Article: Apple Music Lossless Mess Part 2: AirPlay

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This experiment is very impressive.  I thank the experimenter.  It is a technical test to as accurately as possible determine if bit-perfect sound is streaming in many various conditions- and the tester did a great job.  

 

I would like to recommend a somewhat similar but yet very different test.

 

If all the above tests in different formats were redone playing the same music from the same albums- and nobody looked at the bit-perfect light on the dac, but instead a blind listening test was done where the one who controlled the variables was not the one who listened, and the listener took notes to determine which of the many options his ears liked better with NO knowledge of what the operator was playing, I wonder if the listener would choose "bit-perfect or not?  I wonder if the listener would choose Qobuz over Apple, or vice versa, etc., etc.  The most important key in such a test is the word "BLIND" as psychological factors and biases deeply effect our choices without our realizing.  Perhaps, multiple listeners could participate so several sets of ears would be involved in the test to add some credibility to the results.

 

If anyone has the time to do a similar test to the ones above but to use a persons ears instead of a light on a dac as the factor to determine which is better, I think that would be great.  I realize this is a NON-objective test and rather one of listening tastes unlike the experiment conducted above and so the conclusions would not at all be sealed in stone, but yet it may be of interest.

 

I realize that no one is implying that bit-perfect is necessarily better than non-bit perfect- just that it is bit-perfect and therefore not modified from how the artist recorded his song; but at the end of the day, if our ears like non-bit perfect better, or apple better than Tidal,- perhaps this is a more important factor- and that is why I recommend this test.  After all, audiophiles are generally a combination of music lovers and scientists.  But I would hope that we all stress the music loving part over the scientific.