A listening experiment was conducted to examine whether untrained listeners can discriminate up to 12dB of compression limiting above chance levels. Forty-nine participants completed an ABX listening experiment and a musical engagement questionnaire. The experimental results demonstrate that untrained listeners cannot discriminate up to 12dB of compression limiting above chance levels. The effects of musical engagement indicate that participants more likely to use music to alter their emotional state or relieve boredom performed significantly worse than those less likely to use music for these purposes. It is concluded that, in general, hyper-compression may not be significantly audible to untrained listeners and previous inconclusive results on preference tests are related to this finding.
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