Since the advent of mp3 compression tech, this debate had been there among audiophiles and those who claim the insignificance or immaterial differences between mp3 and wav (lossless) sources of music.
While this definitely seems illogical that mp3 with almost 1/10th of the size should sound same as lossless formats, many listeners claim otherwise basis their ears.
We at InsigniaHiFi do not like to get into that debate given the fact that each human ear is different and has a different frequency profile and sensitivities. The dynamic information of music especially in low and high end need an extremely trained ears to spot.
What is the Difference between MP3 & WAV?
We simply adopted a surgical approach to end this debate.
A high resolution music sample was imported in DAW (Logic Pro) and mp3 files of 320 and 160 KBPS were bounced off. These 2 files were again imported as layers in the daw and their phase was inverted.
This way the mixed sound will make the difference obvious and tangible for the listener.
Check the files below and conclude for yourself, there are 5 files:
- WAV is the original high Resolution music
- MP3 320 kbps of the original
- MP3 160KBPS of the original
- Difference 320 KBPS is the difference between original and mp3 320 kbps
- Difference 160 KBPS is the difference between original and mp3 160 kbps
