Yeah - I need to do some ABX testing on myself. I did some iTunes testing, with the two songs in the playlist and it on shuffle with my eyes closed and I feel like I heard the difference if I could really concentrate. I could have been chance though, but I "guessed" it over 10 times. (Probability of that isn't even too insane...)
Anyways, the only difference I could sense was the absolute slightest difference in soundstage from a set of hand drums. (I only listened critically to the first 3 seconds of it.)
Like, I'm talking about, the SMALLEST, and I would definitely not know it was there if I wasn't looking for it / didn't have something to compare it to.
I was comparing .FLAC to 192kbps .mp3 -- Meh.
I don't care if I can't hear the difference and point it out between the two, I'm still going to try and get all my music in lossless and listen in lossless. I'm one of those believers in the whole "Just because you can't hear it doesn't mean it doesn't effect your brain."
And people always talk about the placebo effect as if it's some negative thing. If you have an ego and you care about it in terms of being able to hear hi-fi audio, then yeah it's a negative, but if a placebo effect makes me enjoy my music more, then I couldn't care less that it's just a placebo.
Oh, and the testing I did was just through iTunes and a pair of HD280's plugged into the headphone jack.
I would like to be able to tell the difference between the two, and I feel like if anyone trained themself to they could, but I'm not going to risk ruining my non-lossless listening experience just to be able to pass an ABX test. I really couldn't care less.
And if listening to a 192kbps mp3 doesn't "sound" any different to my ears than listening to a lossless, I really don't care, because no one will be able to convince me that it doesn't -feel- different.
Laying down knowing I'm wearing a nice pair of amp'd headphones with a good source makes me enjoy certain music better, and that won't change regardless of the "truth" behind what I'm hearing.
But yeah, I'm going to have a friend test me through my normal little audio chain and i'll post the results. I probably won't be able to tell a difference.
And most importantly, just because someone can't hear the additional quality / data in the lossless file doesn't mean that it isn't affecting the way they're enjoying / "hearing" their music. This is key when criticizing hi-fidelity audio. I mean, look at that paper that someone posted, it was an interesting read and shows that it still changes our brain activity.
Here it is again so you don't have to dig for it:
Inaudible High-Frequency Sounds Affect Brain Activity: Hypersonic Effect -- Oohashi et al. 83 (6): 3548 -- Journal of Neurophysiology
Later!