Who can hear the difference?

[BobRogers]

Not the most scientific tests, but interesting.

Interesting bit: “There was no convincing evidence that those subjects who consider themselves audiophiles and have invested more in high-quality MP3 players or headphones could discern lossy from lossless audio files better than anyone else. What they could do, however, was give you more convincing arguments as to why one version sounded better than the other. In effect, they had better tools with which to convince themselves that their subjective impressions were correct, even when those impressions were entirely misleading.”

Also: “The only person to get all four tracks right is someone who listens to their headphones at pitifully low volumes and hasn’t attended any rock concerts. We can think of two explanations. One, the subject has particularly sensitive ears, so doesn’t need to turn the volume up high. Two, the subject hasn’t wrecked their hearing through years of listening to a walkman/MP3 player at high volumes and/or seeing Motorhead at the Hammersmith Odeon. Arguably, both apply.”

[Link555]

Interesting.... years ago we did a similar test (equally as un-scientific) with MP3 192k and WAV files and a pair Mackie HR824's. We did it blind, of the four people in the room no one picked the mP3 as sounding better.

But that was then (10 years ago or so...)

[Codemonkey]

Hey, that person with quiet headphones and no rock concerts sounds like me!

Got my headphones on 0% according to Windows' sound mixer.
(In Win7, 0 still passes sound. Just not much)