Apple Music boss says 98 percent of people can’t identify lossless audio

Oh Dear. Nothing like shoving your head into a hornets nest.

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‘…I don’t know if it’s 99 or 98 can’t tell the difference…’

Sounds rather like the famous maxim that ‘75% of all quoted statistics are made up on the spot’ . For Apple’s purposes it doesn’t matter either way as he is actually plugging Dolby Atmos rather than lossless. Not sure if people are aware of the fact that huge numbers of albums are being remixed in Atmos with zero contribution from the artists or original producer. Just another round of remastering and another product to sell, rather like that other one (which shall remain nameless for obvious reasons).

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Will I have to wear my RED/BLUE glasses to hear in 3D??? :nerd_face:

Wonder if Eddy Cue was referring to this paper??? AES E-Library » A Comparison of Clarity in MQA Encoded Files vs. Their Unprocessed State as Performed by Three Groups — Expert Listeners :innocent:

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Well, 98% or more are not audiophiles, have average or below average audio equipment. So, it makes sense to me.

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Exactly.

Soundbars in the TV room, Amazon Echos in the kitchen, portable Sonos units out on the deck. They all sound fine, and are perfect for lossless audio.

But if you sat down a bunch of people in front of a reeeeaaally nice audiophile-grade system, and only two percent could tell the difference, then you’d have a valid statistic.

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and he goes on to stress that you would require great audiophile equipment to do so. Even then, with so many older listeners suffering from degenerative hearing loss, they would probably struggle in an authentic blind listening test.

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We lived in a bias full world!

It takes a good system AND a ‘trained ear’ to tell the difference:

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It’s probably closer to 99%

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I bet that 98% of people really don’t listen that carefully as they don’t care about resolution or format.

And in ten years, another revolutionary format will be released so there is another format we must buy to keep up with the Joneses. Who cares what it sounds like, as the media says it’s a “must have” because the inventor said so,

Nahhh. You just need a firmware upgrade for your brain.

A lot of the world has been trained on 10 years of 128KB downloaded music and another 10 on 256KB so it’s sounds like what they have always heard along with poor quality headphones given away with phone’s and MP3 players. So Apple and others have created this problem.
I watched Hans video last night and he is good at trying to explain things.

The music itself also makes a difference. As a Tidal subscriber that listens to a lot of symphonic and dark Metal, I can almost instantly tell when something recorded in AAC 256 is played. Sadly there is quite a lot of it on the high resolution service. It Just sounds crunched and overly compressed. When I find the same album on CD quality and there is a world of difference. Often I have had to go out and buy these albums to really enjoy them, and thankfully I have no problem with that.

I do not consider myself an Audiophile, just someone who takes pleasure in listening to music.

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And 100% of audiophile evangelists fear blind tests :wink:

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I was about to add that about 98% of people who claim to hear the difference probably can’t 9 out of 10 times unless they only have a few albums in their collection.

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Trained ears have always done well on blind test trials. Typically with accuracy at least 70-80%.

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Generally on tracks they know intimately, on equipment they know intimately, at a certain time of day, having cleaned out their ears in a totally silent house, leaning forward with intense concentration……
Sounds like hard work to me to recognise 1% of a decent collection 70% of the time.

I am talking about independent testers, when the listeners are not intimately familiar with anything in the test.

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One of the best, if not the ‘lossless’ medium is SACD/DSD64.

I can very easy discern between the SACD/DSD layer, and the RBCD layer of the vast majority of my Hybrid SACD collection.

Mind you, I have an Esoteric K-01X BH to help me discern that difference.

As has been previously stated, the quality of replay equipment is key to appreciating ‘lossless’ audio. It’s no surprise that the vast majority of AM users aren’t interested in lossless audio. They’re probably all listening with AirPods. And grand they sound too! :grinning:

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I did the Spotify test from years ago and got 8 out of 10 right through my iMac speakers .
I missed one song that I was simply speaking , I believe Suzanne Vega’s Tom Diner intro .

My ears aren’t that great , so maybe people don’t listen that closely .

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