[brhfl]

  [...] If I pull out a fifteen year old Mac with a fifteen year old copy of iTunes [...]

Just as a fun aside to show what a difference fifteen years makes... there is no such thing as a fifteen year old copy of iTunes, Apple hadn't bought SoundJam MP yet. I think SoundJam used its own encoder, but I may be wrong about that. Whatever they did, it was highly optimized for the PPC, and was lightning fast at the time. While it didn't have the same sense of 'library' that iTunes does, it was very flexible as far as searching through all of your media for specific criteria. It was somewhat revolutionary for being an encode and playback solution, and for introducing the ability to start listening while the rest of the album ripped. I recently fired up an old PowerMac 6100 of mine, and seeing SoundJam for Rio (pre-iPod!) on there was my favorite little bit of nostalgia. A lot has changed in fifteen years...

 

[bigshot]

I had an 8500AV and used SoundJam. I even had a Rio. (never used the damn thing because it sucked)

 

[brhfl]

  I had an 8500AV and used SoundJam. I even had a Rio. (never used the damn thing because it sucked)

The Rio offered a briefly-entertaining glimpse into the future... and then you realized just how awful it (the Rio, (hopefully) not the future) was...

 

[cjl]

   
I am lazy. I want to click on a link and have the MP3 play. I'm not interested in downloading and transcoding. If it was already an MP3, I have no idea why anyone would change it into something else.

VLC is a player. You install it on your computer, and then whenever you click a link to a FLAC file, you hit an OK button and it plays. No transcoding required.

 

[Beachhead1]

Today I tried the ABX test with Foobar2000 and the only few songs I had both in MP3 and FLAC.
 
I was able to tell the difference every time.  I tried about 30 times. 
 
My setup is a Creative Titanium HD + Ultrasone HFi-680.
 
Also to my surprise I could even tell the difference when listening to $10 speakers (my speakers recently blew so I have my crappy laptop speakers hooked up).  It was definitely harder to tell with the laptop speakers.
 
The differences were obvious to me.

 

[Head Injury]

  Today I tried the ABX test with Foobar2000 and the only few songs I had both in MP3 and FLAC.
 
I was able to tell the difference every time.  I tried about 30 times. 
 
My setup is a Creative Titanium HD + Ultrasone HFi-680.
 
Also to my surprise I could even tell the difference when listening to $10 speakers (my speakers recently blew so I have my crappy laptop speakers hooked up).  It was definitely harder to tell with the laptop speakers.
 
The differences were obvious to me.

Great!
 
Could you give us some more info about your test?
 

1. What bitrate were your lossy files at?
2. What songs did you test?
3. These files were from the same mastering, and no processing (EQ, etc.) had been done to either?
4. I believe the plugin keeps a log of your test. Could you post it here? If it doesn't, nevermind. It's been a while!

 
It's not too surprising you could tell the difference even with laptop speakers. My impression is that, while good gear helps, hearing a difference is more about knowing what to look for. Once you find the difference on good gear, I bet you could find it on iBuds too!

 

[Beachhead1]

  Great!
 
Could you give us some more info about your test?
 

1. What bitrate were your lossy files at?
2. What songs did you test?
3. These files were from the same mastering, and no processing (EQ, etc.) had been done to either?
4. I believe the plugin keeps a log of your test. Could you post it here? If it doesn't, nevermind. It's been a while!

 
It's not too surprising you could tell the difference even with laptop speakers. My impression is that, while good gear helps, hearing a difference is more about knowing what to look for. Once you find the difference on good gear, I bet you could find it on iBuds too!

The files were MP3s at 256kbps.  I tested a bunch of Keane songs from the album Hopes and Fears.  I believe they were the same mastering and I didn't use any EQ or anything.  The application offered to make a FLAC file when I was done playing with it but I didn't save it.
 
I found that if I focused on just one instrument something that sounded really crisp/detailed something on the higher end of the spectrum I could hear a difference.  I set the software to start playing the file at an point when that instrument was most prominent.  The difference I heard was a greater fullness or some extra detail that wasn't in the lossy version.   I should note I tried to focus on like 3-15 second sections of the songs.  I found that if I listened to 30 seconds or more straight through when I clicked over to the other file I had difficulty precisely remembering how the section at the beginning of the 30 seconds sounded.
 
At first for each track it probably took me 6 or 7 times going back and forth between A and B to identify a difference.  Once I heard the difference I could go down to X and Y go back and forth say 3 times and get it.  After the first time it only took going back and forth maybe 2-3 times on the A and B then maybe 2 times on X-Y.  By the 4th or 5th time on the same track it was that much easier.

 

[bigshot]

You can pretty much be sure that a high bitrate file sold to audiophiles has different mastering than a CD or iTunes version sold to kids. Bounce the hires version down and compare apples to apples and you will have a MUCH harder time discerning a difference. Particularly if you use LAME VBR for the MP3. I would bet that you couldn't discern a difference between that at all.

 

[SilverEars]

Hi, I down converted, and looked at different aspect of the two files, and didn't see a difference until when I looked at the pitch.  Top one is the FLAC version, and the bottom is the 320 mp3 down converted.  Why is there a difference?  What does this pitch aspect represent and how to read this?
 

 

[Dark_wizzie]

Isn't a proper mp3 vs flac test a flac file and then a mp3 properly done personally by the user from the flac file? Mastering can't change because, of course, it's from the same original file.

 

[blades]

I've done bias controlled listening tests comparing MP3 files to WAV files.  What I learned was that 320 mbps frequency MP3's are indistinguishable from WAV.  256kbps are iindistinguishable more than 95% of the time.  192 kbps are usually distinguishable from WAV.  128kbps are alwalys easily distinguishable and below that things sound pretty bad.  The message in all of this is that 320 kbps is the highest frequency option for MP3 for a reason and 256 kbps is a perfectly excellent frequency to use in downsampling.  128kbps is as low as you should ever go and only when controlling file size is important.
 
Flac, of course, is also indistinguishable from WAV.

 

[Beachhead1]

  You can pretty much be sure that a high bitrate file sold to audiophiles has different mastering than a CD or iTunes version sold to kids. Bounce the hires version down and compare apples to apples and you will have a MUCH harder time discerning a difference. Particularly if you use LAME VBR for the MP3. I would bet that you couldn't discern a difference between that at all.

I only spent a few minutes listening to the file I made with LAME based on the FLAC.  Within those 2-3 minutes I couldn't tell a difference.  So I would say you are right.

 

[bigshot]

You'd be amazed how many people haven't taken the time to find out what you just found out!

 

[cjl]

  Isn't a proper mp3 vs flac test a flac file and then a mp3 properly done personally by the user from the flac file? Mastering can't change because, of course, it's from the same original file.

Yep. If you really, really want to be rigorous about it, you should take your original FLAC/WAV, make an MP3 out of it, and then convert it back to FLAC/WAV afterwards to prevent there from being a filesize and format difference (which could cause subtle differences in the buffering/loading time in playback software). This obviously won't change the sound quality, but it is possible when doing a double blind/ABX for your brain to pick up on even subtle cues like the pause duration after starting a track that could allow you to differentiate between the two file formats.
 
Of course, if you're just doing a comparison to see for yourself (rather than to do a fairly rigorous study), this is a bit over the top and unnecessary.