Perception of Audio Quality in the Production of Popular Music
The paper embarks on providing insights into the dimensions of audio quality. The researchers conducted an objective and subjective evaluation of musical program extracted from commercial CDs. The issue of music quality is one that has been debated for a long time specifically concerning the parameters that influence the audio quality and the perceptions surrounding the same. The study extracted data sets from commercially released compact discs. The CDs used contained.WAV files and had a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz and a 16-bit resolution. A total of 63 songs to be used in the study were selected from the dataset. This sample was chosen randomly to ensure an even distribution of the songs between 1982 and 2013 (Wilson & Fazenda, 2016). For consistency, a 20-second duration of the second chorus was used for each of the samples. The test panel comprised of 22 participants who conducted the tests over a period of five consecutive days.
The results indicated that the effect of the sample was the largest contributor to the variance found in the objective ratings. The results also indicated that the perception of audio quality can be affected by independent factors. The results suggest that the quality seems to have decreased over the years which can be attributed to changes in the features associated with the dynamic range. The rating of how much a listener likes a song seems to be dependent on familiarity, musical content and aesthetics. This indicated a difference in the way quality and like concepts were rated and while the like ratings were not affected the quality of music have may have decreased significantly over the past few years (Wilson & Fazenda, 2016). It was also observed that the words used to describe sonic attributes of the audio signal were typically those that describe defects, space and timbre.
Reference
Wilson, A. & Fazenda, B. (2016). Perception of audio quality in productions of popular music. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 64 (1), 23-34.
