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  • I tried to identify high-quality audio samples and failed miserably

    by 
    Billy Steele
    Billy Steele
    06.03.2015

    High-resolution audio is getting a lot buzz as of late thanks to the efforts of Tidal, Neil Young and others. While Tidal had a test of its own, NPR set up another quiz to see if you can tell the difference between MP3s and uncompressed WAVs. I couldn't, and I listened to the samples through a pair of B&O H6s routed through an Apogee Groove DAC/headphone amp. In fact, the only track out of the six in which I was able to accurately identify the uncompressed audio was Katy Perry's "Dark Horse" (oddly enough, I'm a big KP fan). For reference, 320kbps MP3s, which are the mid-grade option here, are what streaming services like Spotify, Rdio and others use for their catalogs.