Here is the rewritten text in a well-structured article format:

**The Impact of Audio Compression on Music Perception**

We recently conducted an experiment to test whether audio compression makes a difference in music perception. I was blindfolded and tried to guess which audio source was playing, while Anna changed the sources without my knowledge.

In our first test, we used Spotify's highest quality stream, which is still a compressed file format. I got a 50% hit rate, indicating that I couldn't tell the difference between the two sources. This was not surprising, given the compression of the audio.

To see if this would make a difference, we repeated the test using an uncompressed CD-quality source from Tidal. I put on my glasses and attempted to guess which source was playing again. Unfortunately, I still couldn't tell the difference between the two sources. However, Anna did mention that she could hear a difference in her previous tests.

Now, let's talk about the equipment used in our test. We were using an amplifier called the Stefan amplifier, which is known for its excellent sound quality. I was listening to a song on this amplifier and couldn't tell if it was playing from the Tidal source or Spotify. However, Anna mentioned that she could hear a difference when we repeated the test with both compressed and uncompressed sources.

The reason why I couldn't hear a difference in my initial tests is because of the equipment I was using. In two instances where I got the answer wrong, it was because I switched from PC audio to the headphone amplifier. The difference between the two was noticeable, as the amplifier made the music sound more realistic and warm.

However, if you have a motherboard with poor built-in audio, the value of using a headphone amplifier is much greater. In these cases, the amplifier can make a significant difference in sound quality.

**The Verdict**

While I couldn't tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed sources during our test, Anna did mention that she could hear a difference in her previous tests. The use of high-quality equipment, such as the Stefan amplifier, made a noticeable difference in sound quality. If you have poor built-in audio on your motherboard, using a headphone amplifier can make a significant improvement.

**What's Next?**

If you found this video interesting, please let us know in the comments below! We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. You can also check out our other videos by subscribing to our channel. Additionally, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Discord for more content like this one.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ennow today we're going to leave objectivity Valley the place where I like to establish my youtube channel most of the time and we're gonna head straight off into subjectivity swamp does this make any sense I don't really know if it does but today we're going to talk about audio equipment now the point of today's video is to compare the onboard audio of a high-end motherboard to an external headphone amplifier DAC now the reason that I'm doing this is because there are so many options on mass drop for fairly reasonably priced headphone amplifiers which promise to give you better audio quality so today we're gonna see whether or not you should actually buy one of these now before I get into the video I want to say that this is not sponsored by master op although a mass drop if you are watching this video hint hint now how we're gonna go about the tests in this video is first off I'm gonna do the very subjective thing of talking you through the differences as I hear them and then we're at the end we're gonna do a blind test and I got it right this time I'm not gonna call it a double blind test so basically what's gonna happen is Anna's gonna blindfold me and then we're gonna see whether or not I can tell the difference between the two now the motherboard that I'm going to use for today's test is the asus x 570 crosshair a hero now this motherboard sells for about three hundred and sixty dollars and according to asus has a very good audio implementation and then i'm gonna compare it to the mass dropped see th + s DAC now that's a beautiful name but this has this headphone amplifier sells for about three hundred and twenty dollars now this headphone jack is a little bit cheaper than the motherboard but they are about in the same ballpark of price now before we get into the actual kind of sound quality comparisons let's just do a quick physical breakdown of the two components now the C th + s DAC is a very well built all-metal headphone amplifier thing which feels very sturdy all of the buttons have a very satisfying tactile click and the jack also has a nice kind of thud when you plug in your headphones now as far as inputs go it's just got a micro USB which I honestly don't like I would have preferred a USB type-c because it's a much sturdier connector and I also would have liked it to have an optical input you know if not having that isn't a huge deal and then it's also got two sets of RCA's which means that you can plug an external DAC into it or like a turntable or something like that and then on the front of the headphone amplifier you have the kind of 6.3 millimeter jack which is the big fat headphone jack and then you also have a four pin XLR which is like a balanced output now this is gonna be fairly technical but I don't know whether or not it's a truly balanced output because I don't know whether or not the amplifier section or the dark section of this headphone amplifier DAC is balanced because it also doesn't have balanced inputs it means that it probably isn't so I don't know how much of a benefit there is gonna be using that that output over the normal 6.3 millimeter one what you also would have noticed is that it does have a tube there is a solid-state version of this amplifier but the tube version is a bit cheaper and according to audio files everywhere the tube is supposed to give a more analogue kind of hint to the sound so it gives a kind of more warm realistic tone although what it does mean is that it is gonna color the sound a little bit so it's not gonna be the most realistic representation of the recording that you're listening to as far as the motherboard audio goes it looks like all other motherboard audio it's just got a couple of 3.5 millimeter jacks on the back and then it's also got an optical output now what are the interesting things to note is that when you go on a sis's website and you actually look at the specifications of the DAC that it uses it actually supports higher bitrate audio than the DAC in the headphone amplifier that we're using today the headphone amplifier supports 24-bit by 96 kilohertz whereas the DAC on the motherboard supports 32-bit and 192 kilohertz whether or not this matters depends on what audio files you're actually listening to and honestly I don't know how many people have that high bitrate music available other than that Asus doesn't have a bunch of measurements for the actual performance of the DAC and the headphone amplifier on the motherboard whereas mass drop has a huge list of measurements which is really useful because it means that you can on paper compare various headphone amplifiers to see which one you think is gonna perform better now the headphones that I'm going to be using for these is my very old and very used Sennheiser HD 650s now I've had these headphones for a while and they're very worn in I absolutely love them they're basically the same headphones as the mass drop HD 6x X's and I really would recommend them especially at the 220 dollars in mass drop selling them for there are amazing headphones now one thing to note about these headphones though is that they're what's called high impedance which means they're very difficult for the headphone amplifier and DAC to drive that's one of the reasons why you'd want to buy a headphone amplifier DAC for them but the asus motherboard does have a built-in headphone amplifier so that should help it out a lot so now with that out of the way how do they compare to each other now for the first about half an hour of comparing songs I could hear that there was a difference but I couldn't really put my finger on what it was and then it started kind of dawning on me the headphone amplifier to my ear sounds a lot rounder and a lot more realistic now now I know that's already ridiculous audiophile speak but it gives you a very realistic representation of what is happening in the recording and it sounds more like you're listening to actual musicians performing as opposed to listening to a recording over headphones and then the other big difference to my ear was the small little details and the music while listening to the headphone amplifier it would really bring your attention to the small details like a flourish of a backup guitarist or the coughing of an audience member while the performance was happening and then while listening to the headphone amplifier you'll think to yourself whoa I didn't hear these little details with the motherboard and then when you switch back to the same song listening to the motherboard and actually listening for those details you can hear them they're there but they don't stand out to you somehow they don't make themselves as apparent in the mix as they do with the headphone amplifier and then quickly just on a side note before we go into the more concrete objective test I just want to mention the actual gaming performance so I used battlefield 5 to see if I could hear a difference between the two because battlefield traditionally has very good audio mixing in their games and honestly I couldn't hear much of a difference you're so busy concentrating on like winning the match and playing properly that the audio is a really important part but you can't pick apart the like minut differences between the two because honestly this sound quality difference between the headphone amplifier and the motherboard it's it's quite small the headphone amplifier just sprinkles this little bit of magic onto the music so it's quite difficult to put your finger on what it is but it really does make a big difference to the overall just realism of the music and it doesn't really do that with games now we just gone appear on camera now my glasses on so we just did a blind test where Anna changed the actual sources while I tried to guess which one was which and I I couldn't tell the difference like I got I got a 50% hit rate which is the same as guessing but I was using Spotify at the highest quality but I was streaming with Spotify which is still a very compressed file format and I thought that some people may take issue with that and you know I want to believe that this actually fits the difference so now are trying title which you can actually stream at like uncompressed CD quality which is like proper audio files so we'll see if that makes any difference and if I can actually tell so to take these off put the blindfold on and then we're gonna do a control and then I don't know 8 tests yeah and then see if I can actually if I can actually tell the difference just for the sake of complete transparency I do want to point out that we did do the test before and I failed fairly Missouri now I just want to point out that I was listening to the song a lot over Spotify and I know that might at this point my opinion doesn't mean much to me but it sounds a lot better than the Spotify one yeah I did silica should be more Baroody and be like really concerned about whether or not I should murder this one's in the motherboard oh I like the Stefan amplifier oh it sounds like a doll sticking her tongue down my ear like it's just sounds so good I don't even care which one it is it just sounds so good okay do I need to clap how many do you have left one no it's the it's the amplifier okay oh my god how did I do so you got two wrong okay so you got six out of eight okay so this like the previous test when we were using Spotify I know I know that whether or not uncompressed audio and compressed audio makes a difference is also a debate but there I honestly honestly quickly know yeah I couldn't tell at all I got 50% I paint I'll at all but here I I genuinely feel like there was a difference between Adam even though I got I got some wrong but I Irene once you got wrong were when I when you doubled up was when I doubled it so while listening to tidal recordings of Adal songs while blindfolded both Anna and I could tell the difference now this might sound like I'm kind of making excuses here but the two times that I got it wrong was because the the it was back to back with the DAC and the reason that I got it wrong there was because every time you switch from the PC audio to the to the to the headphone amplifier business wow this does sound a lot more realistic and more warm and it just sounds more pleasant it almost gives a physical reaction because of how good it sounds whereas when it's just the DAC again you don't have that surprised as to how much better it sounds in the previous one so then you kind of think it's the motherboard audio again I just want to point out that this motherboard does have very very good built-in audio so if you have the HD 6 x-axis and you have this motherboard there's not that much value in going to the headphone amplifier I'd still recommend it because I think the difference is an important difference but if you have a worse motherboard with these headphones I think that you would get a lot more value out of the out of the headphone amplifier because the headphone amplifier doesn't have to struggle to drive the headphones you're gonna have less distortion on the headphone amplifier then you are going to have with a motherboard that has worse built-in audio anyway with that thank you very much for watching let me know in the comment section below if you found this kind of video interesting and if you think I should do things like this if not tell me just what you thought about the test and with that thank you very much for watching if you like the video do like and subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one check out my Instagram my Twitter and my discord I'll have them linked below and until the next video bye byenow today we're going to leave objectivity Valley the place where I like to establish my youtube channel most of the time and we're gonna head straight off into subjectivity swamp does this make any sense I don't really know if it does but today we're going to talk about audio equipment now the point of today's video is to compare the onboard audio of a high-end motherboard to an external headphone amplifier DAC now the reason that I'm doing this is because there are so many options on mass drop for fairly reasonably priced headphone amplifiers which promise to give you better audio quality so today we're gonna see whether or not you should actually buy one of these now before I get into the video I want to say that this is not sponsored by master op although a mass drop if you are watching this video hint hint now how we're gonna go about the tests in this video is first off I'm gonna do the very subjective thing of talking you through the differences as I hear them and then we're at the end we're gonna do a blind test and I got it right this time I'm not gonna call it a double blind test so basically what's gonna happen is Anna's gonna blindfold me and then we're gonna see whether or not I can tell the difference between the two now the motherboard that I'm going to use for today's test is the asus x 570 crosshair a hero now this motherboard sells for about three hundred and sixty dollars and according to asus has a very good audio implementation and then i'm gonna compare it to the mass dropped see th + s DAC now that's a beautiful name but this has this headphone amplifier sells for about three hundred and twenty dollars now this headphone jack is a little bit cheaper than the motherboard but they are about in the same ballpark of price now before we get into the actual kind of sound quality comparisons let's just do a quick physical breakdown of the two components now the C th + s DAC is a very well built all-metal headphone amplifier thing which feels very sturdy all of the buttons have a very satisfying tactile click and the jack also has a nice kind of thud when you plug in your headphones now as far as inputs go it's just got a micro USB which I honestly don't like I would have preferred a USB type-c because it's a much sturdier connector and I also would have liked it to have an optical input you know if not having that isn't a huge deal and then it's also got two sets of RCA's which means that you can plug an external DAC into it or like a turntable or something like that and then on the front of the headphone amplifier you have the kind of 6.3 millimeter jack which is the big fat headphone jack and then you also have a four pin XLR which is like a balanced output now this is gonna be fairly technical but I don't know whether or not it's a truly balanced output because I don't know whether or not the amplifier section or the dark section of this headphone amplifier DAC is balanced because it also doesn't have balanced inputs it means that it probably isn't so I don't know how much of a benefit there is gonna be using that that output over the normal 6.3 millimeter one what you also would have noticed is that it does have a tube there is a solid-state version of this amplifier but the tube version is a bit cheaper and according to audio files everywhere the tube is supposed to give a more analogue kind of hint to the sound so it gives a kind of more warm realistic tone although what it does mean is that it is gonna color the sound a little bit so it's not gonna be the most realistic representation of the recording that you're listening to as far as the motherboard audio goes it looks like all other motherboard audio it's just got a couple of 3.5 millimeter jacks on the back and then it's also got an optical output now what are the interesting things to note is that when you go on a sis's website and you actually look at the specifications of the DAC that it uses it actually supports higher bitrate audio than the DAC in the headphone amplifier that we're using today the headphone amplifier supports 24-bit by 96 kilohertz whereas the DAC on the motherboard supports 32-bit and 192 kilohertz whether or not this matters depends on what audio files you're actually listening to and honestly I don't know how many people have that high bitrate music available other than that Asus doesn't have a bunch of measurements for the actual performance of the DAC and the headphone amplifier on the motherboard whereas mass drop has a huge list of measurements which is really useful because it means that you can on paper compare various headphone amplifiers to see which one you think is gonna perform better now the headphones that I'm going to be using for these is my very old and very used Sennheiser HD 650s now I've had these headphones for a while and they're very worn in I absolutely love them they're basically the same headphones as the mass drop HD 6x X's and I really would recommend them especially at the 220 dollars in mass drop selling them for there are amazing headphones now one thing to note about these headphones though is that they're what's called high impedance which means they're very difficult for the headphone amplifier and DAC to drive that's one of the reasons why you'd want to buy a headphone amplifier DAC for them but the asus motherboard does have a built-in headphone amplifier so that should help it out a lot so now with that out of the way how do they compare to each other now for the first about half an hour of comparing songs I could hear that there was a difference but I couldn't really put my finger on what it was and then it started kind of dawning on me the headphone amplifier to my ear sounds a lot rounder and a lot more realistic now now I know that's already ridiculous audiophile speak but it gives you a very realistic representation of what is happening in the recording and it sounds more like you're listening to actual musicians performing as opposed to listening to a recording over headphones and then the other big difference to my ear was the small little details and the music while listening to the headphone amplifier it would really bring your attention to the small details like a flourish of a backup guitarist or the coughing of an audience member while the performance was happening and then while listening to the headphone amplifier you'll think to yourself whoa I didn't hear these little details with the motherboard and then when you switch back to the same song listening to the motherboard and actually listening for those details you can hear them they're there but they don't stand out to you somehow they don't make themselves as apparent in the mix as they do with the headphone amplifier and then quickly just on a side note before we go into the more concrete objective test I just want to mention the actual gaming performance so I used battlefield 5 to see if I could hear a difference between the two because battlefield traditionally has very good audio mixing in their games and honestly I couldn't hear much of a difference you're so busy concentrating on like winning the match and playing properly that the audio is a really important part but you can't pick apart the like minut differences between the two because honestly this sound quality difference between the headphone amplifier and the motherboard it's it's quite small the headphone amplifier just sprinkles this little bit of magic onto the music so it's quite difficult to put your finger on what it is but it really does make a big difference to the overall just realism of the music and it doesn't really do that with games now we just gone appear on camera now my glasses on so we just did a blind test where Anna changed the actual sources while I tried to guess which one was which and I I couldn't tell the difference like I got I got a 50% hit rate which is the same as guessing but I was using Spotify at the highest quality but I was streaming with Spotify which is still a very compressed file format and I thought that some people may take issue with that and you know I want to believe that this actually fits the difference so now are trying title which you can actually stream at like uncompressed CD quality which is like proper audio files so we'll see if that makes any difference and if I can actually tell so to take these off put the blindfold on and then we're gonna do a control and then I don't know 8 tests yeah and then see if I can actually if I can actually tell the difference just for the sake of complete transparency I do want to point out that we did do the test before and I failed fairly Missouri now I just want to point out that I was listening to the song a lot over Spotify and I know that might at this point my opinion doesn't mean much to me but it sounds a lot better than the Spotify one yeah I did silica should be more Baroody and be like really concerned about whether or not I should murder this one's in the motherboard oh I like the Stefan amplifier oh it sounds like a doll sticking her tongue down my ear like it's just sounds so good I don't even care which one it is it just sounds so good okay do I need to clap how many do you have left one no it's the it's the amplifier okay oh my god how did I do so you got two wrong okay so you got six out of eight okay so this like the previous test when we were using Spotify I know I know that whether or not uncompressed audio and compressed audio makes a difference is also a debate but there I honestly honestly quickly know yeah I couldn't tell at all I got 50% I paint I'll at all but here I I genuinely feel like there was a difference between Adam even though I got I got some wrong but I Irene once you got wrong were when I when you doubled up was when I doubled it so while listening to tidal recordings of Adal songs while blindfolded both Anna and I could tell the difference now this might sound like I'm kind of making excuses here but the two times that I got it wrong was because the the it was back to back with the DAC and the reason that I got it wrong there was because every time you switch from the PC audio to the to the to the headphone amplifier business wow this does sound a lot more realistic and more warm and it just sounds more pleasant it almost gives a physical reaction because of how good it sounds whereas when it's just the DAC again you don't have that surprised as to how much better it sounds in the previous one so then you kind of think it's the motherboard audio again I just want to point out that this motherboard does have very very good built-in audio so if you have the HD 6 x-axis and you have this motherboard there's not that much value in going to the headphone amplifier I'd still recommend it because I think the difference is an important difference but if you have a worse motherboard with these headphones I think that you would get a lot more value out of the out of the headphone amplifier because the headphone amplifier doesn't have to struggle to drive the headphones you're gonna have less distortion on the headphone amplifier then you are going to have with a motherboard that has worse built-in audio anyway with that thank you very much for watching let me know in the comment section below if you found this kind of video interesting and if you think I should do things like this if not tell me just what you thought about the test and with that thank you very much for watching if you like the video do like and subscribe to the channel for more videos like this one check out my Instagram my Twitter and my discord I'll have them linked below and until the next video bye bye