> you also cannot tell the difference between lossless and properly transcoded MP3

I'm not sure what you mean by "properly transcoded," as though there's a scourge of bad encoders out there and everyone has nutty encoding practices, but I really, really bet you can. Listen to an mp3 of a rock/pop track. Try to focus on the cymbals. See if you can isolate them aurally from the rest of the music. Can you hear how mp3 encoding completely munges high frequencies to sound like digital glass breaking? Then you shall finally understand why mp3 encoding has always sucked, and Napster really, really should have won.

Many mp3 encoders cut off really high frequency stuff - somewhere between 16khz and 20khz depending on the encoder. Often this isn't changed by any of the quality settings, e.g. on lame it's still enabled on the "insane" preset without manually disabling it.

While that's on the very top-end of human hearing - most by middle age can't detect anything above 14-16khz, but it's certainly possible (especially for those younger) to have frequencies all the way up to 20khz as audible.

So it is possible for some people to hear a difference with some mp3 encoders, no matter the bitrate or quality settings.

And the psychoacoustic model is going to focus on the "average" listener, so it's perfectly possible that an lower bitrate encoding is transparent (IE: Completely indistinguishable) to one person, while another may be able to notice higher frequencies that have been cut off to provide more quality in the more noticeable parts of the spectrum. Or even the same person at different ages. This is completely physical difference, and no amount of training or harder listening would be able to bridge the gap.

And I find many of the higher frequencies that are hit by such things are often not particularly noticeable unless you're actively looking for them, being able to tell there's a difference and knowing what to specifically look far isn't the same as saying the recording is somehow less enjoyable due to quality differences.

^ yeah exactly. Also, you really do need a pretty good sound system to hear it. I was with the poster above you for a long time, but then I did blind A/B testing on my buddy's $10k monitors, and the difference was clear.

I wouldn't call it "night and day", but I had no trouble distinguishing even 320 MP3 from FLAC on his system by focusing on the very high frequencies (3/3, small N I know I know, but I felt like I could've gone on indefinitely). The MP3s lost some clarity in the highs which led to less dimensionality/sense of space ("soundstage"), because our spatial hearing is very attuned to minute transient differences in high frequencies in particular. But you need to be listening on a system that is adequately equipped to reproduce very high frequency transients accurately, which most people don't have access to.

The encoders of today create really good mp3 even at 192kbps (at 128kbps not so much which is a shame as a lot of internet radios use that).

Do you have a favorite rock track we can do an ABX test with?

Not the person you replied to, but Hotel California’s Hell Freezes Over version is generally very well regarded in mastering.

If I’m not mistaken one of those A/B/X test websites also tested that, and while I was using a very simple pair of headphones, the difference was noticeable.

Why not.

https://abx.funkybits.fr/test/the-eagles-hell-freezes-over-h...

(obviously there's a bug on the tracks display after round 1)

(fixed)

Thanks, I’ll try and take the test asap. (I need to find my earphones and usb c to 3.5mm adapter first). Is there any way I can contact you after taking the test, perhaps email?

> Hotel California’s Hell Freezes Over version is generally very well regarded in mastering.

Never heard this, but I know the original track is used for reference in studios from LA to NY, and is generally regarded as among the best mixes ever engineered.

Another commenter suggested high end audio equipment and $10K monitors... not necessary. With any off the shelf hifi, $100 worth of equipment, one can easily hear mp3 high frequency problems. Focusing on the cymbals just makes it obvious.

As a former orchestra player I can say that, with a good hi-fi system, the difference is audible, in terms of soundstage size/depth, not in details.

I have a couple systems, one is a proper hi-fi system. If the album is mastered without brick-wall normalization, the difference is easier to hear.

When I listen the same album via my DAC, from MP4, I enjoy it. When I listen the same album, from a CD, I sit in front of the system like a rabbit blinded by lights.

The DAC is the same. It’s a Yamaha CD-S300 with a proper iPod interface, which carries the signal digitally till DAC.

This ABX test is the same. You need a high fidelity chain to enjoy it. I have a nice sound card, but the speakers connected to it can’t handle the resolution put out by it.

Those are two completely different situations.

I'm not a fan of analog, but a high-end analog system will sound far different than a similarly priced digital one. It's a very different type of sound.

Whether someone likes it or not is personal preference. But it does sound night-and-day different to listen to a vinyl from a turntable and using a DAC.

As for MP3 vs lossless, that's mostly true assuming a modern variable bit rate MP3 on OK hardware. The better the audio, the better the equipment, the more noticeable it gets. But yes, for 95%, it's basically not significant.

Badly transcoded mp3s are the worst. For most artists I couldn't tell the difference between a v2 and a flac. There were a few who you could but they're mostly not what people are listening to (intentionally very noisy artists). Realistically if I just heard them blind I don't think I would have cared.

As an anecdote I've noticed that while driving, the bass line in YouTube music jazz can be incredibly hard to hear despite my shelling out for the premium Bose sound system that can shake the vehicle. So I wonder whether this is the encoding or whether it's really supposed to be that quiet.

There's definitely some difference in quality with some music. For instance, the reverb will be slightly better with lossless, in my opinion. Some might say it's not much to bother with but it's definitely there.

Cymbals always sound like bubbling shit in mp3.

MP3 is not monolithic, and has changed drastically since it was released.

You're going to get a pretty terrible experience with MP3 128kbps, whereas modern variable bit rate schemes can actually be quite decent. Personally I prefer to always go lossless, but for most people on most systems, the difference isn't noticeable. (Moreso the better the system gets, ofc)

> MP3 is not monolithic, and has changed drastically since it was released.

To some extent certainly, though I think that e.g. the handling of short sharp transient remains somewhat of a fundamental problem of MP3 no matter how much bitrate and encoding brain power you throw at it, and was only really improved upon in the subsequent generation of codecs, i.e. like AAC, Vorbis or Opus.

True, though I think variable bit rate MP3 is fine enough for most.

But the main reason is that it's so ubiquitous. If you're buying music, it's almost always MP3 unless you go to a source like Qobuz which serves FLAC. Same with devices - basically everything supports MP3. Vorbis and Opus support is far patchier.

> unless you go to a source like Qobuz which serves FLAC.

Apple is another odd one out there by only selling music as AAC, and Bandcamp gives you a comprehensive choice of all sorts of formats.

> Same with devices - basically everything supports MP3. Vorbis and Opus support is far patchier.

True that, though AAC support might also be somewhat reasonably common-ish these days. (Though I've found that apart from also having a relatively low folder count limit in general, my car radio also has some difficulties with reading the metadata in some files, and as far as I can tell I think the affected files are all MPEG-4 files. It's only some MPEG-4 files that are affected, though, but I haven't yet bothered to find out what exactly else they might have in common.)

I wish everyone was on Bandcamp. It's such a great service. It's so flexible. And unlike Qobuz, it's website is actually decent.

> Personally I prefer to always go lossless

Oh? Why's that?

While I likely wouldn't notice the difference, digital space is so cheap now that it costs me very little to store everything I want as lossless copies. Even if the difference is negligible, there's little reason not to get the best quality I can.

The main reasons why not would be streaming (currently Qobuz is the only one I know of that does it properly, and services like Roon + Qobuz can get pricey) and bluetooth (which doesn't support lossless at all).