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You certainly aren't alone! I find 128kbps unlistenable but I A/B tested 320 vs lossless and - nope, couldn't tell the difference, even trying hard to do so. I

You certainly aren't alone! I find 128kbps unlistenable but I A/B tested 320 vs lossless and - nope, couldn't tell the difference, even trying hard to do so. I consider myself an enthusiast/hobbyist, not an audiophile, and hold a pretty high level of scepticism about the truly devoted tbh. That said I've never had the pleasure of listening to anything north of around the £10k mark, so I would love to be convinced of a genuine move-the-dial listening benefit of the really high end gear!

JohnBooty 4y ago
That said I've never had the pleasure of listening to anything north of around the £10k mark I've listened to gear well north of that and I certainly don't have "golden ears" (I don't think many do) but the TL;DR is that you hit diminishing returns way before £10k. Ultimately, we're talking about signal reproduction here, and inexpensive gear can put out some seriously accurate sound thanks to onboard DSP processing that uses software to compensate for less than amazing hardware. As long as the sound reaching your ears is correct, doesn't matter how it was achieved. The one thing you can potentially gain once you get in to the realm of paying thousands of dollars is oodles of power from the amplifier and oodles of power handling from the speakers, which may or may not let you begin to approximate the sound of live music. If you have ever had the pleasure of hearing an orchestra perform live, the average SPL (sound pressure level) may not be that high, but the fleeting momentary peaks from something like a timpani might be north of 100dB. That's a bit of a feat for your stereo system to pull off and there's no substitute for horsepower there. But even then, this doesn't necessarily cost megabucks.
- lukas099 4y ago
  Good point. If you are entertaining a large party, you can expect to pay a lot more for quality too, for similar reasons.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    Yes. And for large rooms, IME dealing with the room itself quickly becomes the challenge. I heard this system in person at this event. A million dollars of objectively great gear, and the end result was it sounded like the PA system at a high school football game. https://www.stereophile.com/content/vac-statement-452iq-power-amplifiers-and-statement-line-and-phono-preamps-von-schweikert https://www.stereophile.com/content/vac-statement-452iq-powe... The reflections in that room were a nightmare. Look at the giant glass wall behind the seating area, perpendicular to the speakers. Holy jesus. So you have the speakers putting out some massive waves, and then you have waves reflecting off of the glass wall with nearly equal energy, and then you have everything coming together and canceling out and/or creating resonances... right at the seating area. Absolutely insane, absolutely pathological.
cyberpunk 4y ago
I think the main sell of hidef audio isn't so much the 'extra bits' but usually they're different masters, and not compressed for CD. A lot of it is in the mind though for sure. Almost anything sounds pretty good on good (>500 euro) headphones. :}
alfalfasprout 4y ago
10-15k (mostly in speakers) is around when you start experiencing strongly diminishing returns. Some really nice floorstanding speakers though offer a jaw dropping improvement that’s measurable.
- nvarsj 4y ago
  Lower that by an order of magnitude. Genelecs are some of the most common studio monitors and they are way less than that. A pair of JBL 308ps for $700 is the point of diminishing returns for accurate reproduction. Only reason to spend more is aesthetics, features, and SPL (fair enough). Most of the budget in high end production facilities goes into room design and acoustics.
  - alfalfasprout 4y ago
    So, two things: 1. Studio monitors are chosen for their flat response curve over a given range not because they: a) accurately cover a large frequency range including bass, b) have exceptional clarity and ultra low distortion. 2. Bookshelf speakers can get really good but they ultimately require subwoofers to cover lower frequencies and that requires not only a good subwoofer with excellent clarity. 3. The vast, vast majority of studios master audio to sound good on a wide range of devices ranging from smartphone speakers to earbuds to $50 soundbars. And ultimately with the "loudness wars" still in full swing, dynamic range compression is widely used. I don't disagree with you that room treatment is of paramount importance. But there is a very, very noticeable difference hearing a good recording over a pair of floorstanding full range speakers with excellent tweeters+woofers and a decent amp. My point a good setup including subwoofer+crossovers+bookshelf speakers that hits the point of diminishing returns tends to approach the $10-15k mark including amp. Some things are a total waste of money. Fancy power cables, super-expensive amps with zero measurements to justify the cost. Snake oil stuff like special ethernet cables, etc. But speakers, as the highest distortion element of the audio chain, absolutely improve noticeably even up to $10-15k or so. I purchased some GoldenEar Triton One.R speakers a few years ago and they still blow people's minds when they listen to them. Everything from the bass to the treble are crystal clear yet not fatiguing.
sorum 4y ago
There used to be an ABX plugin for Foobar, where you could test yourself if you could make out the difference between an MP3 of your choice and a lossless one. I think I scored worse than a coin flip when it came to 320 files
- sneak 4y ago
  If you scored worse than a coin flip, then you are successfully able to distinguish 320kbps from lossless, which is a rare feat in human beings! (Just invert your answer for the correct one.) If you cannot distinguish, you will be the same as a coin flip; i.e. random.
  - sorum 4y ago
    Hah! Never thought of that. Nice one
    - alanh 4y ago
      Studies have shown that people that grew up listening to compressed audio tend to rate it as 'better' than lossless, which is kind of sad/amazing. Anyway, not to take this sub-thread too seriously, but obviously it depends how reproducible your deviation from 50-50 is :-)
Nav_Panel 4y ago
Buddy of mine has a $20k pair of monitors in a soundproofed room, and I was able to A/B 320 vs lossless on that system only, and only on certain types of material. The difference was only evident in the very high frequencies, and I really had to focus to tell.
- leviathant 4y ago
  >The difference was only evident in the very high frequencies, and I really had to focus to tell. This becomes a curse if you practice it too often. Yes, if you strain your ears during cymbal crashes, you'll hear warbly bits in compressed audio, especially if that's all you're looking for. And then you'll start hearing it everywhere. In terms of casual playback, it's not terribly important, and if you don't tune your ears, it won't matter. (Lossless is important for archival copies though, IMO) My favorite/worst example of falling into this trap occurred for me when I was mixing an EP by my band. We had terrible recording equipment, so I was trying my 22-year-old best to carve something workable out with EQ and panning and whatnot. On the kick drum, I wanted the 'click' of the beater hitting the head, but it accentuated this squeak that my pedal made every time I hit it. I spent a little too long trying to cut this squeak out, to little avail. It was like an icepick in my ears, but no one else in the band could hear it. Later that day, I got in the car and put in a CD by the band Cake (this being the early 2000s) - one that I'd heard countless times. On this playthrough though, clear as day, I heard the squeak of the drummer's kick pedal. I switched to pure electronic music for weeks just to cleanse my palette.
  - Nav_Panel 4y ago
    Hah! Been there, except for me it was with pure electronic music. Too much tweaking and then you come back later and go "WTF was I thinking!"
  - whstl 4y ago
    I love the squeaky bass drum in some Led Zeppelin records. Adds to the charm. I worked on a big studio in the late 90s/early 2000s, and it was kinda funny how professionals have (or at least had) an attitude of just not caring about those things. Try to fix with a gate in about 10 seconds, if it doesn't work just turn it down a bit. Or not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

JohnBooty 4y ago

That said I've never had the pleasure of listening to anything north of around the £10k mark I've listened to gear well north of that and I certainly don't have "golden ears" (I don't think many do) but the TL;DR is that you hit diminishing returns way before £10k. Ultimately, we're talking about signal reproduction here, and inexpensive gear can put out some seriously accurate sound thanks to onboard DSP processing that uses software to compensate for less than amazing hardware. As long as the sound reaching your ears is correct, doesn't matter how it was achieved. The one thing you can potentially gain once you get in to the realm of paying thousands of dollars is oodles of power from the amplifier and oodles of power handling from the speakers, which may or may not let you begin to approximate the sound of live music. If you have ever had the pleasure of hearing an orchestra perform live, the average SPL (sound pressure level) may not be that high, but the fleeting momentary peaks from something like a timpani might be north of 100dB. That's a bit of a feat for your stereo system to pull off and there's no substitute for horsepower there. But even then, this doesn't necessarily cost megabucks.

lukas099 4y ago
Good point. If you are entertaining a large party, you can expect to pay a lot more for quality too, for similar reasons.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  Yes. And for large rooms, IME dealing with the room itself quickly becomes the challenge. I heard this system in person at this event. A million dollars of objectively great gear, and the end result was it sounded like the PA system at a high school football game. https://www.stereophile.com/content/vac-statement-452iq-power-amplifiers-and-statement-line-and-phono-preamps-von-schweikert https://www.stereophile.com/content/vac-statement-452iq-powe... The reflections in that room were a nightmare. Look at the giant glass wall behind the seating area, perpendicular to the speakers. Holy jesus. So you have the speakers putting out some massive waves, and then you have waves reflecting off of the glass wall with nearly equal energy, and then you have everything coming together and canceling out and/or creating resonances... right at the seating area. Absolutely insane, absolutely pathological.

cyberpunk 4y ago

I think the main sell of hidef audio isn't so much the 'extra bits' but usually they're different masters, and not compressed for CD. A lot of it is in the mind though for sure. Almost anything sounds pretty good on good (>500 euro) headphones. :}

alfalfasprout 4y ago

10-15k (mostly in speakers) is around when you start experiencing strongly diminishing returns. Some really nice floorstanding speakers though offer a jaw dropping improvement that’s measurable.

nvarsj 4y ago
Lower that by an order of magnitude. Genelecs are some of the most common studio monitors and they are way less than that. A pair of JBL 308ps for $700 is the point of diminishing returns for accurate reproduction. Only reason to spend more is aesthetics, features, and SPL (fair enough). Most of the budget in high end production facilities goes into room design and acoustics.
- alfalfasprout 4y ago
  So, two things: 1. Studio monitors are chosen for their flat response curve over a given range not because they: a) accurately cover a large frequency range including bass, b) have exceptional clarity and ultra low distortion. 2. Bookshelf speakers can get really good but they ultimately require subwoofers to cover lower frequencies and that requires not only a good subwoofer with excellent clarity. 3. The vast, vast majority of studios master audio to sound good on a wide range of devices ranging from smartphone speakers to earbuds to $50 soundbars. And ultimately with the "loudness wars" still in full swing, dynamic range compression is widely used. I don't disagree with you that room treatment is of paramount importance. But there is a very, very noticeable difference hearing a good recording over a pair of floorstanding full range speakers with excellent tweeters+woofers and a decent amp. My point a good setup including subwoofer+crossovers+bookshelf speakers that hits the point of diminishing returns tends to approach the $10-15k mark including amp. Some things are a total waste of money. Fancy power cables, super-expensive amps with zero measurements to justify the cost. Snake oil stuff like special ethernet cables, etc. But speakers, as the highest distortion element of the audio chain, absolutely improve noticeably even up to $10-15k or so. I purchased some GoldenEar Triton One.R speakers a few years ago and they still blow people's minds when they listen to them. Everything from the bass to the treble are crystal clear yet not fatiguing.

sorum 4y ago

There used to be an ABX plugin for Foobar, where you could test yourself if you could make out the difference between an MP3 of your choice and a lossless one. I think I scored worse than a coin flip when it came to 320 files

sneak 4y ago
If you scored worse than a coin flip, then you are successfully able to distinguish 320kbps from lossless, which is a rare feat in human beings! (Just invert your answer for the correct one.) If you cannot distinguish, you will be the same as a coin flip; i.e. random.
- sorum 4y ago
  Hah! Never thought of that. Nice one
  - alanh 4y ago
    Studies have shown that people that grew up listening to compressed audio tend to rate it as 'better' than lossless, which is kind of sad/amazing. Anyway, not to take this sub-thread too seriously, but obviously it depends how reproducible your deviation from 50-50 is :-)

Nav_Panel 4y ago

Buddy of mine has a $20k pair of monitors in a soundproofed room, and I was able to A/B 320 vs lossless on that system only, and only on certain types of material. The difference was only evident in the very high frequencies, and I really had to focus to tell.

leviathant 4y ago
>The difference was only evident in the very high frequencies, and I really had to focus to tell. This becomes a curse if you practice it too often. Yes, if you strain your ears during cymbal crashes, you'll hear warbly bits in compressed audio, especially if that's all you're looking for. And then you'll start hearing it everywhere. In terms of casual playback, it's not terribly important, and if you don't tune your ears, it won't matter. (Lossless is important for archival copies though, IMO) My favorite/worst example of falling into this trap occurred for me when I was mixing an EP by my band. We had terrible recording equipment, so I was trying my 22-year-old best to carve something workable out with EQ and panning and whatnot. On the kick drum, I wanted the 'click' of the beater hitting the head, but it accentuated this squeak that my pedal made every time I hit it. I spent a little too long trying to cut this squeak out, to little avail. It was like an icepick in my ears, but no one else in the band could hear it. Later that day, I got in the car and put in a CD by the band Cake (this being the early 2000s) - one that I'd heard countless times. On this playthrough though, clear as day, I heard the squeak of the drummer's kick pedal. I switched to pure electronic music for weeks just to cleanse my palette.
- Nav_Panel 4y ago
  Hah! Been there, except for me it was with pure electronic music. Too much tweaking and then you come back later and go "WTF was I thinking!"
- whstl 4y ago
  I love the squeaky bass drum in some Led Zeppelin records. Adds to the charm. I worked on a big studio in the late 90s/early 2000s, and it was kinda funny how professionals have (or at least had) an attitude of just not caring about those things. Try to fix with a gate in about 10 seconds, if it doesn't work just turn it down a bit. Or not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯