In my view there is a need to test that for any one individual to make that claim. I'll grant you frau 96 CBR, but it still sounds
nice to me if I am not ABXing. Other people here appear to feel that for 128 cbr frau it is more of a consensus that it is obviously audible at most times. That's fair, but I am not sure I agree. I will say it's reasonable, but for me, after all of the "prevailing wisdom" I have read on the net, surprisingly challenging. I find 128 kbps CBR frau versus lossless highly challenging for an unexceptional passage of music, say what you will about my hearing. I have not trained for artifacts before the last couple of days, but I'll say, if you are talking about day-to-day sound quality, I think you'll be surprised how little the difference is, and you might ask yourself if it's meaningful from an enjoyment perspective. At least I do. And training for artifacts might distract you during enjoyment listening.
There's really no practical need for you to gain this knowledge--you can just rip at higher bitrates and relax, but I find it interesting to get personal knowledge of the actual differences and I do challenge you (softly) to try out some ABXing at 128 CBR frau. . . having in mind that is a worst case real world scenario at 128 kbps. There's no need to ever use that codec at that bitrate. It leaves no room for error even if it would be transparent for a particular person. A 2014 Hydrogen Audio group test showed that the better codecs are challenging for most people at 96 kbps VBR, with Apple AAC leading the way as to what you could use practically. The people engaged in the testing were generally the cream of the crop compared to the general population. I don't think you could ABX 128 VBR Apple AAC on unexceptionally demanding music, but rather only in very special cases, if at all. Try it!
Do the different rips from the same source, install the Foobar ABX Comparometer component, select the two versions of the tracks you are interested in, right click, select utilities from context menu, select the ABX comparometer, and you can do the ABX test. The software does the rest for you. And it tells you the percent chance you are just guessing when you are done. The default is 16 passes for a particular sample. It's really easy.
The bravado, if any is to be derived from this hobby, is in my view not in how discerning your hearing is, but rather in your handle on the way things really are, and what you can do with that knowledge. Obviously there are people way, way past me in the Sound Science part of head-fi. In the rest of head-fi, after you do a little learning and experimenting, your jaw will drop when you read what people are saying. This is really a tight little discussion group among serious experts (with in some cases egos to match, I might add) with passersby like you and me dropping in every now and then. And if we say something too crazy we will draw flak.
In my case that would be two rips of the same exact track off the same exact CD, one encoded at 128kbps and the other at 256, same settings(CBR, full stereo, etc). Listened to and compared via the same listening chain. Common sense I guess! Not an extreme audible difference - like comparing 64kbps and 320 MP3, or comparing 128 to WAV - but a definite one. No need to ABX under those conditions.
Also, to give yourself the very best chance, you would want to compare lossless versus the compressed file, though 256 AAC Apple VBR is arguably pretty close to lossless for sound quality.
Invalid listening tests:
-Listening to the lower bitrate file through headphones, and the higher one through full-size speakers.
-Comparing MP3 of one bitrate downloaded from somewhere(Ewww!) to one you ripped from a CD at another bitrate.
-Comparing a MP3 rip from original CD at any bitrate to a MP3 rip from that CD's remastered version.
Etc..
