Sebastian's Public Listening Tests

Welcome and thank you for your interest in my public tests.

The recent developments in perceptual audio coding, including new formats like AAC, Ogg Vorbis and Windows Media Audio, have brought competition to an arena formerly completely dominated by MP3. Users want to check out these novelties, but frequently stumble over the doubt of "What to choose?".

One of the most important aspects to consider about a format is its sound quality. Undesired artifacts like hissing, pre-echo and stereo-collapse can ruin the pleasure of the listening experience.

One of the most acclaimed methods of comparing codec quality is performing so-called "double blind listening tests". In this sort of test, the participant compares various encoded samples against each other and against an uncompressed reference sample. The "blind" part means that the participant does not know which sample was encoded by which encoder. That guarantees that there will be no psychological bias towards his or her favorite codec or against the codec he or she dislikes.

The purpose of this page is hosting the public tests I conduct from time to time. This includes hosting instructions, results, graphs, etc.

Current open test: No test open at this time.

MP3 Listening Test @ 128 kbps (October 2008):
- Presentation
- Results

Multiformat Listening Test @ 64 kbps (July 2007):
- Presentation
- Results

Multiformat Listening Test @ 48 kbps (November 2006):
- Presentation
- Results

Multiformat Listening Test @ 128 kbps (December 2005):
- Presentation
- Results

Links:

Hydrogenaudio Forums
General audio discussion forum
Roberto Amorim's listening tests
My source of inspiration
ff123
Excellent site on listening tests and audio quality
ITU-R BS.1116-1
My listening tests try to adhere to this specification as much as possible

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank the following people...

Roberto Amorim for helping me a lot with conducting listening tests
schnofler for his great Java version of ABC/HR
Phong for developing the breathtaking Chunky - without this Python script it would take ages to parse result files
Florian for his superb Mp3tag which made creating bitrate tables and audio file tagging as easy as 1-2-3
guruboolez for supporting me and for his private listening tests that ended up helping my tests a lot
Hydrogenaudio Forums members for all the help, suggestions and constructive criticism
Listening test participants: without you, this page wouldn't be here

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me via e-mail: mail@listening-tests.info.

Best regards,
Sebastian Mares