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Your first point stands up to experimental scrutiny, but your second needs qualification: Anyone can be trained to pick up the differences between 320kbps mp3 a

Your first point stands up to experimental scrutiny, but your second needs qualification: Anyone can be trained to pick up the differences between 320kbps mp3 and lossless formats. Compression kills the high end, and learning to recognize tell-tale compression artifacts will forever ruin your ability to appreciate streamed music, low-bandwidth wireless audio systems, or just 320kbps rips of music, certain genres faring worse than others.

c0pium 3y ago
That is absolutely not true. People can be trained to hear that difference when the testing is not blinded, however in triangle tests that ability vanishes.
- soulofmischief 3y ago
  Maybe not anyone. I could be biased with sensitive hearing. I know that in grade school, part of the requirements for joining band, due to the size of my school and overwhelming demand, was passing an audiometry test, where we were evaluated on a few different contexts related to ability to discern detail in audio, such as pitch and volume. I remember being pulled away into the principal's office where some of the test administrators were present, and they accused me of cheating and demanded to know how I did it. Apparently, I was the only student in the entire state to get a perfect score on that test, at least for that particular year. Unsure if they were implying I was the first ever, but that seems ridiculous to me because passing the test boiled down to just paying close attention. So I really don't know. Maybe the average person can't hear it, but I know just what to look for in the high-end and usually guess even 320kbps mp3 correctly from my own self-tests wherein I would randomly select between different encodings of a music file. I'm confident I would do well in an administered ABX test if I'm simply being tasked with finding the difference between mp3 lossy encodings and a lossless reference.
  - saltcured 3y ago
    I don't claim to have golden ears but I am a picky listener. I've been pretty satisfied with good MP3 encodings like 320kb/s though I'm not sure I'd agree they're indistinguishable. I had an experience I mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, about hearing a difference between 24bit 96 kHz and CD-quality in a sound studio. I don't know whether the operator screwed up or what. It doesn't mean I don't think CD quality is "good enough". But that's not the same question as "non-discernable". On the other end, I have had a few encounters with satellite radio (SiriusXM) and I cannot understand how that product exists. In each car I've encountered it, I've had a visceral reaction and wanted it turned off after a few minutes of trying to listen to it. It put me somewhere between anhedonia and dysphoria.
- MaxBarraclough 3y ago
  I'm not sure I get you. If someone can't tell the difference in a blind test, that means they can't tell the difference. The result of a non-blinded test is of no consequence.
  - c0pium 3y ago
    You said the same thing that I said but with more words. There are a ton of people in the audiophile world who swear that knowledge of what you’re listening to makes a physiological difference and therefore it’s not the placebo affect. It’s insane, but then so is most audiophile marketing.
    - soulofmischief 3y ago
      There is a clear distinction between audiophile snake oil, and detecting artifacts from a lossy compressed mp3. You shouldn't conflate that with things like telling the difference between a 44.1KHz and 96KHz sample rate, which is bollocks. That said, it's a good practice for any archivist to source the highest quality digital versions of albums possible, in case they end up befriending or needing to barter with aliens with much more sensitive ears.
pja 3y ago
Are we talking mp3 or other codecs here? mp3 has a a couple of encoding ”tells” that a trained listener can pick up on (although it gets increasingly hard to do so beyond 128kbit IIRC). Other codecs don’t even have those & at higher bitrates people can’t pick them out in blind listening tests.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
  Even 128kit from a modern encoder is harder to pick out than it was 25 years ago. Most of the self-appointed experts proclaiming how woefully inadequate MP3 is are basing their assessment on outdated experience from the distant past.
  - soulofmischief 3y ago
    You can literally point to artifacts in a spectrogram which exist within the range of human hearing with many lossy codecs. It doesn't even have to be subjective.
    - pja 3y ago
      Sure - these codecs lose information. The clue is in the name! The question is can you hear those differences, to which the answer is basically no, for a modern codec at high enough bitrate. "enough" is 128kbit or more in blind listening tests.
      - soulofmischief 3y ago
        The answer is not "basically no", and the qualifier of the initial argument was specifically 320kbps mp3. No one here is arguing that modern, high-bitrate codecs aren't much better at producing imperceptible artifacts. But 128kbps is absolutely not enough in blind listening tests, 128kpbs typically produces a ton of perceptible artifacts. You're just making that up.
        pja 3y ago

c0pium 3y ago

That is absolutely not true. People can be trained to hear that difference when the testing is not blinded, however in triangle tests that ability vanishes.

soulofmischief 3y ago
Maybe not anyone. I could be biased with sensitive hearing. I know that in grade school, part of the requirements for joining band, due to the size of my school and overwhelming demand, was passing an audiometry test, where we were evaluated on a few different contexts related to ability to discern detail in audio, such as pitch and volume. I remember being pulled away into the principal's office where some of the test administrators were present, and they accused me of cheating and demanded to know how I did it. Apparently, I was the only student in the entire state to get a perfect score on that test, at least for that particular year. Unsure if they were implying I was the first ever, but that seems ridiculous to me because passing the test boiled down to just paying close attention. So I really don't know. Maybe the average person can't hear it, but I know just what to look for in the high-end and usually guess even 320kbps mp3 correctly from my own self-tests wherein I would randomly select between different encodings of a music file. I'm confident I would do well in an administered ABX test if I'm simply being tasked with finding the difference between mp3 lossy encodings and a lossless reference.
- saltcured 3y ago
  I don't claim to have golden ears but I am a picky listener. I've been pretty satisfied with good MP3 encodings like 320kb/s though I'm not sure I'd agree they're indistinguishable. I had an experience I mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, about hearing a difference between 24bit 96 kHz and CD-quality in a sound studio. I don't know whether the operator screwed up or what. It doesn't mean I don't think CD quality is "good enough". But that's not the same question as "non-discernable". On the other end, I have had a few encounters with satellite radio (SiriusXM) and I cannot understand how that product exists. In each car I've encountered it, I've had a visceral reaction and wanted it turned off after a few minutes of trying to listen to it. It put me somewhere between anhedonia and dysphoria.
MaxBarraclough 3y ago
I'm not sure I get you. If someone can't tell the difference in a blind test, that means they can't tell the difference. The result of a non-blinded test is of no consequence.
- c0pium 3y ago
  You said the same thing that I said but with more words. There are a ton of people in the audiophile world who swear that knowledge of what you’re listening to makes a physiological difference and therefore it’s not the placebo affect. It’s insane, but then so is most audiophile marketing.
  - soulofmischief 3y ago
    There is a clear distinction between audiophile snake oil, and detecting artifacts from a lossy compressed mp3. You shouldn't conflate that with things like telling the difference between a 44.1KHz and 96KHz sample rate, which is bollocks. That said, it's a good practice for any archivist to source the highest quality digital versions of albums possible, in case they end up befriending or needing to barter with aliens with much more sensitive ears.

pja 3y ago

Are we talking mp3 or other codecs here? mp3 has a a couple of encoding ”tells” that a trained listener can pick up on (although it gets increasingly hard to do so beyond 128kbit IIRC). Other codecs don’t even have those & at higher bitrates people can’t pick them out in blind listening tests.

kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
Even 128kit from a modern encoder is harder to pick out than it was 25 years ago. Most of the self-appointed experts proclaiming how woefully inadequate MP3 is are basing their assessment on outdated experience from the distant past.
- soulofmischief 3y ago
  You can literally point to artifacts in a spectrogram which exist within the range of human hearing with many lossy codecs. It doesn't even have to be subjective.
  - pja 3y ago
    Sure - these codecs lose information. The clue is in the name! The question is can you hear those differences, to which the answer is basically no, for a modern codec at high enough bitrate. "enough" is 128kbit or more in blind listening tests.
    - soulofmischief 3y ago
      The answer is not "basically no", and the qualifier of the initial argument was specifically 320kbps mp3. No one here is arguing that modern, high-bitrate codecs aren't much better at producing imperceptible artifacts. But 128kbps is absolutely not enough in blind listening tests, 128kpbs typically produces a ton of perceptible artifacts. You're just making that up.
      - pja 3y ago