An interesting experiment
Lossless FLAC vs 320kbps MP3 experiment
5. I undid the padlocks and released them.
Did you use your favourite £15 speaker 
Could they tell you were using active speakers? 
5. I undid the padlocks and released them.
No not yet. I need to keep them locked up for a bit longer so that I can run some speaker cable experiments on them... 
Did you use your favourite £15 speaker
Hehe. 
No the AVI Neutron's.
Now do it again with 128k.
And then do it on actives, since presumably all that passive crossover distortion will prevent you hearing any difference anyway.
Have you considered trying to find out at what point you could reliably tell the difference?
Oh, and one last thing - did any of them go on a second date?
Have you considered trying to find out at what point you could reliably tell the difference?
Me or him? If me, it starts to show itself about 256 and below. 128k is obvious to me on most stuff.
Have you considered trying to find out at what point you could reliably tell the difference?
Good idea. I might give that a try sometime.
Have you considered trying to find out at what point you could reliably tell the difference?
Me or him? If me, it starts to show itself about 256 and below. 128k is obvious to me on most stuff.
It's exactly the same for me too.
There is sometimes subtle difference at 256kbps. At 128kbps the difference is usually pretty obvious but music still sounds pleasant enough to listen to.
Have you considered trying to find out at what point you could reliably tell the difference?
Me or him? If me, it starts to show itself about 256 and below. 128k is obvious to me on most stuff.
Him
I have my iTunes library at 256 VBR, but have never critically compared bitrates, although this rate is supposed to be indistinguishable from lossless and provides a slightly smaller file than 320Kbps.
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Here are details of a 'lossless vs MP3' experiment that I have carried out on three different people. Each time results are the same. The experiment consists of three separate blind A/B listening tests and an ABX test.
1. For the first test I played a series of two identical MP3 files but lied and said that one of them was lossless. Most of the time they prefered the sound of the fake lossless file over the MP3 file even though it was really the same identical MP3 file.
2. For the second test I swapped the files around. I told them that the MP3 was lossless and that the lossless was an MP3. Most of the time they prefered the sound of the MP3 file over the lossless file.
3. For the third test I played the lossless and MP3 files again and told the truth about which one was which. Most of the time they prefered the sound of the lossless file over the MP3 file.
4. For the fourth test I let them do an ABX test using Foobar and nobody managed to tell the difference between the MP3 and lossless files.
PC > AVI Neutron Five 2.1
32GB Sony NWZ-A846 Walkman > Westone UM3x