ear test FLAC and different MP3 quality levels
- Crucially, you use your own music, rather than samples you don’t know well
- It’s humbling a lot of audiophiles
In a bid to work out whether they had the hearing chops to tell the difference between FLAC and MP3, a Redditor recently built a tool to let you do a ‘blind’ listening test. It’s not the first tool for this, but it addresses common pain points with these tools, to make it easier to directly compare and contrast songs — and most crucially, 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 16, 64, 128 and 320kbps MP3 copies. Then you can seamlessly switch between the lower bitrates and original, with randomized labels not telling you which version you’re listening to. Changing won’t jump you back to the start of the song, so you can hear excerpts in different streams.
The tool does the rest, and it’s all processed in your browser, so your data won’t be uploaded to the cloud or anyone ready to sell it. Just note, you’ll actually need a lossless file to do the test, and for best results you’ll want to be outputting to a good DAC – either in 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 I am I talking? You can test out the tool yourself, by browsing to it right here. It’s free to use, although there’s a donation link for the creator if you find it useful.
Hearing a difference?
Most audiophiles will probably assert that they can always hear a difference between lossless and lossy, but this test might cause some to doubt their own ears. The owner himself said jokingly “turns out I’m deaf I guess”, when describing how they can’t hear the difference between 128kbps, 320kbps and FLAC.
The original poster’s not alone, with other users confirming that they’ve struggled to hear a difference. One poster simply said “this is very humbling”, communicating in four words what many other responders took paragraphs to say.
Another commenter described doing the test on $25,000 monitors, and not being able to tell 320kbps files from lossless.
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 rumbled about the differences between higher-quality compressed audio and full lossless being impossible to pick out. Famed producer Steven Wilson who recently admitted that he can’t tell the difference between CDs and high-res audio any more (though I should point out that none of the options in the comparison tool are as high-quality as CD, which is around 1,400kbps).
There is plenty of defense for lossless, though, beyond audio fidelity. Posters point out that storing the best-quality FLAC files means you can easily convert to other file types without introducing artefacts, because while you can convert lossless to lossy MP3, you can’t convert back and regain the information you lost.
So for audiophiles, having your music collection in FLAC is still a safer choice, even if it eats up that storage space. But this tool is a reminder that a good MP3 can still sound great, and even on par with lossless in real terms.
And at the very least, it asserts that 16kbps and 64kbps MP3s still sound garbage.
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tom.bedford@hotmail.co.uk (Tom Bedford)
