heres the definitions for certain terms Im using in the survey and advice for answering any potentially confusing questions:
Q3 Do you work in the music industry? If so please describe your occupation
If you have multiple roles in the industry (for example, you are both a musician and producer) please select the role you have most experience with. If you are equally experienced, choose the role you prefer. For the purposes of this survey “working in the music industry” includes amateur and non professional work, this is dealt with in the next question.
Q4 If you work in the music industry, what is your level of experience?
If music industry work is not your main source of income or you only take it on very occasionally please select Amateur/Hobbyist. If you graduated with a music industry related degree and take minimal freelance work, or are in training for a full time music industry role, please select graduate or trainee.
Q9 Do you think listening fatigue has changed music consumption habits among ordinary consumers?
”Music consumption habits” refers to the way people buy and subsequently listen to music. For example, both a change in the amount of music a person buys and a change in how often they listen to that music would be changes to music consumption habits.
Q10 Do you think there is a correlation between how susceptible a person is to listening fatigue and their level of listening experience?
In this survey, ”Listening Experience” refers to a person’s ability to perceive artefacts in audio and nuances of production, NOT ability to perceive musical nuances. For example, a mastering engineer with 30 years experience could be said to have a high level of listening experience, while a musician with 30 years experience but no studio experience could be said to have a low level of listening experience.
Q13 What devices do you most often use to listen to music?
“Devices” refers to the kind of speakers you use to listen to music.
“Low end” refers to devices like ipod docks, shelf mounted speakers, portable CD players and car speakers.
“High end” refers to large, expensive or specialist domestic audio speakers, including home surround systems, freestanding floor mounted speakers, and electrostatic speakers. If you are unsure please choose ‘low end’.
If you listen an equal amount of time across multiple devices, please choose the device you prefer.
Q14 What is the audio format you most often use for listening to music?
“Format” refers to the way an audio file is stored. They include physical formats like vinyl, CD and tape and digital formats like mp3. Formats vary in quality.
Uncompressed formats like vinyl, CD quality audio, and .WAV files are high quality formats.
Formats with ‘lossy’ compression, for example mp3 and the formats used by spotify, youtube and other streaming services do not preserve the entirety of the audio information they encode and are low quality formats.
Q16 How noticeable do you find the difference between low and high quality audio formats?
For the purposes of this survey, an ‘obvious difference’ would mean you could tell the format within a few seconds of hearing the song (for example, experienced listeners can hear artefacts in audio induced by mp3 encoding). A ‘noticeable’ difference would be obvious after a brief comparison or extended listening time, and a ‘subtle’ difference would require the listener to concentrate hard on side by side comparisons of different formats.
Q17 How do you do most of your listening?
if you listen equal amounts of time in different ways, please choose your preferred listening method
Q20 Given the choice, how loud do prefer to play music when listening? (assume you would not be disturbing anybody)
If you mainly listen via headphones consider how loud you would have to play music via speakers to achieve the same volume you experience via headphones and choose the appropriate answer.
