This appears to be visual comparisons of graphs of various automated measurements. Lossy codecs are designed to exploit weaknesses of human hearing, so the only

This appears to be visual comparisons of graphs of various automated measurements. Lossy codecs are designed to exploit weaknesses of human hearing, so the only way to test if they're working as intended is with listening tests. This is most conveniently done with ABX testing software. If that high frequency roll off is really noticeable you should be able to produce a statistically significant result. Here's an online ABX test of 320kbps MP3 using a modern encoder: http://abx.digitalfeed.net/lame.320.html http://abx.digitalfeed.net/lame.320.html Very few people are capable of hearing the difference, and even then only in difficult-to-encode samples. I don't think it's reasonable to call something of this quality "crap".