墨尔本PTE素材库——Human Eats Can Hear Better-Than-CD Quality

墨尔本PTE素材库——Human Eats Can Hear Better-Than-CD Quality

中文批注

这段音频的主要内容，是关于人类耳朵所听到的音质可能会比CD更好哦！是不是看到标题就有点震惊呢？那么就更要听下去啦！这段音频的技术性较高，有不少的专业词汇。各位PTE的考生，可以试着用这段音频来做听力练习，比如说，re-tell lecture，雅思的烤鸭们可以拿来作为Section 4的练习素材。听完之后，在学习Full transcript的过程中，也可以当做是阅读的文章来阅读哦！熟悉生词，查阅字典，做精听，精读的练习，这段音频绝对是很棒的材料！

墨尔本PTE素材库，旨在用最贴切PTE考试内容，帮助各位PTE的考生在考前和平时复习的时间能够接触最有用的PTE素材，力求每一篇视频音频都符合PTE官方所给出的Question Criteria！这是一篇难度不小的短文，词汇量不小，阅读理解也有些许难度。大家可以拿来作为Reading 的练习，PTE要求更高的学生可以考虑拿来练习Re-tell Lecture这个题型哦！~

【Key Vocabulary】

Promise：承诺，许诺

Stream：流，涌出

Compress：压缩

Scuba dive：水肺潜水

Muddle：混合，咬字不清晰，糊涂状态

Seafloor：海底

Murk：黑暗，阴沉

Dial：拨号

Visceral：处于本能的

Audiophiles：唱片爱好者，爱玩高级音响的人，发烧友。

Compact：合同，契约。Adj.紧凑的，简洁的。

Perceive：察觉，感觉，理解，认知。

Feast：享受，款待。

Convince：说服，使确信。

Perception：知觉，看法，洞察力。

Full Transcript

Human Ears Can Hear Better-Than-CD Quality (Just Barely)

Jay Z’s “Tidal” platform promises listeners CD-quality streaming music, in all its 44.1 kilohertz, 16 bit glory—much better, they say, than compressed files, like mp3s. But why stop there? Neil Young’s PonoMusic Store sells music that’s even better than CD quality.

In a YouTube video for the service Young compares mp3 listeners to scuba divers, muddling around the seafloor. “You know you’re walking around in the murk and there’s big fish down there, that’s kind of like listening to an mp3.”

CD listeners are underwater, too. The only way to rise to the top, he says, is to dial up sample rate to over four times that of CD: to 192 kilohertz. “When you make it to 192, you actually break through the surface, and you’re breathing air. And the feeling is different, it actually is a visceral relief. You feel good.”

But… how good? What researchers, record producers, audiophiles, sound engineers, want to know is: “Is CD, compact disc, enough?” Joshua Reiss (RICE), who leads audio engineering research at Queen Mary University of London. “And the arguments seem to be never-ending.”

Reiss took a stab at settling the argument with a meta-analysis—a study of studies—on whether people can really perceive better-than-CD quality sound. He analyzed data from 18 studies, including more than 400 participants and nearly 13,000 listening tests. Overall, listeners picked out the better-than-CD-quality track 52.3 percent of the time. Statistically significant, if not all that impressive.

But when Reiss isolated studies that trained listeners first and gave them a chance to feast their ears on the difference, their odds of picking the higher-quality track climbed to 60 percent. Suggesting there may actually be some perceptible difference… at least enough to convince Reiss to change his listening habits. “Yes I think I actually will, based on this.” The analysis is in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. [Joshua D. Reiss, A Meta-Analysis of High Resolution Audio Perceptual Evaluation]

Not that it will settle all arguments. “No, no never. But what I think it might do is allow the researchers to move on a little bit from this question and to start looking deeper into the causes of the perception.” And for the audiophiles out there? It’s no doubt music to their ears.

—Christopher Intagliata

(Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/human-ears-can-hear-better-than-cd-quality-just-barely/)