[Tarkovsky]

I used itunes and simply encoded a lossless file to AAC256 and searched for them so as I'd have no idea which was which. I kept thinking I was hearing things differently then realised I was playing the same version and hadn't hit the back key twice. Talk about placebo affect. In the end I really decided I could hear more body in Ian Anderson's voice on one particular track. Turned out to be the bloody AAC! To my mind what this proves is 1)The quality of the AAC codec 2) The poor quality of my dac. 3) A headphone test might not reveal imaging detail loss like a speaker test (of course this is a good argument for the use of lossy compression on portable devices)
In my mind it's still worth ripping to lossless for the sake of scalability and peace of mind.

 

[TheMarchingMule]

Well, a few things I got to say here.

1.) It's DBT; Double Blind Test, not 'blink.'

2.) foobar2000 is the proper way to do it!

3.) Indeed, some have said it's easier to distinguish lossy from lossless on speakers more than headphones.

 

[Tarkovsky]

1) It was double blind as neither the tester nor the testee (hehe) knew
2) Actually Itunes is bit perfect on a mac

 

[Nebby]

Comment #1 was in response to your thread title, which says right now "Double blink test on AAC 256K v ALAC"

 

[dkjohnso]

And Comment #2 was addressing the fact that iTunes does not have a built in method of blind testing. Foobar2000 allows you to ABX two tracks in a truly blind fashion, and after a number of trials gives you the probability that you are guessing. It has nothing to do with being bit perfect or not.

 

[Tarkovsky]

Oh wow that is cool.

 

[krmathis]

Do a real ABX test, then pick either lossy or lossless depending on the result.
No questions asked AAC at 256Kbps are high quality, and you might have a hard time hearing any audible difference against ALAC.