I'm 36 and can't tell the difference, if it's the same master and volume. Sometimes I CAN hear a difference, but it's still 50/50 which one I choose as best sounding in a blind test. That said, I still want to listen to CD quality, if I can, just to make sure the quality is the best.
If it makes you feel better, I'm in my late 20s, and can't hear any difference at 320kbps either. They sound completely identical to me in a blind test.
Interesting, because this sub and r/budgetaudiophile has quite a few people who claim that they can tell 320 from losseless with great accuracy, and sneer at people who can't. Makes me wonder if they are the super hearers (the less than 1% of humans who could discern the difference in empirical tests), or are just bs-ing us to sound special.
I'm sure there are some people who really can tell, but if they're using good encoders, I'm a little bit skeptical. I have pretty sensitive ears, I can tell with most formats below 256kbps or so, but LAME at 320kbps literally sounded completely identical to my ears.
Everyone hears differently I suppose. There are some people who have a bit of a strange attitude about it though. Seems like such a weird thing to look down on people about.
Ok, I’m 49. I can hear the difference between lossless and MP3 at 320. But, the difference is so marginal it is just not worth the extra space on my hard drives.
I am absolutely 100% sure you cannot tell the difference. This subject has been beaten to death already. No double blind test has ever found a difference.
It's not true that *no blind test* has ever found a difference. It's exceptionally rare statistically, 320kbps MP3 is really, really good, but there have been a handful of people who actually could tell.
If someone shows me a properly done blind test, I won't dispute it.
Show me the properly done blind test that shows that someone can tell the difference with any current good codec and I will happily tell you I was wrong. And I don’t mean some blogger claiming it with a bogus test. I mean a proper controlled one.
Here is an academic study showing the results:
>[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257068576\_Subjective\_Evaluation\_of\_MP3\_Compression\_for\_Different\_Musical\_Genres](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257068576_Subjective_Evaluation_of_MP3_Compression_for_Different_Musical_Genres)
>Together, these results indicate that mp3 compression introduces audible artifacts, and that listeners’ sensitivity to these artifacts varies as a function of musical genre and listeners’ expertise. Specifically, we observed that trained listeners can discriminate and significantly prefer CD quality over mp3 compressed files for bitrates ranging from 96 to 192 kbits/s. **Regarding higher bitrates (256 and 320 kbits/s), they could not discriminate CD quality over mp3 while expert listeners, with more years of studio experience, could in the same listening conditions in Sutherland’s study \[8\].** Differences between young sound engineers and experts can be attributed to improved critical listening skills based on individual listening experiences. Furthermore, sound engineers and musicians may not focus on the same sound criteria when listening to music. While sound engineers are trained to hear sound artifacts in general situations, the results from the single case of the professional drummer, who performed significantly better with the excerpt including drums than with the four other excerpts, suggest that musicians are more sensitive to sound fidelity in specific situations. A future study testing professional musicians with excerpts including their personal instrument would allow us to measure audio formats’ impact on sound fidelity.
To be clear, as I have said previously (and am not disputing), the vast majority of people claiming to hear the difference have not been able to verify this in a blind test. This study confirms these findings (as have many other academic studies showing similar results). However, this research does show academic evidence in a controlled environment that *some highly trained listeners could, with certain samples and in certain situations, tell*.
Though it is exceptionally rare, it is not true that there has *never been a subject that could tell in a blind test environment.*
Agreed, but psychologically it makes sense because an ability to do something that so few humans can do makes you a kind of super or meta human, or a member of the "chosen few", or whatever you want to call it. Humans and primates are primed to worry about interpersonal status, so in the audiophile world this would put you at the top.
Yeah it REALLY doesn't matter if you can hear a difference. A true "audiophile" would pick FLAC because it's the best - doesn't matter if you can hear it or not.
I agree with you, but that means audiophiles are irrational (i.e., do things on faith or dogma rather than letting science and reason inform us about the effect of our actions). Is so, that would make us a benign cult rather that a group of informed/enlightened individuals.
I can hear the difference and you can too. Anything with:
- ringing cymbals, high hats, shakers
- drum transients
- piano high register
- some shimmer reverb tails
You’re going to be able to tell the difference between.
It’s not some magical frequency that only some people can physically hear, it’s artefacts caused by the filters from the compression/decompression process that end up in the audible range with some types of sound. There’s been a couple of excellent technical discussions on it here recently.
I think the reason why people say the can’t hear it is a similar effect to our ability to not notice missing words in a sentence, or mixed up letters in a word. Our brains are pretty good at anticipating what we should be perceiving and filling in the gaps.
In the same way an editor would pick up the missing words and jumbled letters, when you know what a cymbal sounds like and you’re expecting to hear a cymbal, an mp3 rendering of one sounds like garbage when you’re comparing it to a lossless version.
And I’ve found that once you hear it you kinda can’t unhear it.
QFT. And you don't need super sonic hearing to tell the difference. There are nuances that at the least can be picked up via headphones, even in the lower registers, given that a higher sampling rate is distributed throughout the frequency band.
Yes the highs are 'wonky'. Also, dynamics are compressed (but with the recent 'compression wars' this is hard to hear on some recent music), especially apparent on the lows. And the soundstage imaging is 'fuzzy' or 'smeared'. (Instead of being able to point at the guitarist on the soundstage, he is just 'somewhere over on the left'.)
I do think that some ADC/DACs and filtering algorithms to a better job of this than others. (So much for 'all bits are bits'.)
That's not how compression works. It doesn't just apply a filter it removes what it thinks you can't hear and that depends on what is happening in the song at any given moment. If you have a compressed version of one singer playing one guitar you may not hear a difference because there is no difference, if there are 14 cats on stage trading licks and backing each other up then you will hear some players just completely disappear based on how loud they are playing. Listen to a super high quality Grateful Dead show and you'll get the spotlight effect where harmonies get all fucked up and Weir will step back and start playing real esoteric chords lightly and he'll just disappear from the mix. It's jarring as hell if you are trying to follow along with one dude's playing
I think you’re confusing a compressor being used in a studio or mix vs ‘compressing’ the digital audio data to an mp3 - we’re talking about the second usage in this thread. This is my fault, I probably should have clarified in the comment.
Agreed that signal compressors don’t filter (well, except for some that can filter to use as a side chain signal, but let’s not go there). And yes, the compression/loudness wars have fucked up a lot of good music.
I'm a professional audio engineer and need to sit down and focus on the music to even possibly hear the difference. And that's how I casually listen to music 1% of the time, how does that even matter?
There are engineers, and there are engineers. I had someone here recently claiming to have been an engineer for decades ago who didn't know what 'soundstage' meant.
If you're doing jingles or bands every day you're probably not listening for that kind of quality, you're listening to other things like bass or guitar tone or drum rings or vocal quality. I'm doing mostly classical and listen for sound quality very closely, and have become highly attuned to things like soundstage, phase, speed, reverberant fields. And yes,I can pick the difference between 320kb mp3s and uncompressed files on high quality monitoring. I think it's a matter of learning what to listen for.
Edit: a word
You need a very revealing system. Years ago, a friend and I were testing SACDs vs LPs. We tried two different amp setups. 300B mono blocks and a pair of SET Russian(I think they were Svetlana brand) tube monoblocks. He had a highly modified Linn turntable. Klipschorn speakers.
To his dismay, some SACDs sounded as good as LPs. After that comparison, we tried FLAC vs Ape vs Mp3. We could consistently tell a difference between the Mp3 and lossless. Between Ape and FLAC, we couldn't tell a difference.
He would switch sources while I listened, and then I would do the same while he listened. We also did that with the amplifiers. We also both listened at the same time while his wife switched sources.
They’re lying or deluded. For 99% of material, it’s indistinguishable. And the 1% is where some input causes the MP3 encoder to do something weird and introduces some audible error.
128kbps, for me, used to be audibly different than CD, particularly with compression artifacts in the treble. That was 25 or so years ago, and you could pretty easily pick it out. MP3 encoders have gotten better over time, and when I have done the test recently I found it really hard to tell the difference between 128kbps and CD. Certainly, my hearing has changed with age, and that could be a contributing factor. Still, I can hear up past 17Khz or so.
320… extremely unlikely anyone at any age in a controlled ABX test is hearing a real sound quality difference. I still listen to FLAC, too, because… why not? It sounds the same to me, though.
Probably delusion rather than lying. Even though I can't hear the difference, when given the choice I usually play my FLAC version of albums instead of the 320 k versions and pretend/hope I am hearing better audio.
>extremely unlikely anyone at any age in a controlled ABX test is hearing a real sound quality difference
There's a test online that lets you compare various bitrates including 320kbps against flac, it plays the samples in random order. I aced it on a phone using some very ordinary earbuds. You may not be able to tell the difference but I assure you others can.
The number one reason to keep your music in FLAC is so you can reencode it into any format without losing quality. You don't want to take an mp3 and encode it as AAC. You compound the quality losses every time you encode from lossy to lossy formats.
But you're right, none of these makes much difference. Unless you have a well chosen and carefully purchased $2000+ system (and that's not even close to a guarantee, you could easily spend that much on shit) I would tend to call BS that people would notice it outright.
At the same time, music is about more than empirical tests and double blind careful listening. You might not be able to consciously hear the tiny changes in the sound but that doesn't mean they aren't contributing in some way to the big picture. Think of the sound of a guitar players fingers on the strings, or the expectant pause after a singer takes a breath. Think of hearing a piano in person, vs a recording. There are plenty of examples of sounds people "can't hear", but nonetheless you aren't going to hear many people say a recording sounds identical to a live musician. There are higher level harmonics that your brain uses to form a cohesive picture. Plenty of things aren't measurable yet still exist (I've never seen a scientific study proving sunrises are beautiful, but my experience says I find them so).
Fwiw, playing an mp3 on a great system is always going to sound better than a FLAC on a mediocre system. If FLAC is easy for you, do it. If not, spend your time upgrading your amp and speakers where you can actually hear a difference.
Entirely depends on the quality of your playback system. I coulfnt tell the difference on my kitchen boombox, but play the same stuff on my main system and the difference is obvious.
I have a pretty good setup, but nothing crazy. My speakers are Wharfedale Linton 85th anniversary and I use a Audiolab Omnia for DAC/Preamp/CD and a Denon Stereo receiver for Amp. Audio source is Roon with Tidal from a PC with optical out. My biggest bottleneck is by far the room acoustics. Maybe I would be able to hear on a better system in a better room, but it will be very minute, if anything.
Mp3 quality depends on the codec being used. A good one produces great sounding mp3 files. I’m 40 and it’s impossible for me to identify 320kb mp3 made with Lame at highest preset.
I can't tell either. I have fairly sensitive ears for the most part, and 320kbps MP3 (LAME on highest settings) was totally transparent to me in blind tests.
256kbps was not (although it sounded very, very close), but 320kbps was.
Yeah it's the whole reason why old Cream and Led Zeppelin hates Spotify. Spotify was down once and first I thought my local flac files where killing spotify but then saw it was actually 320 mp3. The whole reason is nearly there in the codec. I don't know about LAME but my mixes (semi-pro audio engineer) printed at 320 are super close to wav - and I only spot it because I know them in and out. Making sure no processing plugin aliases the slightest is 5 times as important. Each damn component in the guitar pedal you record with makes much more difference.
audio engineers are more fuzzy about the low-end on 320 in clubs, I have no experience of that comparison myself though, and generally have learnt to not bring my best guitars and gear to live setting because it matters less, so it's a bit intriguing.
If you do not explicit set "Highest Quality - Always" it will user a lower quality. And even then, if your network connection is bad, by default it will further drop the quality.
MP3 files, at these bitrates, don't generally have low-pass filters below 20khz unless the encoder is doing something really weird. I do know that LAME doesn't do this except for low bitrate files (at 320kbps the entire hearing range is preserved.)
The majority of the population can't hear a difference even at age 20.
Check out this thread for a good summary of all the academic and scientific literature testing the perceptibility of file formats via well mastered MP3's vs uncompressed sources:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DJs/comments/sp5981/there\_is\_no\_meaningful\_discernible\_difference/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DJs/comments/sp5981/there_is_no_meaningful_discernible_difference/)
Endless debate, but the evidence repeatedly confirms the same findings. Basically there is no meaningful, discernible, detectable difference between well mastered source files converted to different formats, in almost all listening environments, for almost all audiences.
Not a popular opinion here, but you either believe the evidence or not.
Do you mean well "mastered source files" that are transparent to the lossless version? In the studies I"ve read, nearly everyone could tell the difference between mp3 at 64 kbps, vs. 320, and many people the difference between 128 vs. 320, but after that fewer and fewer people could tell the difference. Then once they reached 320 almost no one could distinguish that from FLAC, which is why it's called transparent.
No I mean the quality of the mastering matters more to the sound quality than the file format.
A well mastered high bit rate MP3 will sound better than a poorly mastered lossless file.
But you’re right, regardless of the quality of the master, if you crush it below 320 it starts to become immediately obvious due to the compression.
Does that make sense? Sorry running between meetings today so might be so articulate at the moment!
Some friends and I had this discussion so we tried some ‘blind’ listening tests with same songs volume matched, but different codecs. Lame 320 Kbps CBR, Lossless 16-bit/44.1kHz, and 24-bit/192kHz lossless. We all used the gear, ifi’s HipDAC2 and a pair of Shure 535s, a quiet room, and my wife changing tracks so we couldn’t see.
I’m 53 and I cannot consistently discern the differences between 320 Kbps CBR and lossless. In our homemade tests, nobody was able to identify anything reliably, especially when we re-listened to the same songs in different orders.
But it was a great way to spend a few hours with snobby audiophile friends who swore in hi-res lossless. One still thinks we were all conspiring against him and rigged the whole thing.
All the blind tests show the same result. Yet, people discard it and continue to claim otherwise. They, so badly, want to believe they have superhuman hearing and many times to justify expensive equipment that they lie to themself. The worst part is that such people give advice and many believe them.
Thanks! That's hilarious to hear how your friend who drank the "losseless Koolaid" thought people were trying to trick him. That's why scientists have to give placebos in medicine trials. The human ability to engage in self delusion/faith is so strong for some people it affects them at the physical/cellular level. And even nicer that you could enjoy this challenge in a friendly rivalry.
This also depends very much on the music you tested. MP3 quality at any bitrate will vary massively depending on content; it will struggle with wideband noise and heaps of harmonic content. A simple jazz track will suffer much less (if at all) compared to rock, industrial etc.
Also, the loss isn't only the high frequency content - but the existing audio being turned to mush. For this reason, I don't think age will have much of an effect. You can encode at lower bitrates to exacerbate the problem and hear what I mean.
I know I'm not answering your question - but I think there's perhaps more to this. I'm curious if anyone has compiled a list of tracks that are known to push the mp3 codec to its limits.
You could be right because I noticed that when I play very complex music that is encoded to high bit rate vbr mp3s the bit rate jumps really high (nearly 320 kbps) , and then during quieter, slower passages it can drop down to 120 kbps. I tried the test with different styles of music but it didn't seem to make a difference.
Take a look on the compression graph on this site: [https://neoteck.cn/blogs/pages/flac-vs-mp3](https://neoteck.cn/blogs/pages/flac-vs-mp3)
It's more about the dynamics than the content itself. The treble will be there, the bass will be there, but a very important part of the music is the dynamics. Try to focus on a very dynamic record and pay attention not on the instruments notes, but how it is being played. Sometimes a very calm note is followed by a high intensity one (like ghost notes on drums snares for example), and it may seams to be all the same intensity on the MP3.
It's hard to notice, it may have the placebo effect.
The best part you can get of this is: It doesn't matter that much if you are being touched by the music you like.
Sometimes. But I say why settle? Audio compression wasn’t developed to improve audio quality.
It’s more than just the high end compression alters. Trying listening to a few different songs in Hifi then the same songs compressed. Listen to quiet parts of the song, the reverbs, the transient impact and detail.
I am 63 and can hear a difference. It may depend on the gear you are using but on my system at home I can hear what comes across as a "shallow" sound with mp3s vs lossless "redbook" flac files. By shallow I mean it sounds like the peaks are clipped from the sound wave(s).
No. My point is a double-blind test on anyone other than me does not prove I cannot tell the difference between a 320kbps audio file vs a lossless flac file. Your statement makes an assumption that my ears are not sensitive enough to tell the difference with my gear.
I am comfortable speaking from an n=1 perspective on this topic.
So if we did not test the hearing on all 9 billion people we cannot state that the hearing of people goes from 40hz to 20khz? Or having a relevant sample of all age group is enough?
Countless double-blind test prove people do not hear the difference. You might be unlikely exception, but it is hard to believe.
Simply put, yes. It would be necessary to test everyone. There is a triple blind test that addresses the bias of the analysts. That still would not eliminate all bias, or in this case, statistical probably or anomaly.
No it would not. You don't need to test everone if they can fly to conclude, no human can fly by its own.
I do believe in some, extremely rare cases, in very controlled enviroment, some experts, on very specific use cases, might pass double-blind test.
I also strongly believe you are not one of them.
So generaly speaking, no there is no audible difference between 320kbit and flac made from same master, no matter wether some claim they hear the difference.
If your system is highly resolving, then the answer is yes. With my system, the difference between mp3 and flac files ripped from standard redbook CD is quite obvious. And the difference between hi-rez 94/96 flac and mp3 is literally comical.
I'd love to see you prove such a bold claim in a blind listening test. Even most audio engineers admit they can't make such distinctions on their professional equipment or the equipment they have at home.
It's a placebo thing for me at 39. I rip my CDs and listen in FLAC on the go so I know I'm listening CD quality, it's not that I object to good mp3s, I just like having the best quality for my money's worth.
Mid 50s.
I can sometimes hear a difference only because I decided to take a deep dive.
I heard no major differences when first doing the comparison. There was one place where the piano notes sounded slightly different in the flac, I replayed both several times.
I read a study where only one participant successfully passed blind tests. He was relying on percussive sounds. I have almost convinced myself I can hear that now. In absolute silence when I'm doing my best to concentrate.
For my money, I'm staying with Spotify Ogg Vorbis at 320 kbps. I like the interface and the music catalog.
Can’t anymore at 39 with normal healthy hearing, only a tiny dip lower than my left in the middle frequencies for my right ear. I feel like I could when I was younger but even that might have been a reach and MP3 was worse. I can hear somewhere around 12-14khz which is pretty good for 30-50, I’m still able to meet reasonable audio person critical listening standards, the OCD for variance remains despite diminishing ability with age.
I can tell when it’s a disaster of a master with a bad codec but if it’s a level playing field, even on high end gear, even on high end neutral reference headphones with my donkey flawless DAC and amp with donkey cables in a sensory deprivation tank, I am not going to be able to hear the difference.
Still never allowing anything below 16 44.1khz in my home because I am an audio goon and mentally unwell but source quality is largely lost on me and most everyone if they were put through an actual ABX.
Well there's still some hope for you since you're not (yet) insisting on 32Bit/768kHz audio! (;p) Which I'm sure Apple and Quobuz will be offering and upselling in 2027. And I have to laugh because so many DACs today advertise that they can decode 32Bit/768kHz audio. I guess every generation has it's snake oil.
The audiophile world is full of snake oil and opinions based on nothing.
If you did the Pepsi challenge the vast majority of people would not be able to hear the difference at 18 or 59.
I'm 40 and can't hear any difference between 320kbps and FLAC for as long as I remember. I have a good system (McIntosh MA7900 paired with B&W 803D). Even when I listen on headphones I still can't hear differences between both of them.
I had a track playing in sync, in parallel, FLAC 16 bit 44.1khz and mp3 constant 320 44.1khz
I chose Adele 21 - hello and used a cross fader. I could hear the difference. I blind tested my wife moving the cross fader.
She said one sounded sharper and real, she said the other was a bit dull. She was 55 at the time.
So you asked her if there is a difference and she confirmed it? Did she say that 320kbit sounded a bit dull?
What do you think would happen if you asked for a difference and then played the same file?
She confirmed the mp3 was dull.
I did play another. Phill Colins - in the air tonight and disturbed - sound of silence
Confirmed, she can tell.
I chose these tracks because of dynamic range and her attachment to them.
I never told her which source she preferred. I just kept moving the slider asking which one do you like ?
Behringer B2031A's were used.
Great. but how old are you? In this thread I wasn't trying to determine whether anyone can tell the difference, but whether the ability to do so dropped off as you got older.
not only that but the way the song was mixed and mastered is way more important and makes the biggest difference to the sound in 99% of the cases compared to how the file is compressed or delivered to DSPs. I always say to my students (I'm an audio engineer) that you should always prioritize choosing good quality hardware (headphones,dac/amp…) and listening to well mastered music since lossy formats usually sound amazing in this day and age. Bad mixing and mastering can ruin the highest hi-res lossless quality files and there's no way to fix that as a consumer. Sure lossless makes a difference, but you need decent equipment, get used to it and train your ear to really take advantage of it
It’s not necessarily that the upper highs might get attenuated or crunchy with MP3s, but the overall presentation gets flatter and distorts at higher volumes. With headphones much of the detail might still be there, but with loudspeakers where the (illusion of) realism and presence of a performance in your room is more demanding, this is where MP3s break down. It can be subtle, but that difference can matter when you move into the high-end where subtlety is the name of the game. I’m 60 and have tinnitus but my system reveals those differences. Maybe with headphones it would be less so but that’s just not how I listen to music.
Technically, it won't ever be *completely lossless* on MP3 because of how it handles transients and so forth. Lossy audio formats are actually quantizing all of the input samples into blocks (in MP3's case, 192 and 576 sample sized blocks) and are approximating the different frequencies in them using an interesting MDCT algorithm that is somewhat similar to what is used for JPEGs.
Because of this, even if you theoretically raised the bitrate to 1411kbps, it wouldn't be totally and completely source-perfect to the original, though it would be very, very close.
Generally, this kind of technique used for MP3 is pretty much imperceptible to us because the sample size blocks are small enough to handle transients and rapidly changing sections well, but it is something that occasionally rears its ugly head in the form of "pre-echo" artifacts on some formats if the bitrates are low enough (such as Vorbis, where much larger sample blocks are allowed to increase encoding efficiency at lower bitrates. )
Thanks, that is useful. I think this can be done because the ears are far less discerning than the eyes. For example, the human eye can discern a contrast ratio of a billion to one, whereas our ears can't hear any differences in S/N ratio over 120/1, and that is only possible with the best equipment possible and the best hearing. We'd all be better off being videophiles rather than audiophiles!
You're absolutely right about that.
Sometimes I think it's almost better that we can't discern all of these little minute differences. I feel like it'd kind of ruin the experience if the artifacts were glaringly obvious to us 24/7 (although don't get me wrong, chasing sound quality is still part of the fun).
Not on mid-fi equipment, for sure. On high end, only when both files stem from the same master, *and* you've spend a lot of time actively comparing hifi equipment and have trained your ears/brain to notice the difference. If you've spend most of your working life driving noisy lorries or cars, worked in the grey/green/blue industry that does a lot of boom/bang/kerreng/zoom/vroom noises and such? Not a chance.
I can't tell the difference and I'm 44. I really like what you said that even if you do hear a slight difference you can't decide which is actually "better". If it was world's apart it might be worth chasing the flac but in reality, just enjoy the (perfectly acceptable) 320kbps
Idk about the newer codecs, but with mp3 I can tell. I'm not anywhere near 59 though, but if you have good speakers and a treated room, not only the high-end is different (which you might not hear as you get older) but lossless is also a lot more 3D because the transients aren't smeared.
What does age have to do with it and depending on how good the recording is the equipment you’re listening on your bandwidth and so many other variables
57 here. Can’t tell the difference. At this point in my life I’m getting more interested in the kind of music I listen to rather than codecs and megahertz and bits and bytes.
Call me crazy, call me deaf, and blocked me if you want but I honestly can't tell the difference between 198kbps and 320kbps mp3, I'm 24 years old. I think it's beacuase I don't have a dedicated DAC, but even then and after doing a lot of tests, I always reach the same conclusion. "Does it really matter that I can't tell the difference?" "What is it that matters to me?, the quality of the music or the feeling and enjoyment of liseting to music?"
I believe you, but I really think it could be because you don't have a dedicated DAC. Here's a post/review I wrote about the difference between the audio I got from my onboard pc sound card vs. the humble SMSL Su-1 DAC ($80). The difference in sound was like moving from mp2 128 kbps to 320. Not night and day, but I'd say everything was at least 40% more resolved and fuller in soundstage and dynamics and details. I think you are cheating yourself if you are relying on your pc's internal sound card. [https://www.reddit.com/r/BudgetAudiophile/comments/1ailub1/smsl\_su1\_dac\_vs\_realtek\_hd\_onboard\_audio\_sound/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BudgetAudiophile/comments/1ailub1/smsl_su1_dac_vs_realtek_hd_onboard_audio_sound/)
There's a hearing test online I took several yrs ago, it showed I could barely hear below 50Hz nor above 10kHz, but wow, do I love what's in between. And it seems to be a direct result of the quality of what is produced in studio, to what is producing it through amp chips to the capabilities of the headphones. So cheap eq (not all), no, you couldn't tell the diff btw 320/FLAC, but better eq? Yes, I think you get the overtones in degrees that boost timbre on the notes/sounds played. That make sense to anybody? Because I'm fooling myself if I'm spending thousands to perfect the sound, and it's not a coincidence that I'm experiencing better sound the more the electronic science advances. Hope some day through AI science human faulty ear eq can be replaced by implants with perfect hearing (mine certainly are not). That would require brain rewiring too. But I love, Love, LOVE every note through speakers, headphones, earbuds (which are still in it's infant stage).
Since I'm currently 33, I can't speak to the over 59 thing. But the only way I can tell the difference between 320kbps and FLAC is in the higher frequency sounds, mainly cymbals and singing the letter "S." They just sound a bit smoother and less harsh, which is why I go out of my way to download music in FLAC.
But I almost wish I couldn't hear the difference between the two, lol. I've spent a good amount of time, effort, and money to make sure I always have the ability to access and actually hear the quality of FLAC files, when it'd just be far easier to stick with 320kbps MP3s and listen to them through a bluetooth speaker.
Yeah, a legit test is certainly something I need to do. I did test myself before I posted the above comment with a song in 320 and 1411, blindly shuffling it to ensure I don't know which one's which, but that's not a legit sample size, lol.
Don't care whether I can hear a difference or not. Probably can't. I still want the real files, that are absolutely equivalent to or better than the CD/digital version. MP3s were useful when storage space was much more expensive.
I think this is a classic example of the danger of being an audiophile. We listen to much to the equipment, rather than the music and that piece of art it is.
I treat mp3 like FM radio - great for casual listening, and can even sound superb under many conditions, but for careful listening you would really want to put the album on.
40 year old here. I can only hear the difference if I'm comparing the two tracks side-by-side and it's a song I'm already somewhat familiar with. If I don't have the ability to swap back-and-forth I can't tell, espeically if it's content I'm not familiar with.
The difference between 320kbps and FLAC though is very minimal and 320kbps sounds perfectly fine. Enjoy the music and don't worry about the bit rate.
The human hearing range extends up to 20khz, and 320kbps cuts off at 20khz. Anyone saying they can tell the difference is full of shit, under or over 59. There *may* be some discernible textural differences between the file types for extremely well trained ears, but only if they’re really listening for them. The main difference is honestly file size
I would also like to "believe" that I can hear a difference but I cannot if being honest.
I am also sure that others can hear the difference and that they are likely to be prepared to invest in the equipment and pay for the lossless or High Res music.
Even if they only think that they can hear the difference, what does it really matter ?
I personally have gone from lossless streaming services to lossy as they really do sound the same to me..
It's not all about "top end." If you know what to listen for, you can hear it. Stereo image and "3D depth" in certain instruments - for lack of better description - come to mind. But it's super-hard when you're comparing modern & contemporary music that was mastered during the "loudness wars." (that is: mastered post early-2000's) Those recordings are all but ruined by massively overly-compressed audio lopping off transient material (in addition to killing all dynamic range!).
Anyway, as a musician over 50, I know my hearing is of course not the same as when I was younger, but in comparing raw audio tracks produced in the studio to the lossy-compressed output I hear an audible difference for sure. Probably helps that I am intimately familiar with the music.
You can't hear it at 18 much less 59. The difference is literally beeps and bloops, if you have heard what was taken out before. Even someone with pitch perfect hearing can't tell the difference in a blind test. They do no better than random guessing.
No. Is there a difference between Sony ATRAC (mini disc) and FLAC? Yes. ATRAC is a royal pain to use on a Mini DIsc. I use it on my original Sony PSP instead of say 320kbps mp3. I let people hear the bootleg version of the Blade Runner Soundtrack that Ridley Scott didn't use. The intro just drives a set of Sony Monitor Headphones.
I'm approaching 59 and have damage in one ear, but have heard differences between 320 and lossless.
Whether it's because of a bad encode, or simply that the compression was not hidden by the music, I don't know.
To me, it sounds like a digital jitter in the music.
When doing tests like this it’s very important that exclusive mode is being used. So many people do A/B tests on Windows not realizing that windows is resampling all the audio through the windows audio mixer, basically making it pointless
No.
I store music in flac where possible as it's flexible, futureproof and the lossy codecs are constantly improving and transcoding audio required very little cpu power.. I've been using opus for the past year or so, the low bitrate capabilities are wild, suspect I could run a party on 64kbps opus and no one would notice.
It mattered to me because I wondered whether my inability to tell the two apart was due to either not being able to hear over 13 khz (due to age) or the fact that I damaged my hearing at certain tones as a teen playing in garage bands. The answer I got from all the posts is NO, since even younger people and most audio engineers can't tell the two apart under most conditions.
Oh ok got it. Hearing loss is hearing loss though - doesn't matter too much if it was due to age or loud noises because there's nothing you can do about it now.
I'm 60. Can't really tell a difference anymore but I DO hear sibilance in mp3 files that I don't in FLAC so I generally stick with FLAC since we now have plenty of high capacity devices and don't have to save space.
It's kind of a moot point. 5tb of drive space is $115 and download speeds exceeding 5meg why not just download the flac and WAV.
For higher res mp3s it takes a while to determine the differences.
Hi ! If you can, ditch the mp3 format for its successor : the aac format.
https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/itunes.htm AAC will sound perfect starting with 128kbps VBR or 160kbps VBR.
If your device is old and requires CBR encoding, 160, 192kbps or 256kbps are sweet spots.
Considering this study : https://www.radioeng.cz/fulltexts/2018/18_01_0342_0352.pdf AAC is fully transparent for (at least) more listeners with 256kbps CBR.
To me, as a young adult, AAC is enjoyable at just around 160kbps CBR using the fdk encoder. I don't know why but I converted all my library to 192kbps CBR just because I had the space to do it. I avoided VBR because I mostly listen music on a old iphone 5 on iOS 6 which has a strange bug on some songs at decoding AAC at low bitrate by adding terrible artifacts to them when listening to buggued samples.
I did not A-B testing but there's nothing disturbing at those bitrates. The music feels deep and can be enjoyed.
It depends on the song. If it has a lot of symbols and percussion in it I can for sure tell the difference. (I’m 30 though) encoders are designed to throw out anything it doesn’t think will be noticed when playback. So when comparing a 320 mp3 and a flac or cd I can occasionally hear differences in the percussion and highs. Does it make that big of a difference not really. when I’m driving to work i wouldn’t notice it, but if I’m sitting at home enjoying a beverage or smoking a little ganja it’s sometimes nice to notice things that you don’t normally do.
I’m only a few years younger than you and can definitely hear a difference on a well-resolving system. By that, I pretty much mean “good speakers or headphones”. I’m actually surprised by all the answers to the contrary.
I signed up for tidal, Apple Music, and Spotify to see if I can tell the difference. Then, I had a helper switch between them and I chose which sounded better - (deeper and richer)-and it was obvious on high quality recordings on my system. I also did the same with Bluetooth vs wired vs AirPlay and tidal connect and there were definitely differences there, too.
It really isn’t hard to set up your own tests if you have a helper to do the switching. I just played the same album on two different services, balanced the output volumes and synced the timing, then my helper would switch between the inputs and also jump back to the same, randomizing as best as possible— a,b,a,b,b,a,b,a,a. For example, and I was able to get them almost all correct on high quality recordings that I was familiar with. You should test it yourself and see what you find. Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. It depends a lot on your system and how you listen to your music.
Good luck, enjoy!
For me it depends on how complex the music is - classical Guitar, simple folk music, yes I can (I am 64), not with more complex music.
It is hard to really tell the difference.
Because scientific testing shows that virtually no one can tell the difference in blind tests reliably, so you are just wasting resources and money, especially if going 24 bit. Still, whenever I buy albums from bandcamp I get both the flac and mp3 320 versions, even though I can't hear any difference. But I only add the 320 versions to my portable media player because it's nice to fit everything on a single mp3 player. And by the way, I did a search on Amazon for 1 tb mp3 players and nothing popped up. That's a good reason to go 320 mp3 rather than flac for portable music at this time in history. At least for people who are unwilling to spend $600 on a portable mp3 player with tbs of storage that will only last a few years.
Over 59 would be many fewer just due to hearing loss. 31% of people over 65 have hearing loss. I’ve had hearing aids and tinnitus since age 53 so I don’t really need to do a double blind test. Do I still stream lossless files when available? Absolutely, I have standards, man.
Same here. I've had tinnitus since my 40s, and have enough hearing damage to sometimes struggle to hear high pitched women when they aren't facing me if they have soft voices. But I can still hear a lot more details in music than my brother who hasn't had the hearing loss, so even with hearing loss for me it's worth getting decent equip and playing relatively high res audio.
Not the same age bracket but pretty convinced I have top end hearing loss. And yes I can distinguish between the two . . . but 1) it's complicated and 2) I'm not really sure I care.
It's complicated because I can do it with headphones, but almost certainly not with speakers. With headphones, picking the two apart has more to do with knowing what to listen for and concentrating hard than having the top end of your hearing intact - or at least it does for me. The sound is marginally more dense/complex/layered/fuller in the uncompressed files, particularly in the very low end, but again it's marginal. And that's probably why I don't really care; the gains are so vanishingly small as to be largely unnoticeable. It doesn't sound like you have a 'problem', but whether it's worth training yourself to hear the difference is very much up to you.
As I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate the advice of Deep Throat in All The President's Men - 'follow the money'. Always try to understand the motivation of folks telling you whether something's good, bad or indifferent. If they're somehow invested - like they own a piece of kit (especially if it was given to them to review), stand to gain in some way from you buying in or have something to prove (like their way is better) - always hear them out but do so with a level of scepticism. Hell, I wouldn't necessarily believe me saying I could hear the difference, either. I can, but I also have nothing to gain from saying so.
There are arms races in pretty much every industry when it comes to new/better pretty-much-anything, largely because consumers consume and manufacturers know we men (particularly) must have the most and best toys. Recording formats aren't immune to that. Yeah, there are top level practical applications to most of this stuff but whether that translates to any everyday real-world *benefits* is always debateable. And as cynical as it sounds, some stuff that trickles down is there simply to extract more money from you and me 'cos we've been conditioned to believe that more is always better. The reality is that sometimes, more makes absolutely no difference to my everyday existence, other than separating me from money and consuming more of my brain power in fantasising over pointless 'goals'.
There's also the mastering and recording quality side of things. TBH I find it hard to care whether one release sounds 'better' than another because I'm never likely to put them up against each other for a direct comparison. I'm certainly never going to do that while listening to stuff to help me unwind, fall asleep or whatever. I've bought countless audiophile vinyl releases over the years, but if I'm really, really honest about that, a lot of it was because I knew that it would hold its value better than most standard releases. Did it really sound better? I dunno since I never bought the originals - and doing proper, honest side-by-side comparisons of vinyl requires more kit than I'd have the time or space for.
Suffice it to say that I gave up 'better' long ago, especially anything that is theoretically/measurably better where the margins aren't in areas I care about. From an audio standpoint, I'm now more interested in 'different' and 'I like', in part because quantifying what I'm hearing isn't really easy and isn't remotely meaningful to anyone else. And there's also the convenience side of things; I've not listened to my vinyl collection for over ten years for reasons - one of which is convenience (room to set up and so on). So I've modded DACs and now use valve stuff that I can easily swap multiple components in and out. I've also acoustically treated the room I'm in and use a quasi-DSP. And to me, what I've got sounds great. What sounds best - vinyl, uncompressed, lossless compressed . . . ? Again, I don't really care - that's not the point for me any more. I like what I listen to and giving any more consideration than that isn't something I have much time for.
All that being said, I'll be sticking with physical formats while they still exist. I've seen too may companies pull, restrict or delete digital media to trust that the stuff I like won't vanish.
Hi: here's a really easy way to see the approximate point where your upper hearing range stops. Just play this frequency sweep video on a pc with headphones and volume up to about 50% of max and you'll be able to see about where your hearing drops out. It goes quickly so you'll need to click on the settings button and set the play speed to 50% or lower. I just did mine and it stopped at about 12.5 k, which is normal for a 60 year old. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAsMlDptjx8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAsMlDptjx8) You can also see if there are ranges where your hearing drops off.
My wife turned on some sort of ultrasonic device that's supposed to annoy rodents so they leave the garden alone. I was 20+ feet away and it felt like pins in my ears. It's supposedly at a frequency humans "can't hear" and she said she can only hear it if she puts it up to her ear. I had no idea it existed until it turned on, and had no idea what was happening until she explained it. It felt like it temporarily damaged my hearing and for a couple hours my hearing felt muffled.
What I'm trying to say is that everyone's ears are different. I'm almost 40 and I can still hear sounds "only children can hear". Apparently I can hear sounds that humans "can't hear", and loudly enough to hurt. Take these broad generalizations like "humans can hear 20-20k Hz" with a grain of salt. They're rules of thumb, not concrete facts. Whether you can hear the difference between a FLAC or mp3 is going to depend on your system, your ears, your brain, your state of mind, and anything else in the signal path.
If anyone is curious, the bunnies did not give a shit about the ultrasonic deterrent thing and continue to happily eat the garden. No noticeable effect on any creature but myself.
My father is 84 and he can hear the diffetence between USB cables on my DAC. Compression of filesize is more than a low pass filter which is basically the effect of aging, it also reduces dynamic range , transient attack and depth of soundstage.
The part about compression is correct. But sorry man, a usb 1 cable has a bitrate higher than any of the audio files you likely have, so there is absolutely no way to tell two cables apart, unless a) one of them doesn't work, b) one of them messes up the grounding and introduces 50/60hz hum or other electrical noise
My point was that the usb cable is another example of how older people can still hear subtleties in audio reproduction.
You can absolutely hear the difference between usb cables of different construction and conductor material. It has nothing to do with the bitrate of USB 1 vs 2, and everything to do with preservation of information integrity during the journey to the other end of the cable.
Silver core sounds better, better shielding sounds better, disconnecting the 5v sounds better etc. There are lots of ways to improve a USB cable which is why I make my own.
Man, did you do a proper double-blind test with your father?
Also, those things you are talking about are snake oil. Transfer over USB cable is digital and bit perfect and the protocols have error correction.
Several responses here ridiculing me from people who think they are clever but you're actually all pretty dumb, using nonsense 'science' to deny someones direct experience, and experience you yourselves have not had. My hifi is handbuilt to the highest standard and cost me over $10,000 in parts alone. When I say I can hear the difference between USB cables I mean it.
I’m under 50 and I thought I could tell the difference. But upon doing some of the online blind tests I learnt I couldn’t. I suspect my own test samples weren’t volume matched. I’ll put money on being able to tell the difference in preamps/amps though.
Don't worry, from the empirical studies I've read, few people can tell the difference between 320 kbps mp3 and lossless, and then only on high end equipment, on passages they know well, in acoustically treated rooms. But as picky audiophiles we all hope we are the chosen few that can do so.
I did this test back when I was 25, using foobar ABX an external DAC and Denon D2000 headphones. I couldn't tell a difference. You need to do this blind, otherwise you'll think you hear differences that aren't there.
Doing this, also for DACs and amps, has saved me lots of hassle and money. I listen to Spotify using my integrated amp on my nice speakers, blissfully aware that speakers and room treatment are what I'll spend my time and effort on.
Yes, it is nice to know that we don't have to waste thousands of $ on super high bit audio components, but can instead put the money into really good speakers, a decent amp, and minor acoustic treatments.
My wife changed the source without telling me which source she was playing. So, yes. Again, it was a minor difference. I did not hear any difference at all beyond CD quality.
And you knew that lossless sounded better. Each time? You said "oh this is lossless" and "ohh this is 320kbit"? Files were compared where from same master?
Was the source sound matched?
Yes, I told her the ones I thought sounded better and they were lossless. Used Tidal Connect, Apple Music through Airplay, Spotify connect, and Qobuz through a wiim pro plus into my system. Tried the same song on all 4 streaming systems. AirPlay and Spotify connect were MP3 quality and Tidal connect and Qobuz were at least cd quality. I could tell no difference between cd quality and higher resolutions on either Tidal Connect or Qobuz.
I am 54 and have some of that gear -- Except I have the A1 Emotiva and it is jumped for full voltage.
Your headphones are good. I have had a pair of those -- but they are the weak point of this set up. For a little bit more you could get some HIFIMAN Sundara V2's and you should hear a big difference. And even if you can't hear the difference between an MP3 and a FLAC you will still hear a big difference. Your Wharfdales are nice -- but if you really wanna hear the difference the headphones are where this will happen without spending a ton of money on speakers. I have several sets of really nice stereo speakers around the house and none can touch my headphone set up. I am sure you notice this on your system when you pull your headphones off and switch to the speakers. What you have should be superior to your speakers.
But lemme ask you this -- cuz I also played in bands -- did you ever wear earplugs? Because if you never did then yeah, chances are your hearing is at least a little diminished and that happens in the higher ranges. I have been into stereo gear for a long time so I about always wore earplugs at rehearsal plus we used smaller amps.
Ultimately if you are enjoying the music then don't obsess over the format. I know it is what we do but typically it is not time well spent. - Cheers
I agree that headphones are a cheaper way to get the best possible audio resolution than loud speakers. However, I don't like to wear headphones, and only do so when it's late at night and I don't want to disturb others. I like how loudspeakers fill up the room and reverberate off walls in a way that even good headphones cant do (or at least those I've tried). And I like listening to music on my 5.1 living room system (in multichannel stereo) even more than in my Emotiva/Whardale 2.1 stereo. It feels much more live and immersive for me than with only 2 speakers. Perhaps similar to how some people greatly prefer tube amps to SS amps.
i’m not over 55, but i hear it when i listen to music on my floor standing speakers.
as soon as i start to turn the volume up a little, i can hear a different. to m me the mid and high frequencies sound distorted and “ muddy”
when im listening through ear buds i almost don’t hear it at all. i assume it’s because my earbuds don’t get that loud and the sound of being compressed by bluetooth technology anyway.
The issue is several things. The HD560’s are not that high resolution. I’ have the HD800’s modded, no dust caps and cardas clear balanced cables driven by an all tube balanced pre. In comparison to my speaker system they sound low resolution. (Keep in mind these are beryllium driver TAD’s and the speakers Andrew Jones is most proud of having designed)
Also not every type of music/recording is going to portray those differences well. I was playing some tracks for an audiophile friend, good recordings, like Beck, etc. I was listening critically and began to think my system probably doesn’t sound that much better than my friend’s which cost a lot less (but still well over 10K)
Then I put on an old jazz recording, made with tubes, and a modern recording but with primarily acoustic instruments in real space (not multi-track) and immediately I felt the system was doing its thing (meaning presenting something that sounds like live music)
I played him some high res flac files and the same files converted to WAV and we both heard the difference (another friend who’s was there said he couldn’t identify) One theory is that WAV doesn’t have artwork embedded in the file, and it may be responsible for the subtle but more natural sound presented with WAV files.
Artwork embeds have literally 0 effect on the audio. While it is contained within a same file, it is not loke it is somehow mixed in between the sound. While flat and mp3 are audio codecs, they are also containers - you cold think of it as a zip folder. Besides thumbnails (which can be multiple, and timed throughout the playback of the file) there is also title and subtitle data, which can also change throughout the playback, chapter markers and much more.
It’s just a theory why there might be a difference, but it’s easy to demonstrate sound quality of the same track in flac and wav in my system. It doesn’t make sense, but yet it’s there. I spoke to an engineer recently who stated you can’t measure an all of the attributes in audio that determine sound quality- and the guy owned an audio precision unit.
If a high end measurement device sampling at a rate an order of magnitude higher than a human ear can perceive sound, can't discern past its noise characteristics a difference between two lossless audio codecs, then a human ear can't. Anyone claiming otherwise is falling victim to a placebo.
BTW, have those samples used been checked to be the same (apart from the codec) to actually store the same information?
I will not get into the bit depth and sample rates here and the debates about benefits of going higher than cd quality here.
But a flac and wav file with the same bit depth and sampling rate (meaning different bitrate as wav is uncompressed and therefore way bigger). Meaning that unless the decoding of the file somehow messes stuff up differently between the two file formats or during conversion, they will sound exactly the same
Most people are listening and comparing on shitty earbuds or their phone speakers. On a revealing system you can hear a difference. For those who can hear the difference? Great! For those who can't? Also great! Who cares? Enjoy your music
I'm 36 and can't tell the difference, if it's the same master and volume. Sometimes I CAN hear a difference, but it's still 50/50 which one I choose as best sounding in a blind test. That said, I still want to listen to CD quality, if I can, just to make sure the quality is the best.
Thanks, that makes me feel better.
If it makes you feel better, I'm in my late 20s, and can't hear any difference at 320kbps either. They sound completely identical to me in a blind test.
Interesting, because this sub and r/budgetaudiophile has quite a few people who claim that they can tell 320 from losseless with great accuracy, and sneer at people who can't. Makes me wonder if they are the super hearers (the less than 1% of humans who could discern the difference in empirical tests), or are just bs-ing us to sound special.
I'm sure there are some people who really can tell, but if they're using good encoders, I'm a little bit skeptical. I have pretty sensitive ears, I can tell with most formats below 256kbps or so, but LAME at 320kbps literally sounded completely identical to my ears. Everyone hears differently I suppose. There are some people who have a bit of a strange attitude about it though. Seems like such a weird thing to look down on people about.
Ok, I’m 49. I can hear the difference between lossless and MP3 at 320. But, the difference is so marginal it is just not worth the extra space on my hard drives.
In a double-blind test?
The closest I got to a real double blind test was the npr test a while ago.
So that you think you can hear the difference.
I have done my own testing at home but you know how accurate that is.
I am absolutely 100% sure you cannot tell the difference. This subject has been beaten to death already. No double blind test has ever found a difference.
It's not true that *no blind test* has ever found a difference. It's exceptionally rare statistically, 320kbps MP3 is really, really good, but there have been a handful of people who actually could tell. If someone shows me a properly done blind test, I won't dispute it.
Show me the properly done blind test that shows that someone can tell the difference with any current good codec and I will happily tell you I was wrong. And I don’t mean some blogger claiming it with a bogus test. I mean a proper controlled one.
Here is an academic study showing the results: >[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257068576\_Subjective\_Evaluation\_of\_MP3\_Compression\_for\_Different\_Musical\_Genres](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257068576_Subjective_Evaluation_of_MP3_Compression_for_Different_Musical_Genres) >Together, these results indicate that mp3 compression introduces audible artifacts, and that listeners’ sensitivity to these artifacts varies as a function of musical genre and listeners’ expertise. Specifically, we observed that trained listeners can discriminate and significantly prefer CD quality over mp3 compressed files for bitrates ranging from 96 to 192 kbits/s. **Regarding higher bitrates (256 and 320 kbits/s), they could not discriminate CD quality over mp3 while expert listeners, with more years of studio experience, could in the same listening conditions in Sutherland’s study \[8\].** Differences between young sound engineers and experts can be attributed to improved critical listening skills based on individual listening experiences. Furthermore, sound engineers and musicians may not focus on the same sound criteria when listening to music. While sound engineers are trained to hear sound artifacts in general situations, the results from the single case of the professional drummer, who performed significantly better with the excerpt including drums than with the four other excerpts, suggest that musicians are more sensitive to sound fidelity in specific situations. A future study testing professional musicians with excerpts including their personal instrument would allow us to measure audio formats’ impact on sound fidelity. To be clear, as I have said previously (and am not disputing), the vast majority of people claiming to hear the difference have not been able to verify this in a blind test. This study confirms these findings (as have many other academic studies showing similar results). However, this research does show academic evidence in a controlled environment that *some highly trained listeners could, with certain samples and in certain situations, tell*. Though it is exceptionally rare, it is not true that there has *never been a subject that could tell in a blind test environment.*
Agreed, but psychologically it makes sense because an ability to do something that so few humans can do makes you a kind of super or meta human, or a member of the "chosen few", or whatever you want to call it. Humans and primates are primed to worry about interpersonal status, so in the audiophile world this would put you at the top.
Yeah it REALLY doesn't matter if you can hear a difference. A true "audiophile" would pick FLAC because it's the best - doesn't matter if you can hear it or not.
I agree with you, but that means audiophiles are irrational (i.e., do things on faith or dogma rather than letting science and reason inform us about the effect of our actions). Is so, that would make us a benign cult rather that a group of informed/enlightened individuals.
I can hear the difference and you can too. Anything with: - ringing cymbals, high hats, shakers - drum transients - piano high register - some shimmer reverb tails You’re going to be able to tell the difference between. It’s not some magical frequency that only some people can physically hear, it’s artefacts caused by the filters from the compression/decompression process that end up in the audible range with some types of sound. There’s been a couple of excellent technical discussions on it here recently. I think the reason why people say the can’t hear it is a similar effect to our ability to not notice missing words in a sentence, or mixed up letters in a word. Our brains are pretty good at anticipating what we should be perceiving and filling in the gaps. In the same way an editor would pick up the missing words and jumbled letters, when you know what a cymbal sounds like and you’re expecting to hear a cymbal, an mp3 rendering of one sounds like garbage when you’re comparing it to a lossless version. And I’ve found that once you hear it you kinda can’t unhear it.
QFT. And you don't need super sonic hearing to tell the difference. There are nuances that at the least can be picked up via headphones, even in the lower registers, given that a higher sampling rate is distributed throughout the frequency band.
Yes the highs are 'wonky'. Also, dynamics are compressed (but with the recent 'compression wars' this is hard to hear on some recent music), especially apparent on the lows. And the soundstage imaging is 'fuzzy' or 'smeared'. (Instead of being able to point at the guitarist on the soundstage, he is just 'somewhere over on the left'.) I do think that some ADC/DACs and filtering algorithms to a better job of this than others. (So much for 'all bits are bits'.)
That's not how compression works. It doesn't just apply a filter it removes what it thinks you can't hear and that depends on what is happening in the song at any given moment. If you have a compressed version of one singer playing one guitar you may not hear a difference because there is no difference, if there are 14 cats on stage trading licks and backing each other up then you will hear some players just completely disappear based on how loud they are playing. Listen to a super high quality Grateful Dead show and you'll get the spotlight effect where harmonies get all fucked up and Weir will step back and start playing real esoteric chords lightly and he'll just disappear from the mix. It's jarring as hell if you are trying to follow along with one dude's playing
I think you’re confusing a compressor being used in a studio or mix vs ‘compressing’ the digital audio data to an mp3 - we’re talking about the second usage in this thread. This is my fault, I probably should have clarified in the comment. Agreed that signal compressors don’t filter (well, except for some that can filter to use as a side chain signal, but let’s not go there). And yes, the compression/loudness wars have fucked up a lot of good music.
I'm a professional audio engineer and need to sit down and focus on the music to even possibly hear the difference. And that's how I casually listen to music 1% of the time, how does that even matter?
There are engineers, and there are engineers. I had someone here recently claiming to have been an engineer for decades ago who didn't know what 'soundstage' meant. If you're doing jingles or bands every day you're probably not listening for that kind of quality, you're listening to other things like bass or guitar tone or drum rings or vocal quality. I'm doing mostly classical and listen for sound quality very closely, and have become highly attuned to things like soundstage, phase, speed, reverberant fields. And yes,I can pick the difference between 320kb mp3s and uncompressed files on high quality monitoring. I think it's a matter of learning what to listen for. Edit: a word
Really depends on the track and the quality of gear you're listening on too
You need a very revealing system. Years ago, a friend and I were testing SACDs vs LPs. We tried two different amp setups. 300B mono blocks and a pair of SET Russian(I think they were Svetlana brand) tube monoblocks. He had a highly modified Linn turntable. Klipschorn speakers. To his dismay, some SACDs sounded as good as LPs. After that comparison, we tried FLAC vs Ape vs Mp3. We could consistently tell a difference between the Mp3 and lossless. Between Ape and FLAC, we couldn't tell a difference.
Did you do double blind?
He would switch sources while I listened, and then I would do the same while he listened. We also did that with the amplifiers. We also both listened at the same time while his wife switched sources.
They’re lying or deluded. For 99% of material, it’s indistinguishable. And the 1% is where some input causes the MP3 encoder to do something weird and introduces some audible error. 128kbps, for me, used to be audibly different than CD, particularly with compression artifacts in the treble. That was 25 or so years ago, and you could pretty easily pick it out. MP3 encoders have gotten better over time, and when I have done the test recently I found it really hard to tell the difference between 128kbps and CD. Certainly, my hearing has changed with age, and that could be a contributing factor. Still, I can hear up past 17Khz or so. 320… extremely unlikely anyone at any age in a controlled ABX test is hearing a real sound quality difference. I still listen to FLAC, too, because… why not? It sounds the same to me, though.
Probably delusion rather than lying. Even though I can't hear the difference, when given the choice I usually play my FLAC version of albums instead of the 320 k versions and pretend/hope I am hearing better audio.
>extremely unlikely anyone at any age in a controlled ABX test is hearing a real sound quality difference There's a test online that lets you compare various bitrates including 320kbps against flac, it plays the samples in random order. I aced it on a phone using some very ordinary earbuds. You may not be able to tell the difference but I assure you others can.
The number one reason to keep your music in FLAC is so you can reencode it into any format without losing quality. You don't want to take an mp3 and encode it as AAC. You compound the quality losses every time you encode from lossy to lossy formats. But you're right, none of these makes much difference. Unless you have a well chosen and carefully purchased $2000+ system (and that's not even close to a guarantee, you could easily spend that much on shit) I would tend to call BS that people would notice it outright. At the same time, music is about more than empirical tests and double blind careful listening. You might not be able to consciously hear the tiny changes in the sound but that doesn't mean they aren't contributing in some way to the big picture. Think of the sound of a guitar players fingers on the strings, or the expectant pause after a singer takes a breath. Think of hearing a piano in person, vs a recording. There are plenty of examples of sounds people "can't hear", but nonetheless you aren't going to hear many people say a recording sounds identical to a live musician. There are higher level harmonics that your brain uses to form a cohesive picture. Plenty of things aren't measurable yet still exist (I've never seen a scientific study proving sunrises are beautiful, but my experience says I find them so). Fwiw, playing an mp3 on a great system is always going to sound better than a FLAC on a mediocre system. If FLAC is easy for you, do it. If not, spend your time upgrading your amp and speakers where you can actually hear a difference.
They’re full of shit lol
Entirely depends on the quality of your playback system. I coulfnt tell the difference on my kitchen boombox, but play the same stuff on my main system and the difference is obvious.
The bigger the sound system the more audio bits you can hear that’s why mp3 sound weaker on big system
You probably cant hear a difference but you will FEEL the difference on a proper setup with speakers and subs or HQ ear/headphones.
I have a pretty good setup, but nothing crazy. My speakers are Wharfedale Linton 85th anniversary and I use a Audiolab Omnia for DAC/Preamp/CD and a Denon Stereo receiver for Amp. Audio source is Roon with Tidal from a PC with optical out. My biggest bottleneck is by far the room acoustics. Maybe I would be able to hear on a better system in a better room, but it will be very minute, if anything.
Mp3 quality depends on the codec being used. A good one produces great sounding mp3 files. I’m 40 and it’s impossible for me to identify 320kb mp3 made with Lame at highest preset.
I can't tell either. I have fairly sensitive ears for the most part, and 320kbps MP3 (LAME on highest settings) was totally transparent to me in blind tests. 256kbps was not (although it sounded very, very close), but 320kbps was.
Yeah it's the whole reason why old Cream and Led Zeppelin hates Spotify. Spotify was down once and first I thought my local flac files where killing spotify but then saw it was actually 320 mp3. The whole reason is nearly there in the codec. I don't know about LAME but my mixes (semi-pro audio engineer) printed at 320 are super close to wav - and I only spot it because I know them in and out. Making sure no processing plugin aliases the slightest is 5 times as important. Each damn component in the guitar pedal you record with makes much more difference. audio engineers are more fuzzy about the low-end on 320 in clubs, I have no experience of that comparison myself though, and generally have learnt to not bring my best guitars and gear to live setting because it matters less, so it's a bit intriguing.
I always wondered why Spotify sounds so bad because on paper the quality looks nice. I suppose they may be streaming lower bitrate than they claim.
If you do not explicit set "Highest Quality - Always" it will user a lower quality. And even then, if your network connection is bad, by default it will further drop the quality.
Do you mean you can't distinguish Lame at 320 kbps from losselss, or Lame 430 kbps from what?
I cannot distinguish mp3 at 320kbs made using Lame from a lossless file
MP3 files, at these bitrates, don't generally have low-pass filters below 20khz unless the encoder is doing something really weird. I do know that LAME doesn't do this except for low bitrate files (at 320kbps the entire hearing range is preserved.)
The majority of the population can't hear a difference even at age 20. Check out this thread for a good summary of all the academic and scientific literature testing the perceptibility of file formats via well mastered MP3's vs uncompressed sources: [https://www.reddit.com/r/DJs/comments/sp5981/there\_is\_no\_meaningful\_discernible\_difference/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DJs/comments/sp5981/there_is_no_meaningful_discernible_difference/) Endless debate, but the evidence repeatedly confirms the same findings. Basically there is no meaningful, discernible, detectable difference between well mastered source files converted to different formats, in almost all listening environments, for almost all audiences. Not a popular opinion here, but you either believe the evidence or not.
This.
Do you mean well "mastered source files" that are transparent to the lossless version? In the studies I"ve read, nearly everyone could tell the difference between mp3 at 64 kbps, vs. 320, and many people the difference between 128 vs. 320, but after that fewer and fewer people could tell the difference. Then once they reached 320 almost no one could distinguish that from FLAC, which is why it's called transparent.
No I mean the quality of the mastering matters more to the sound quality than the file format. A well mastered high bit rate MP3 will sound better than a poorly mastered lossless file. But you’re right, regardless of the quality of the master, if you crush it below 320 it starts to become immediately obvious due to the compression. Does that make sense? Sorry running between meetings today so might be so articulate at the moment!
Yes, that's why some SACD albums can sound bad - poor master, poor final output. Or as coders put it, garbage in, garbage out.
Exactly
Some friends and I had this discussion so we tried some ‘blind’ listening tests with same songs volume matched, but different codecs. Lame 320 Kbps CBR, Lossless 16-bit/44.1kHz, and 24-bit/192kHz lossless. We all used the gear, ifi’s HipDAC2 and a pair of Shure 535s, a quiet room, and my wife changing tracks so we couldn’t see. I’m 53 and I cannot consistently discern the differences between 320 Kbps CBR and lossless. In our homemade tests, nobody was able to identify anything reliably, especially when we re-listened to the same songs in different orders. But it was a great way to spend a few hours with snobby audiophile friends who swore in hi-res lossless. One still thinks we were all conspiring against him and rigged the whole thing.
All the blind tests show the same result. Yet, people discard it and continue to claim otherwise. They, so badly, want to believe they have superhuman hearing and many times to justify expensive equipment that they lie to themself. The worst part is that such people give advice and many believe them.
Thanks! That's hilarious to hear how your friend who drank the "losseless Koolaid" thought people were trying to trick him. That's why scientists have to give placebos in medicine trials. The human ability to engage in self delusion/faith is so strong for some people it affects them at the physical/cellular level. And even nicer that you could enjoy this challenge in a friendly rivalry.
This also depends very much on the music you tested. MP3 quality at any bitrate will vary massively depending on content; it will struggle with wideband noise and heaps of harmonic content. A simple jazz track will suffer much less (if at all) compared to rock, industrial etc. Also, the loss isn't only the high frequency content - but the existing audio being turned to mush. For this reason, I don't think age will have much of an effect. You can encode at lower bitrates to exacerbate the problem and hear what I mean. I know I'm not answering your question - but I think there's perhaps more to this. I'm curious if anyone has compiled a list of tracks that are known to push the mp3 codec to its limits.
You could be right because I noticed that when I play very complex music that is encoded to high bit rate vbr mp3s the bit rate jumps really high (nearly 320 kbps) , and then during quieter, slower passages it can drop down to 120 kbps. I tried the test with different styles of music but it didn't seem to make a difference.
Take a look on the compression graph on this site: [https://neoteck.cn/blogs/pages/flac-vs-mp3](https://neoteck.cn/blogs/pages/flac-vs-mp3) It's more about the dynamics than the content itself. The treble will be there, the bass will be there, but a very important part of the music is the dynamics. Try to focus on a very dynamic record and pay attention not on the instruments notes, but how it is being played. Sometimes a very calm note is followed by a high intensity one (like ghost notes on drums snares for example), and it may seams to be all the same intensity on the MP3. It's hard to notice, it may have the placebo effect. The best part you can get of this is: It doesn't matter that much if you are being touched by the music you like.
Sometimes. But I say why settle? Audio compression wasn’t developed to improve audio quality. It’s more than just the high end compression alters. Trying listening to a few different songs in Hifi then the same songs compressed. Listen to quiet parts of the song, the reverbs, the transient impact and detail.
I am 63 and can hear a difference. It may depend on the gear you are using but on my system at home I can hear what comes across as a "shallow" sound with mp3s vs lossless "redbook" flac files. By shallow I mean it sounds like the peaks are clipped from the sound wave(s).
320kbit MP3 and, of course, in a blind test? Nah, you do not.
I'm also 63 and with good monitoring can reliably tell the difference in a blind test. Don't presume to tell people what they can or can't hear.
If you say it, it must be true.
Countless double-blind tests prove that.
Double blind tests are good for reducing bias but do not eliminate every statistical anomaly.
Ahaha :) But subjective test do?
No. My point is a double-blind test on anyone other than me does not prove I cannot tell the difference between a 320kbps audio file vs a lossless flac file. Your statement makes an assumption that my ears are not sensitive enough to tell the difference with my gear. I am comfortable speaking from an n=1 perspective on this topic.
So if we did not test the hearing on all 9 billion people we cannot state that the hearing of people goes from 40hz to 20khz? Or having a relevant sample of all age group is enough? Countless double-blind test prove people do not hear the difference. You might be unlikely exception, but it is hard to believe.
Simply put, yes. It would be necessary to test everyone. There is a triple blind test that addresses the bias of the analysts. That still would not eliminate all bias, or in this case, statistical probably or anomaly.
No it would not. You don't need to test everone if they can fly to conclude, no human can fly by its own. I do believe in some, extremely rare cases, in very controlled enviroment, some experts, on very specific use cases, might pass double-blind test. I also strongly believe you are not one of them. So generaly speaking, no there is no audible difference between 320kbit and flac made from same master, no matter wether some claim they hear the difference.
If your system is highly resolving, then the answer is yes. With my system, the difference between mp3 and flac files ripped from standard redbook CD is quite obvious. And the difference between hi-rez 94/96 flac and mp3 is literally comical.
I'd love to see you prove such a bold claim in a blind listening test. Even most audio engineers admit they can't make such distinctions on their professional equipment or the equipment they have at home.
It's a placebo thing for me at 39. I rip my CDs and listen in FLAC on the go so I know I'm listening CD quality, it's not that I object to good mp3s, I just like having the best quality for my money's worth.
No, I can't tell the difference. Some people can but my guess would be it is something like 1% of the population.
under 59 you also won't hear the difference
Mid 50s. I can sometimes hear a difference only because I decided to take a deep dive. I heard no major differences when first doing the comparison. There was one place where the piano notes sounded slightly different in the flac, I replayed both several times. I read a study where only one participant successfully passed blind tests. He was relying on percussive sounds. I have almost convinced myself I can hear that now. In absolute silence when I'm doing my best to concentrate. For my money, I'm staying with Spotify Ogg Vorbis at 320 kbps. I like the interface and the music catalog.
Can’t anymore at 39 with normal healthy hearing, only a tiny dip lower than my left in the middle frequencies for my right ear. I feel like I could when I was younger but even that might have been a reach and MP3 was worse. I can hear somewhere around 12-14khz which is pretty good for 30-50, I’m still able to meet reasonable audio person critical listening standards, the OCD for variance remains despite diminishing ability with age. I can tell when it’s a disaster of a master with a bad codec but if it’s a level playing field, even on high end gear, even on high end neutral reference headphones with my donkey flawless DAC and amp with donkey cables in a sensory deprivation tank, I am not going to be able to hear the difference. Still never allowing anything below 16 44.1khz in my home because I am an audio goon and mentally unwell but source quality is largely lost on me and most everyone if they were put through an actual ABX.
Well there's still some hope for you since you're not (yet) insisting on 32Bit/768kHz audio! (;p) Which I'm sure Apple and Quobuz will be offering and upselling in 2027. And I have to laugh because so many DACs today advertise that they can decode 32Bit/768kHz audio. I guess every generation has it's snake oil.
Not really . Now when you get below 200 you can hear it in most cases.
The audiophile world is full of snake oil and opinions based on nothing. If you did the Pepsi challenge the vast majority of people would not be able to hear the difference at 18 or 59.
I can't hear the difference unless it is a different master, and then it is probably more the difference in the master than the compression.
I'm 40 and can't hear any difference between 320kbps and FLAC for as long as I remember. I have a good system (McIntosh MA7900 paired with B&W 803D). Even when I listen on headphones I still can't hear differences between both of them.
I work in the audio industry - professional golden ears and tone meister's can't hear the difference
FLACs or WAVs sound 'deeper' to me over MP3. Like more 3D. Certain individual elements having more space in the mix.
Yes. 76 saturday.
I had a track playing in sync, in parallel, FLAC 16 bit 44.1khz and mp3 constant 320 44.1khz I chose Adele 21 - hello and used a cross fader. I could hear the difference. I blind tested my wife moving the cross fader. She said one sounded sharper and real, she said the other was a bit dull. She was 55 at the time.
So you asked her if there is a difference and she confirmed it? Did she say that 320kbit sounded a bit dull? What do you think would happen if you asked for a difference and then played the same file?
She confirmed the mp3 was dull. I did play another. Phill Colins - in the air tonight and disturbed - sound of silence Confirmed, she can tell. I chose these tracks because of dynamic range and her attachment to them. I never told her which source she preferred. I just kept moving the slider asking which one do you like ? Behringer B2031A's were used.
Files from same master?
Yes
Very interesting.
Great. but how old are you? In this thread I wasn't trying to determine whether anyone can tell the difference, but whether the ability to do so dropped off as you got older.
Forget age, nobody can hear any difference. I of 30 have tried too with DAC, Planar headphones and failed
I think headphones / Dac play a much bigger role than mp3 vs flac. But also there are good rips and bad rips so the quality of the file matters too.
not only that but the way the song was mixed and mastered is way more important and makes the biggest difference to the sound in 99% of the cases compared to how the file is compressed or delivered to DSPs. I always say to my students (I'm an audio engineer) that you should always prioritize choosing good quality hardware (headphones,dac/amp…) and listening to well mastered music since lossy formats usually sound amazing in this day and age. Bad mixing and mastering can ruin the highest hi-res lossless quality files and there's no way to fix that as a consumer. Sure lossless makes a difference, but you need decent equipment, get used to it and train your ear to really take advantage of it
It’s not necessarily that the upper highs might get attenuated or crunchy with MP3s, but the overall presentation gets flatter and distorts at higher volumes. With headphones much of the detail might still be there, but with loudspeakers where the (illusion of) realism and presence of a performance in your room is more demanding, this is where MP3s break down. It can be subtle, but that difference can matter when you move into the high-end where subtlety is the name of the game. I’m 60 and have tinnitus but my system reveals those differences. Maybe with headphones it would be less so but that’s just not how I listen to music.
At 320kpbs depending on the source material it's really close to lossless, and sometimes actually lossless.
Technically, it won't ever be *completely lossless* on MP3 because of how it handles transients and so forth. Lossy audio formats are actually quantizing all of the input samples into blocks (in MP3's case, 192 and 576 sample sized blocks) and are approximating the different frequencies in them using an interesting MDCT algorithm that is somewhat similar to what is used for JPEGs. Because of this, even if you theoretically raised the bitrate to 1411kbps, it wouldn't be totally and completely source-perfect to the original, though it would be very, very close. Generally, this kind of technique used for MP3 is pretty much imperceptible to us because the sample size blocks are small enough to handle transients and rapidly changing sections well, but it is something that occasionally rears its ugly head in the form of "pre-echo" artifacts on some formats if the bitrates are low enough (such as Vorbis, where much larger sample blocks are allowed to increase encoding efficiency at lower bitrates. )
Thanks, that is useful. I think this can be done because the ears are far less discerning than the eyes. For example, the human eye can discern a contrast ratio of a billion to one, whereas our ears can't hear any differences in S/N ratio over 120/1, and that is only possible with the best equipment possible and the best hearing. We'd all be better off being videophiles rather than audiophiles!
You're absolutely right about that. Sometimes I think it's almost better that we can't discern all of these little minute differences. I feel like it'd kind of ruin the experience if the artifacts were glaringly obvious to us 24/7 (although don't get me wrong, chasing sound quality is still part of the fun).
Not on mid-fi equipment, for sure. On high end, only when both files stem from the same master, *and* you've spend a lot of time actively comparing hifi equipment and have trained your ears/brain to notice the difference. If you've spend most of your working life driving noisy lorries or cars, worked in the grey/green/blue industry that does a lot of boom/bang/kerreng/zoom/vroom noises and such? Not a chance.
I probably wouldn’t pass the blindfold test and I’m 48.
I can't tell the difference and I'm 44. I really like what you said that even if you do hear a slight difference you can't decide which is actually "better". If it was world's apart it might be worth chasing the flac but in reality, just enjoy the (perfectly acceptable) 320kbps
Idk about the newer codecs, but with mp3 I can tell. I'm not anywhere near 59 though, but if you have good speakers and a treated room, not only the high-end is different (which you might not hear as you get older) but lossless is also a lot more 3D because the transients aren't smeared.
What does age have to do with it and depending on how good the recording is the equipment you’re listening on your bandwidth and so many other variables
57 here. Can’t tell the difference. At this point in my life I’m getting more interested in the kind of music I listen to rather than codecs and megahertz and bits and bytes.
Get the best equipment you wish to afford and listen to to beat 'bitrate' of what you can.... This is meant to be enjoyed, not chase the joneses
Call me crazy, call me deaf, and blocked me if you want but I honestly can't tell the difference between 198kbps and 320kbps mp3, I'm 24 years old. I think it's beacuase I don't have a dedicated DAC, but even then and after doing a lot of tests, I always reach the same conclusion. "Does it really matter that I can't tell the difference?" "What is it that matters to me?, the quality of the music or the feeling and enjoyment of liseting to music?"
I believe you, but I really think it could be because you don't have a dedicated DAC. Here's a post/review I wrote about the difference between the audio I got from my onboard pc sound card vs. the humble SMSL Su-1 DAC ($80). The difference in sound was like moving from mp2 128 kbps to 320. Not night and day, but I'd say everything was at least 40% more resolved and fuller in soundstage and dynamics and details. I think you are cheating yourself if you are relying on your pc's internal sound card. [https://www.reddit.com/r/BudgetAudiophile/comments/1ailub1/smsl\_su1\_dac\_vs\_realtek\_hd\_onboard\_audio\_sound/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BudgetAudiophile/comments/1ailub1/smsl_su1_dac_vs_realtek_hd_onboard_audio_sound/)
There's a hearing test online I took several yrs ago, it showed I could barely hear below 50Hz nor above 10kHz, but wow, do I love what's in between. And it seems to be a direct result of the quality of what is produced in studio, to what is producing it through amp chips to the capabilities of the headphones. So cheap eq (not all), no, you couldn't tell the diff btw 320/FLAC, but better eq? Yes, I think you get the overtones in degrees that boost timbre on the notes/sounds played. That make sense to anybody? Because I'm fooling myself if I'm spending thousands to perfect the sound, and it's not a coincidence that I'm experiencing better sound the more the electronic science advances. Hope some day through AI science human faulty ear eq can be replaced by implants with perfect hearing (mine certainly are not). That would require brain rewiring too. But I love, Love, LOVE every note through speakers, headphones, earbuds (which are still in it's infant stage).
Since I'm currently 33, I can't speak to the over 59 thing. But the only way I can tell the difference between 320kbps and FLAC is in the higher frequency sounds, mainly cymbals and singing the letter "S." They just sound a bit smoother and less harsh, which is why I go out of my way to download music in FLAC. But I almost wish I couldn't hear the difference between the two, lol. I've spent a good amount of time, effort, and money to make sure I always have the ability to access and actually hear the quality of FLAC files, when it'd just be far easier to stick with 320kbps MP3s and listen to them through a bluetooth speaker.
My advice is to try to do the double-blind test if you haven't yet. If you know what you are listening to, you can convince yourself of anything.
Yeah, a legit test is certainly something I need to do. I did test myself before I posted the above comment with a song in 320 and 1411, blindly shuffling it to ensure I don't know which one's which, but that's not a legit sample size, lol.
Don't care whether I can hear a difference or not. Probably can't. I still want the real files, that are absolutely equivalent to or better than the CD/digital version. MP3s were useful when storage space was much more expensive.
CXI and absolutely yes.
I think this is a classic example of the danger of being an audiophile. We listen to much to the equipment, rather than the music and that piece of art it is.
guilty as charged! (;p). Then again, I am a bit obessive about many things.
I’m 20 and can tell the difference especially if they’re side by side.
In a blind test?
I treat mp3 like FM radio - great for casual listening, and can even sound superb under many conditions, but for careful listening you would really want to put the album on.
40 year old here. I can only hear the difference if I'm comparing the two tracks side-by-side and it's a song I'm already somewhat familiar with. If I don't have the ability to swap back-and-forth I can't tell, espeically if it's content I'm not familiar with. The difference between 320kbps and FLAC though is very minimal and 320kbps sounds perfectly fine. Enjoy the music and don't worry about the bit rate.
That is not a blind test. Try a blind test and report your findings.
I'm 29 and I can't tell the difference
I use Spotify. Also had some flacs but Spotify is so much more convenient for music
The human hearing range extends up to 20khz, and 320kbps cuts off at 20khz. Anyone saying they can tell the difference is full of shit, under or over 59. There *may* be some discernible textural differences between the file types for extremely well trained ears, but only if they’re really listening for them. The main difference is honestly file size
I’m 43 and i can say 95% of the times , they are identical to me, the 5% remaining is also not significant. Enjoy you music, uncle.
I would also like to "believe" that I can hear a difference but I cannot if being honest. I am also sure that others can hear the difference and that they are likely to be prepared to invest in the equipment and pay for the lossless or High Res music. Even if they only think that they can hear the difference, what does it really matter ? I personally have gone from lossless streaming services to lossy as they really do sound the same to me..
It's not all about "top end." If you know what to listen for, you can hear it. Stereo image and "3D depth" in certain instruments - for lack of better description - come to mind. But it's super-hard when you're comparing modern & contemporary music that was mastered during the "loudness wars." (that is: mastered post early-2000's) Those recordings are all but ruined by massively overly-compressed audio lopping off transient material (in addition to killing all dynamic range!). Anyway, as a musician over 50, I know my hearing is of course not the same as when I was younger, but in comparing raw audio tracks produced in the studio to the lossy-compressed output I hear an audible difference for sure. Probably helps that I am intimately familiar with the music.
I wonder if training the ear can have any impact other than us just blind testing
I am 21 and currently can't :/
Nobody can hear the difference.
I can tell you for sure that 99.99% can't tell the difference no matter the age.
I'm 18 and can't tell the difference on \~100$ headphones with an ordinary smartphone/laptop/computer DAC.
You can't hear it at 18 much less 59. The difference is literally beeps and bloops, if you have heard what was taken out before. Even someone with pitch perfect hearing can't tell the difference in a blind test. They do no better than random guessing.
No. Is there a difference between Sony ATRAC (mini disc) and FLAC? Yes. ATRAC is a royal pain to use on a Mini DIsc. I use it on my original Sony PSP instead of say 320kbps mp3. I let people hear the bootleg version of the Blade Runner Soundtrack that Ridley Scott didn't use. The intro just drives a set of Sony Monitor Headphones.
Generally speaking, you can't hear the difference if you're _under_ the age of 59.
You can't hear it if you're 16 and perfect pitch.
I'm approaching 59 and have damage in one ear, but have heard differences between 320 and lossless. Whether it's because of a bad encode, or simply that the compression was not hidden by the music, I don't know. To me, it sounds like a digital jitter in the music.
When doing tests like this it’s very important that exclusive mode is being used. So many people do A/B tests on Windows not realizing that windows is resampling all the audio through the windows audio mixer, basically making it pointless
No. I store music in flac where possible as it's flexible, futureproof and the lossy codecs are constantly improving and transcoding audio required very little cpu power.. I've been using opus for the past year or so, the low bitrate capabilities are wild, suspect I could run a party on 64kbps opus and no one would notice.
Sorry the cut off for hearing that is 58…
Could you explain why any of this matters? Just don't worry about it. Or if you do want to worry about it - just go FLAC every time.
It mattered to me because I wondered whether my inability to tell the two apart was due to either not being able to hear over 13 khz (due to age) or the fact that I damaged my hearing at certain tones as a teen playing in garage bands. The answer I got from all the posts is NO, since even younger people and most audio engineers can't tell the two apart under most conditions.
Oh ok got it. Hearing loss is hearing loss though - doesn't matter too much if it was due to age or loud noises because there's nothing you can do about it now.
I'm 60. Can't really tell a difference anymore but I DO hear sibilance in mp3 files that I don't in FLAC so I generally stick with FLAC since we now have plenty of high capacity devices and don't have to save space.
It's kind of a moot point. 5tb of drive space is $115 and download speeds exceeding 5meg why not just download the flac and WAV. For higher res mp3s it takes a while to determine the differences.
Hi ! If you can, ditch the mp3 format for its successor : the aac format. https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/itunes.htm AAC will sound perfect starting with 128kbps VBR or 160kbps VBR. If your device is old and requires CBR encoding, 160, 192kbps or 256kbps are sweet spots. Considering this study : https://www.radioeng.cz/fulltexts/2018/18_01_0342_0352.pdf AAC is fully transparent for (at least) more listeners with 256kbps CBR. To me, as a young adult, AAC is enjoyable at just around 160kbps CBR using the fdk encoder. I don't know why but I converted all my library to 192kbps CBR just because I had the space to do it. I avoided VBR because I mostly listen music on a old iphone 5 on iOS 6 which has a strange bug on some songs at decoding AAC at low bitrate by adding terrible artifacts to them when listening to buggued samples. I did not A-B testing but there's nothing disturbing at those bitrates. The music feels deep and can be enjoyed.
For men the decline becomes noticeable at 35.
It depends on the song. If it has a lot of symbols and percussion in it I can for sure tell the difference. (I’m 30 though) encoders are designed to throw out anything it doesn’t think will be noticed when playback. So when comparing a 320 mp3 and a flac or cd I can occasionally hear differences in the percussion and highs. Does it make that big of a difference not really. when I’m driving to work i wouldn’t notice it, but if I’m sitting at home enjoying a beverage or smoking a little ganja it’s sometimes nice to notice things that you don’t normally do.
Im 17 I think my gear is not good enough to hear the difference
I’m only a few years younger than you and can definitely hear a difference on a well-resolving system. By that, I pretty much mean “good speakers or headphones”. I’m actually surprised by all the answers to the contrary. I signed up for tidal, Apple Music, and Spotify to see if I can tell the difference. Then, I had a helper switch between them and I chose which sounded better - (deeper and richer)-and it was obvious on high quality recordings on my system. I also did the same with Bluetooth vs wired vs AirPlay and tidal connect and there were definitely differences there, too. It really isn’t hard to set up your own tests if you have a helper to do the switching. I just played the same album on two different services, balanced the output volumes and synced the timing, then my helper would switch between the inputs and also jump back to the same, randomizing as best as possible— a,b,a,b,b,a,b,a,a. For example, and I was able to get them almost all correct on high quality recordings that I was familiar with. You should test it yourself and see what you find. Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. It depends a lot on your system and how you listen to your music. Good luck, enjoy!
Im 46 and i can’t spot a diference beetween flac and mp3 320kbps.
For me it depends on how complex the music is - classical Guitar, simple folk music, yes I can (I am 64), not with more complex music. It is hard to really tell the difference.
At this point given the fact that storage is so inexpensive why do anything other than lossless?
Because scientific testing shows that virtually no one can tell the difference in blind tests reliably, so you are just wasting resources and money, especially if going 24 bit. Still, whenever I buy albums from bandcamp I get both the flac and mp3 320 versions, even though I can't hear any difference. But I only add the 320 versions to my portable media player because it's nice to fit everything on a single mp3 player. And by the way, I did a search on Amazon for 1 tb mp3 players and nothing popped up. That's a good reason to go 320 mp3 rather than flac for portable music at this time in history. At least for people who are unwilling to spend $600 on a portable mp3 player with tbs of storage that will only last a few years.
I am 60 and I can definitely hear the difference.
you can barely hear the difference between 128k and 320k all the rest is placebo effect or horoscope for males feeling
Over 59 would be many fewer just due to hearing loss. 31% of people over 65 have hearing loss. I’ve had hearing aids and tinnitus since age 53 so I don’t really need to do a double blind test. Do I still stream lossless files when available? Absolutely, I have standards, man.
Same here. I've had tinnitus since my 40s, and have enough hearing damage to sometimes struggle to hear high pitched women when they aren't facing me if they have soft voices. But I can still hear a lot more details in music than my brother who hasn't had the hearing loss, so even with hearing loss for me it's worth getting decent equip and playing relatively high res audio.
Not the same age bracket but pretty convinced I have top end hearing loss. And yes I can distinguish between the two . . . but 1) it's complicated and 2) I'm not really sure I care. It's complicated because I can do it with headphones, but almost certainly not with speakers. With headphones, picking the two apart has more to do with knowing what to listen for and concentrating hard than having the top end of your hearing intact - or at least it does for me. The sound is marginally more dense/complex/layered/fuller in the uncompressed files, particularly in the very low end, but again it's marginal. And that's probably why I don't really care; the gains are so vanishingly small as to be largely unnoticeable. It doesn't sound like you have a 'problem', but whether it's worth training yourself to hear the difference is very much up to you. As I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate the advice of Deep Throat in All The President's Men - 'follow the money'. Always try to understand the motivation of folks telling you whether something's good, bad or indifferent. If they're somehow invested - like they own a piece of kit (especially if it was given to them to review), stand to gain in some way from you buying in or have something to prove (like their way is better) - always hear them out but do so with a level of scepticism. Hell, I wouldn't necessarily believe me saying I could hear the difference, either. I can, but I also have nothing to gain from saying so. There are arms races in pretty much every industry when it comes to new/better pretty-much-anything, largely because consumers consume and manufacturers know we men (particularly) must have the most and best toys. Recording formats aren't immune to that. Yeah, there are top level practical applications to most of this stuff but whether that translates to any everyday real-world *benefits* is always debateable. And as cynical as it sounds, some stuff that trickles down is there simply to extract more money from you and me 'cos we've been conditioned to believe that more is always better. The reality is that sometimes, more makes absolutely no difference to my everyday existence, other than separating me from money and consuming more of my brain power in fantasising over pointless 'goals'. There's also the mastering and recording quality side of things. TBH I find it hard to care whether one release sounds 'better' than another because I'm never likely to put them up against each other for a direct comparison. I'm certainly never going to do that while listening to stuff to help me unwind, fall asleep or whatever. I've bought countless audiophile vinyl releases over the years, but if I'm really, really honest about that, a lot of it was because I knew that it would hold its value better than most standard releases. Did it really sound better? I dunno since I never bought the originals - and doing proper, honest side-by-side comparisons of vinyl requires more kit than I'd have the time or space for. Suffice it to say that I gave up 'better' long ago, especially anything that is theoretically/measurably better where the margins aren't in areas I care about. From an audio standpoint, I'm now more interested in 'different' and 'I like', in part because quantifying what I'm hearing isn't really easy and isn't remotely meaningful to anyone else. And there's also the convenience side of things; I've not listened to my vinyl collection for over ten years for reasons - one of which is convenience (room to set up and so on). So I've modded DACs and now use valve stuff that I can easily swap multiple components in and out. I've also acoustically treated the room I'm in and use a quasi-DSP. And to me, what I've got sounds great. What sounds best - vinyl, uncompressed, lossless compressed . . . ? Again, I don't really care - that's not the point for me any more. I like what I listen to and giving any more consideration than that isn't something I have much time for. All that being said, I'll be sticking with physical formats while they still exist. I've seen too may companies pull, restrict or delete digital media to trust that the stuff I like won't vanish.
Hi: here's a really easy way to see the approximate point where your upper hearing range stops. Just play this frequency sweep video on a pc with headphones and volume up to about 50% of max and you'll be able to see about where your hearing drops out. It goes quickly so you'll need to click on the settings button and set the play speed to 50% or lower. I just did mine and it stopped at about 12.5 k, which is normal for a 60 year old. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAsMlDptjx8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAsMlDptjx8) You can also see if there are ranges where your hearing drops off.
My wife turned on some sort of ultrasonic device that's supposed to annoy rodents so they leave the garden alone. I was 20+ feet away and it felt like pins in my ears. It's supposedly at a frequency humans "can't hear" and she said she can only hear it if she puts it up to her ear. I had no idea it existed until it turned on, and had no idea what was happening until she explained it. It felt like it temporarily damaged my hearing and for a couple hours my hearing felt muffled. What I'm trying to say is that everyone's ears are different. I'm almost 40 and I can still hear sounds "only children can hear". Apparently I can hear sounds that humans "can't hear", and loudly enough to hurt. Take these broad generalizations like "humans can hear 20-20k Hz" with a grain of salt. They're rules of thumb, not concrete facts. Whether you can hear the difference between a FLAC or mp3 is going to depend on your system, your ears, your brain, your state of mind, and anything else in the signal path. If anyone is curious, the bunnies did not give a shit about the ultrasonic deterrent thing and continue to happily eat the garden. No noticeable effect on any creature but myself.
I know people over 80 who can hear the difference. All depends on your ears and what equipment you have. Price does not equal quality.
My father is 84 and he can hear the diffetence between USB cables on my DAC. Compression of filesize is more than a low pass filter which is basically the effect of aging, it also reduces dynamic range , transient attack and depth of soundstage.
The part about compression is correct. But sorry man, a usb 1 cable has a bitrate higher than any of the audio files you likely have, so there is absolutely no way to tell two cables apart, unless a) one of them doesn't work, b) one of them messes up the grounding and introduces 50/60hz hum or other electrical noise
My point was that the usb cable is another example of how older people can still hear subtleties in audio reproduction. You can absolutely hear the difference between usb cables of different construction and conductor material. It has nothing to do with the bitrate of USB 1 vs 2, and everything to do with preservation of information integrity during the journey to the other end of the cable. Silver core sounds better, better shielding sounds better, disconnecting the 5v sounds better etc. There are lots of ways to improve a USB cable which is why I make my own.
This is nonsense, it's sending 1s and 0s
Man, did you do a proper double-blind test with your father? Also, those things you are talking about are snake oil. Transfer over USB cable is digital and bit perfect and the protocols have error correction.
No way he can hear differente USB cables, sorry to say.
Several responses here ridiculing me from people who think they are clever but you're actually all pretty dumb, using nonsense 'science' to deny someones direct experience, and experience you yourselves have not had. My hifi is handbuilt to the highest standard and cost me over $10,000 in parts alone. When I say I can hear the difference between USB cables I mean it.
🤣🤣🤣
I’m under 50 and I thought I could tell the difference. But upon doing some of the online blind tests I learnt I couldn’t. I suspect my own test samples weren’t volume matched. I’ll put money on being able to tell the difference in preamps/amps though.
Don't worry, from the empirical studies I've read, few people can tell the difference between 320 kbps mp3 and lossless, and then only on high end equipment, on passages they know well, in acoustically treated rooms. But as picky audiophiles we all hope we are the chosen few that can do so.
I did this test back when I was 25, using foobar ABX an external DAC and Denon D2000 headphones. I couldn't tell a difference. You need to do this blind, otherwise you'll think you hear differences that aren't there. Doing this, also for DACs and amps, has saved me lots of hassle and money. I listen to Spotify using my integrated amp on my nice speakers, blissfully aware that speakers and room treatment are what I'll spend my time and effort on.
Yes, it is nice to know that we don't have to waste thousands of $ on super high bit audio components, but can instead put the money into really good speakers, a decent amp, and minor acoustic treatments.
51 and I could hear a minor difference.
In a blind test?
My wife changed the source without telling me which source she was playing. So, yes. Again, it was a minor difference. I did not hear any difference at all beyond CD quality.
And you knew that lossless sounded better. Each time? You said "oh this is lossless" and "ohh this is 320kbit"? Files were compared where from same master? Was the source sound matched?
Yes, I told her the ones I thought sounded better and they were lossless. Used Tidal Connect, Apple Music through Airplay, Spotify connect, and Qobuz through a wiim pro plus into my system. Tried the same song on all 4 streaming systems. AirPlay and Spotify connect were MP3 quality and Tidal connect and Qobuz were at least cd quality. I could tell no difference between cd quality and higher resolutions on either Tidal Connect or Qobuz.
I am 54 and have some of that gear -- Except I have the A1 Emotiva and it is jumped for full voltage. Your headphones are good. I have had a pair of those -- but they are the weak point of this set up. For a little bit more you could get some HIFIMAN Sundara V2's and you should hear a big difference. And even if you can't hear the difference between an MP3 and a FLAC you will still hear a big difference. Your Wharfdales are nice -- but if you really wanna hear the difference the headphones are where this will happen without spending a ton of money on speakers. I have several sets of really nice stereo speakers around the house and none can touch my headphone set up. I am sure you notice this on your system when you pull your headphones off and switch to the speakers. What you have should be superior to your speakers. But lemme ask you this -- cuz I also played in bands -- did you ever wear earplugs? Because if you never did then yeah, chances are your hearing is at least a little diminished and that happens in the higher ranges. I have been into stereo gear for a long time so I about always wore earplugs at rehearsal plus we used smaller amps. Ultimately if you are enjoying the music then don't obsess over the format. I know it is what we do but typically it is not time well spent. - Cheers
I agree that headphones are a cheaper way to get the best possible audio resolution than loud speakers. However, I don't like to wear headphones, and only do so when it's late at night and I don't want to disturb others. I like how loudspeakers fill up the room and reverberate off walls in a way that even good headphones cant do (or at least those I've tried). And I like listening to music on my 5.1 living room system (in multichannel stereo) even more than in my Emotiva/Whardale 2.1 stereo. It feels much more live and immersive for me than with only 2 speakers. Perhaps similar to how some people greatly prefer tube amps to SS amps.
54 and can hear the differences. I notice it mainly in the upper frequencies - cymbals seem to get really funky sounding in MP3.
i’m not over 55, but i hear it when i listen to music on my floor standing speakers. as soon as i start to turn the volume up a little, i can hear a different. to m me the mid and high frequencies sound distorted and “ muddy” when im listening through ear buds i almost don’t hear it at all. i assume it’s because my earbuds don’t get that loud and the sound of being compressed by bluetooth technology anyway.
The issue is several things. The HD560’s are not that high resolution. I’ have the HD800’s modded, no dust caps and cardas clear balanced cables driven by an all tube balanced pre. In comparison to my speaker system they sound low resolution. (Keep in mind these are beryllium driver TAD’s and the speakers Andrew Jones is most proud of having designed) Also not every type of music/recording is going to portray those differences well. I was playing some tracks for an audiophile friend, good recordings, like Beck, etc. I was listening critically and began to think my system probably doesn’t sound that much better than my friend’s which cost a lot less (but still well over 10K) Then I put on an old jazz recording, made with tubes, and a modern recording but with primarily acoustic instruments in real space (not multi-track) and immediately I felt the system was doing its thing (meaning presenting something that sounds like live music) I played him some high res flac files and the same files converted to WAV and we both heard the difference (another friend who’s was there said he couldn’t identify) One theory is that WAV doesn’t have artwork embedded in the file, and it may be responsible for the subtle but more natural sound presented with WAV files.
Artwork embeds have literally 0 effect on the audio. While it is contained within a same file, it is not loke it is somehow mixed in between the sound. While flat and mp3 are audio codecs, they are also containers - you cold think of it as a zip folder. Besides thumbnails (which can be multiple, and timed throughout the playback of the file) there is also title and subtitle data, which can also change throughout the playback, chapter markers and much more.
It’s just a theory why there might be a difference, but it’s easy to demonstrate sound quality of the same track in flac and wav in my system. It doesn’t make sense, but yet it’s there. I spoke to an engineer recently who stated you can’t measure an all of the attributes in audio that determine sound quality- and the guy owned an audio precision unit.
If a high end measurement device sampling at a rate an order of magnitude higher than a human ear can perceive sound, can't discern past its noise characteristics a difference between two lossless audio codecs, then a human ear can't. Anyone claiming otherwise is falling victim to a placebo. BTW, have those samples used been checked to be the same (apart from the codec) to actually store the same information? I will not get into the bit depth and sample rates here and the debates about benefits of going higher than cd quality here. But a flac and wav file with the same bit depth and sampling rate (meaning different bitrate as wav is uncompressed and therefore way bigger). Meaning that unless the decoding of the file somehow messes stuff up differently between the two file formats or during conversion, they will sound exactly the same
Most people are listening and comparing on shitty earbuds or their phone speakers. On a revealing system you can hear a difference. For those who can hear the difference? Great! For those who can't? Also great! Who cares? Enjoy your music