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Friday fun: Test your audio knowledge with Philips Golden Ears

Think you know your bass extension from your bass boost? Put yourself to the test with the Philips Golden Ears quiz

We like to think we know our stuff here at Expert Reviews, particularly when it comes to headphones – some of us are practically permanently attached to a pair of in-ears away from the office, and we tend to stay plugged in at our desks too, so our audio reviews can go into a lot of depth – but what does it all mean?

The very handy Philips Golden Ear quiz will train you to understand the differences between commonly used terms like bass boost and bass extension, loudness, timbre, distortion, MP3 compression and spacial impression.

There are four parts to the quiz; basic, bronze, silver and gold. Each level is split between timbre, details, spaciousness, bass and loudness, with the difficulty jumping up as you progress. The final quiz is particularly tricky, combining everything you’ve learnt and tasking you with identifying specific frequency boosts or cuts to a particular piece of music.

At the time of writing only a few people had managed to earn their Golden Ears (ourselves included), so it’s by no means an easy task, but persevere and you’ll appreciate what a difference a good pair of headphones can make to your music.

Each part of the quiz is preceded by a training mode, which teaches you what to listen out for. If you complete the whole thing, you can rest easy knowing you have equally sensitive ears to some of the best in the business: all Philips audio engineers have to complete a similar test before working on the Fidelio brand.

The whole thing should take less than an hour, which should be make it the perfect lunchtime time waster, but with Google and Facebook logins you can go away and come back at your leisure – a particularly handy feature if you’re stuck in a noisy office.

Let us know how you get on with the quiz on twitter @expertreviewsuk.

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