Kids Prefer Poor Quality MP3

[its phillip]

When I was talking about the scene standard I meant the pirating scene. I actually think the standard is v2 (supposedly transparent) and not v0, but some groups use v0 and you may as well test it since it's technically better

 

[lsiberian]

I just presented a paper at the recent 132nd AES Convention in Budapest entitled "Some New Evidence That Teenager and College Students May Prefer Accurate Sound Reproduction" that refutes Berger's findings that kids like bad sound.

In my study none of 58 high school and college students I tested preferred MP3 (128 kbps) to CD-quality music files. On average, the students preferred CD to MP3 in 70% of the trials. The students with more critical listening experience tended to prefer CD in a higher percentage of trials than those students with less or no experience.

In a separate loudspeaker test where four consumer loudspeakers were evaluated under double-blind conditions, the most preferred loudspeaker had the most accurate set of anechoic measurements, and the least preferred loudspeaker had the least accurate set of anechoic measurements. So, it seems that kids can hear and appreciate good sound just like the rest of us. When given the opportunity to compare good sound to bad sound, the youngsters generally prefer the higher quality options.

Sound and Vision has summarized the paper here:

Quite honestly I thought his research was crazy. Even the Teens I know would certainly what the music to be as good as possible. I'm sure the musically inclined were even more polarized. I was on the front edge of the MP3 movement and while I did rip all the music I had to MP3 I also used the best rippers I could find to do so. I always went with higher bit-rates. The quality of compression has improved drastically from my days on the high seas. Besides with SSD Hard Drives getting huge space is not a problem.

 

[tonmeister]

Quite honestly I thought his research was crazy. Even the Teens I know would certainly what the music to be as good as possible. I'm sure the musically inclined were even more polarized. I was on the front edge of the MP3 movement and while I did rip all the music I had to MP3 I also used the best rippers I could find to do so. I always went with higher bit-rates. The quality of compression has improved drastically from my days on the high seas. Besides with SSD Hard Drives getting huge space is not a problem.

I agree with you that the quality of MP3 has gradually improved, and this factor alone could explain why more of Berger's students preferred MP3 ever year -- unless he was using the same MP3 encoder over the 7-year period. We'll never know since he never published his study, and there are more questions than answers. That was the motivation for me adding some data points to this debate.

I posted something about this study today on my blog. You can find a PDF of my slide presentation that I gave last month over at AES in Budapest.

 

[gene]

I just presented a paper at the recent 132nd AES Convention in Budapest entitled "Some New Evidence That Teenager and College Students May Prefer Accurate Sound Reproduction" that refutes Berger's findings that kids like bad sound.

In my study none of 58 high school and college students I tested preferred MP3 (128 kbps) to CD-quality music files. On average, the students preferred CD to MP3 in 70% of the trials. The students with more critical listening experience tended to prefer CD in a higher percentage of trials than those students with less or no experience.

In a separate loudspeaker test where four consumer loudspeakers were evaluated under double-blind conditions, the most preferred loudspeaker had the most accurate set of anechoic measurements, and the least preferred loudspeaker had the least accurate set of anechoic measurements. So, it seems that kids can hear and appreciate good sound just like the rest of us. When given the opportunity to compare good sound to bad sound, the youngsters generally prefer the higher quality options.

Sound and Vision has summarized the paper here:

Great article and I love the title. The ending quote is priceless:

To the elders:

Shut up about people younger than you. By every metric, the world gets better over time, despite some really crappy dips and diversions. Embrace new technology. Also, if the music is too loud, you’re too old.

 

[its phillip]

Here's an example of how strict one torrent site is on the quality of their uploads - a screenshot of their upload rules page (click to see full):

 

[GranteedEV]

Google Chrome is calling this thread's tag to be "Kids Prefer Poo"

I just presented a paper at the recent 132nd AES Convention in Budapest entitled "Some New Evidence That Teenager and College Students May Prefer Accurate Sound Reproduction" that refutes Berger's findings that kids like bad sound.

In my study none of 58 high school and college students I tested preferred MP3 (128 kbps) to CD-quality music files. On average, the students preferred CD to MP3 in 70% of the trials. The students with more critical listening experience tended to prefer CD in a higher percentage of trials than those students with less or no experience.

In a separate loudspeaker test where four consumer loudspeakers were evaluated under double-blind conditions, the most preferred loudspeaker had the most accurate set of anechoic measurements, and the least preferred loudspeaker had the least accurate set of anechoic measurements. So, it seems that kids can hear and appreciate good sound just like the rest of us. When given the opportunity to compare good sound to bad sound, the youngsters generally prefer the higher quality options.

Sound and Vision has summarized the paper here:

Thanks Sean.

 

[tonmeister]

Google Chrome is calling this thread's tag to be "Kids Prefer Poo"
.

Well, that's what Jonathan Berger said, which is the opposite conclusion of my tests. I guess that's another reason to use Safari instead of Chrome :O

 

[lsiberian]

I agree with you that the quality of MP3 has gradually improved, and this factor alone could explain why more of Berger's students preferred MP3 ever year -- unless he was using the same MP3 encoder over the 7-year period. .

Some folks forget that it wasn't more than 20 years ago that I was listening to Tapes.

 

[tomd51]

Some folks forget that it wasn't more than 20 years ago that I was listening to Tapes.

Of course we'd forget, I didn't even know you 20 years ago...

 

[lsiberian]

Of course we'd forget, I didn't even know you 20 years ago...

I was a lot cuter back at age 9. I'm not sure what happened to me.

 

[tomd51]

Tell me about it... I need to have some age regression photos done nowadays...

 

[j_garcia]

Kids like a lot of useless thing

 

[STRONGBADF1]

I was a lot cuter back at age 9. I'm not sure what happened to me.

Doritos....

 

[Ariii]

Honestly, some clean guitar things sound way better to me when the recording quality is horrible, since the fuzziness actually makes it sound amazing. Especially the song I referenced in another thread, Guitarazzo. Personally, I'm not that audiophilic, but I can't miss any instrument in a recording, and my $5 headphones actually bring each instrument out pretty well on my AAC-encoded music at the highest quality. I'm 13 and completely hate most of the pop music out there right now, if that would make any difference. And it's slightly true, most kids I know have no care at all for the recording quality of their rap/hip-hop music as long as they're listening to it on their $200 headphones.

 

[wlmmn]

...it's blatently obvious the masses prefer portability over quality when it comes to music....

What kills me when I hear this is that they can have both. In this age of cheap storage and lossless compression codecs, it's very easy and managable to have quality and portability. My iPod is portable (of course) and I only have uncompressed wav files straight off my CDs on it. The two concepts aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[Steve.]

I know...all my kids have now is iPod music on their horrible iPod based "stereos" . Horrible sounding... That's OK though because after listening to that and my crappy stock car stereo after driving for 8 hours it's really nice to retreat to man town and listen to some good music on a quality system.