A listening test in video form. On the plus side, it’s helpful to see the spectrum as it’s playing, and a peak meter to see how the sweeps compare to each other, and to the announcing voice. On the minus side, YouTube drops my 24-bit uncompressed source down to 16-bit. Worse, it somehow maintains the minimum 16-bit level for all subsequent sweeps—if you can hear the 16-bit, you’ll hear the ret too. So, for the quieter sweeps, please reference the audio from A listening test.
Tip: I’ve included the audio from A listening test in a player below the video. The audio is identical, but starts about two seconds later in the video. You can start the video, and as soon as the audio (or meter and spectrogram color) appears, start the audio player, and mute the video. As long as you’re within a second or so, it will match up fine with the video.
If I set the level so the spoken voice is at “rock music listening” or “movie theatre loudness” I could hear the sweep up to 24bit in the video – is it possible that some distortion emphasizes the sound, because in the audio only version I could hear “only” up to 22 – at that level of playback.
But if the voice level is set at a comfortable “audio book listening” volume, I could hear the sweep only up to 15 bits in audio only version and up to 18bit in the video. I adjusted the volume so the voice would be perceptually of equal loudness. I really wonder why the sweep is more audible in the video – if the level is set so the voice sounds perceptually the same between video and audio only file.
I am male, 51, listening through Steinberg AXR4 interface and Neumann KH150 monitors.
Read the text above the video. The issue is the youtube compression. Mute the video’s audio, and use the audio from the player below it.