Seems that over 90% of the people here can tell the difference between 320kbps and lossless. Something must be wrong with me. I can't even tell the difference between 256kbps and lossless.

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I really doubt a lot of people can tell the difference. Hardly anyone provided an ABX result. And for myself, I can only tell the difference if I try really hard and I am using proper headphones. It's not easy at all.

It's a difference you won't notice unless you try to notice it.

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There is nothing wrong with you. Perhaps 90% of the people say they can tell the difference between well-encoded high bitrate lossy files and lossless, but I have seen only a very small handful actually substantiate their claims with a proper listening test.

There are any number of reasons that people may claim to be able to hear a difference. Many times, people base their ability to hear difference on their evaluation of lossy files that they made using outdated encoders, or lossy files of dubious origin that they have downloaded from the internet. Likewise, people often compare files without properly level-matching the files, so that the differences that they perceive are attributable to volume differences. And, of course, expectation bias can also create a perception of a difference.

My sense is that most of the people here who claim to be able to hear a difference between well-encoded lossy files and lossless files would not be able to do so in a proper double-blind listening test involving level-matched files. I have no doubt that there are some people who actually can identify the difference, but they're fewer than the anecdotal evidence would have you believe.

I think I'll make a start a new thread with a poll to check it. I am getting interested.

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Sorry, I should correct myself on this point... it was indeed -V6 (VBR). The 115kbps is only the approximate average-bandwidth estimate as displayed in foobar2000's convert-to-mp3 feature.

Do you know what sort of genre of music is easier to pick out compression flaws? I've been trying fast rock (drums/guitar/vocals) through to classical (piano, etc) and haven't noticed much difference for either genre. I assume it is more noticeable in faster music with more instruments, as the music is more 'complicated'?

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Yes, I tried that as well, but the volumes are only out by 0.01dB or some other minute amount which I don't think is detectable? The other thing is that even without volume normalization between the FLAC and mp3 versions of the track, I still couldn't pick them apart

Anyway, I'm probably going to try it on a new soundcard to see if that improves anything

Thanks

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0.01 dB is not audible indeed. However, the average volume difference between the two is 0.01 dB. The peaks could be a higher and audible. You can train yourself if you want to be able to hear the difference. I can't recommend this though.

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Things like metal usually contain the flaw which has been described by some as "warbling". Don't ask me to explain this "warbling" sound to you. It's something you should hear to be able to realise what you are hearing.

http://ff123.net/training/training.html
Artifact Identification

See ya
Steve

Being able to tell the difference is irrelevant, I encode lossless because I want to archive ALL of those little pits in my CDs and because space is cheep. I've got a 250 gig partition dedicated to music storage and I'm only at 100 gigs right now. I will reach 250 gigs eventually and when I do, I will just get more space. Its very cheep.

I recently got into only listening to uncompressed wav's and wowwwwww, the difference between that and 320 kb/s mp3's is night and day. It's so much fuller and there's just more "there", almost like you can touch the music.

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Do an ABX test.

As I said in my prior post in this thread, there are any number of reasons that people may claim to be able to hear a difference. Many times, people base their ability to hear difference on their evaluation of lossy files that they made using outdated encoders, or lossy files of dubious origin that they have downloaded from the internet. Likewise, people often compare files without properly level-matching the files, so that the differences that they perceive are attributable to volume differences. And, of course, expectation bias can also create a perception of a difference.

I would be willing to bet that if you do a proper ABX test with level-matched files, you will either not be able to hear any difference at all, or you will at least find that the difference is very small, and not "night and day"

a

I've done searches and I am new to lossless, so please bear with me on this question.
I have a newly acquired Squeezebox3 and am using dBpoweramp music converter to rip my own CD's to .flac.
It comes with ID3 tagging but even with the most modern CD's, all I get is "Track -01" and so on, without any tagging info.
I am using the power pack add-on, but when I right click ID3 Tag, it says "no information".

What can I do to remedy this situation?

I think the biggest factor isn't so much lossless, but the recording itself.

I've just heard some 128 mp3's that sound BETTER than some lossless files, as well as some other bit rates (256 and 328) that sound identical to my lossless files simply because of the recording. Some recordings are hot, flat, overpowering, etc. I think what needs to be done, is take that lossless file, make a compressed one, THEN compare. Otherwise, you don't really have an accurate standpoint as to which sounds better.

So what do I do? I just DL the song from iTunes and am done with it, as many times, the iTunes aac DL sounds just as good as my lossless, except, it takes up CONSIDERABLY less space....