Test your system (and your room) with this audio quality quiz, comparing lossless audio with several compressed bit rate streams [1]. With my 50-year old ears, and an outboard DAC/amp and audiophile magnetic planar headphones, I could only score 50%.
That said, switching between Spotify and Tidal on the same track, I hear a pretty big difference. The lossless music has a depth that just isn't there on the compressed streams
I think some of it is whether you're used to listening to the type of music. All those samples are types of music I don't normally listen to and thus scored 0%. They're also mostly low-information songs that are vocal-heavy. Vocal-heavy music is very easy to compress compared to say something like electronic or EDM type music which will easily create distortion with lower bitrates.
I got 4 / 6 with some old Apple EarPods plugged into my laptop. I think it was probably just luck, because I picked the 128kbps MP3 for both of the ones that I got wrong.
It's fun to think that I might be able to distinguish between uncompressed audio and 320kbps MP3. I didn't think it was possible. I had a hearing test recently, and they did say that I have better than average hearing. But yeah it was probably just random.
Whoa I just put on a nicer pair of headphones (Plantronics BackBeat Pro), and I think I might be able to tell the difference between uncompressed audio and 320kbps MP3.
The third one was really tricky so I had to guess. But the first two were a really clear difference. Uncompressed kind of sounds "fuller" and sharper, and MP3 is a bit flatter. It's a tiny difference but I think I can hear it.
I got 2/6 right, the 4 wrong were 320kbps. Using the cheap-but-decent shp9500s and no dac, but quite good hearing. I'd chalk it up to having been listening to almost exclusively streamed 320kbps, it was interesting to note that the 4 I got wrong were because I discarded the more 'neutral' toned one which was actually lossless.
The 128kbps was of course very easy to pick out.
I'm of the opinion that 320 vs lossless is meaningless enough to not really bother, but I know for some tracks it was trivial for me to tell the different. Mostly it was the very complex/atmospheric tracks, Mind In A Box being a good example, where 320 lost a notable amount of quality. Probably others like Ne Obliviscaris as well.
The biggest problem with Spotify is that not all of their library is available at 320kbps.
I got 3/6 right using the iPhone XR built-in speakers (other three were 320k). I then tried it again with someone else clicking the buttons (in case they weren’t randomized order) using my DAC/amp and headphones and got 5/6.
The thing that gives it away for me is the extreme highs and lows, both are clipped when compressed usually. I should note, I wasn’t picking which “sounded better”, but rather which “sounded uncompressed”. Several of the tracks sounded better at 320k than they did uncompressed to me. Despite being rather close to 40, I am still able to easily hear sounds well over 20kHz.
What I will say about lossy MP3 audio is that in a blind ABX style test, I imagine I would not be able to point out which is which if the bitrate is high enough. However, if you play the lossy audio and lossless audio back to back in a good critical listening environment, there will often be small detectable differences between the two.
The difference is usually very, very subtle (my description for it is "soundstage differences", like slight differences in audio imaging) and if you are in the situation you are 99% of the time where you are not in a critical listening environment, you probably won't be able to even hear this. But if you are absolutely gung-ho about preserving the full spectrum of the recording, MP3 won't work. It's not an archival format by design.
Ha, loser! My cables were made in the same places that they make the best cuban cigars, naked beautiful people of the appropriate genders make the best cigars and the best cables. My ethernet cable is sex on wheels.
FLAC is best for archiving songs. MP3 is outdated tech and if I wanted lossy audio I would use opus but transcoding MP3 to opus will destroy the quality of the track so you have to go FLAC -> opus
At least with 320mp3s I could only get it right with certain songs and not too consistently. I'd say my room treatment has a far bigger impact.
(but regarding hardware I'm totally with you and haven't found the source of my rather high noise floor either)