[scannon18]

I discovered the ABX tester for Foobar yesterday and spend the better part of the day playing with it.  I was surprised that all three of my headphones (see sig below) were able to discern between lossy and lossless, but only on some albums.  On other albums I could not tell a difference.
 
But for the albums I could discern the difference the difference was obvious on all of my headphones, which leads me to believe that lossless is really only necessary for albums that are extremely well produced.  Most albums do not have a high enough production quality to warrant lossless playback.  This makes sense because a lot of my music is made by independent artists (I listen to a LOT of underground music).
 
So, it seems to really come down to production quality, not entirely fidelity of the headphones.  All of the headphones were "hi-fi" enough.  Not all of the albums were.
 
Anybody else notice this?  The abX tester is a great tool, I was really surprised at how good the quality of V0 mp3 tracks is.

 

[Head Injury]

You made sure there were no encoding errors and that volume levels between files were matched, right?
 
And what were your results?

 

[scannon18]

Yes, I did.  I had them properly gained and scanned and whatnot.  My result were either 10/10 correct (0% chance of guessing) for the well produced albums and less than 5/10 for the other albums.
 
The objectivist approach to sq is starting to dawn on me. . . ABX testing can be a powerful tool, it was a real eye-opener

 

[bowei006]

i did the same thing on the other thread and yes did ABX. i did it properly the second time around with hidden results(do this, you will get biased by your own results) and ended up with a 1.1% guessing result after 16 tries
 
but basically like i also said on that thread. for more complex and modern music. lady gaga, metal like slipknot and stuff. i can't tell a difference. on well recorded oldies and just good not soo complex recordings like sweet child of mine, hotel calirfornia ..it's easy for me to tell apart. well not easy. but good enough that i will wish it to be lossless on my ipod and not MP3 320kbps or AAC256kbps

 

[MattTCG]

I have been listening to a new set of he-500's with a lyr amp for the past few days. My everyday set of phones up until this point have d2000's with a fiio e10. There is no denying that the is a grand canyon of difference between those two setups. The truth is that the difference didn't really floor me, and yes it did eventually floor me, until I listened to well mastered recordings of high fidelity tracks. The he-500 setup was just able to go to a completely different place with the right source of music. The denon sounded good but just hit a ceiling even with superb mastering of the track. 
 
So my point is to the original poster, that yes you are right

 

[IEMCrazy]

I believe it has been auditioned many times with 320 that it is virtually impossible to tell the difference.   The very quiet sections of classical are still usually the exception to the rule where the guess ratio goes down (technically, CD audio isn't really adequate for those passages to begin with.) 
 
But paranoia rules the day for us audiophiles, and we like knowing we're getting every last bit available!  

 

[Head Injury]

 

I believe it has been auditioned many times with 320 that it is virtually impossible to tell the difference.   The very quiet sections of classical are still usually the exception to the rule where the guess ratio goes down (technically, CD audio isn't really adequate for those passages to begin with.) 
 
But paranoia rules the day for us audiophiles, and we like knowing we're getting every last bit available!  

Why isn't CD audio adequate for quiet passages? It offers a dynamic range of 96 dB above the quantization noise floor. That's more than any recording uses. Unless you're blasting a high dynamic range recording so the quietest parts are still ~40-50 dB above ambient noise, you won't hear it.