App to Test Your Audio Quality Hearing

by Rian

There was a time about a decade ago when wireless audio was simply not acceptable. I recall The Verge called wireless headphones to be the next quartz watch; the new technology that will soon replace the existing ones, and the consumer wired audio will live on as niche, maybe for hobbyists to admire the craftsmanship. Though I disagree on technical point of the metaphors, —unlike quartz, wireless isn’t inherently cheaper yet— The Verge was right: wireless is the new norm.

All the pleasantries aside, for most prospective buyers of new wireless headphones, audio quality has now become something measurable and accessible for once. Wireless headphone often advertise what version of codec it supports, and these codecs have different transfer rate or bit rate. But as we all know, codec isn’t the only criteria for a good headphone —batteries, comfort, audio cancellations, many other things to consider. But let’s focus on those bit rates. Higher is better, but how far are you willing to go?

This is where NPR’s coverage on lossless and two lossy compressed (320kbps and 128kbps) tests come in. You get to listen to 6 tracks of music, each with three samples of audio. This test may not be the most accurate, but it does give you the sense of idea of where ‘okay’ from ‘great-okay-bad’ rating should stand.

On more personal note, I couldn’t tell the difference between 320kbps and uncompressed WAV from NPR. I was wearing a Bluetooth headset, and that is likely the bottleneck off the top of my head. But not only I found 320kbps to be pleasurable enough, I quickly realized I wasn’t paying attention to the audio quality itself. The test itself too, I noticed what was going to be better from how slow it loads, not actually what sounds better. Just think about how much data I must have used to stream some musics on the road, lossless. I doubt I would have noticed the difference with all the distractions.