At that quality of MP3 you'd really need either a track that specifically pushes the limits of the codec on technicalities, or a one in a million hearing + high precision monitors.

Albeit FLAC is generally a better option still because it compresses things losslessly, reducing raw file size 50-70% (comparable to MP3 at 128kbps bitrate) and is a royalty-free, meaning it can be freely implemented as a hardware codec.

For example, a bunch of microcontrollers in the ESP32 family have built in FLAC codecs that outperform their MP3 counterparts, meaning a FLAC library can be directly streamed to them, and with the right DAC combo, one can build inexpensive, low power adapters to hook their existing AV systems up to Sonos-style streaming. And with many AV systems supporting bidirectional RS232 (or other serial) communications for controlling the system and querying it's state, you can literally smartify them completely AND provide high quality audio streams to them.

I did a blind test, and found it depends on the genre.

Slow, chill music is completely transparent when compressed, no matter how hard I “audio peep.” It’s not even a question.

But something “dense” like System of a Down has audible distortion. It loosely (not always) coincided with the bitrate of the flac files, which kind of makes sense, though even the extreme end is hard to notice unless you know the particular song very well.

Also… a lot of recordings kind of suck. It’s crazy to worry about tiny bits of distortion when a bit perfect master is already noisy and distorted.

Most people can’t tell the difference between a 320kbps mp3 and lossless

I'd be surprised if anyone could.

However, 128kbps vs. 192kpbs+ is like night and day, and it's especially obvious with better equipment.

People who say 128kbps mp3 is fine, are full of shit. I've been to weddings where it's been so obvious that whoever's in charge of the music is just blasting 128kpbs mp3s and it's brutal.

The funny thing is that the people who can afford all that overpriced garbage are usually so old, they can't hear all that well anymore.

I found I can detect VBR but yeah at that bitrate I really can't tell the difference between 320 and flac, always thought it was just my ears!

Hell, I can't even tell the difference between 128kbps and flac. Realizing that saved me a whole lot of hard drive space :D

Most people don't have proper home stereo setups any more either, and they prefer shitty overcompressed music through earbuds. They don't know any better, sadly.

And Ive probably spent less than 400 dollars on my home setup. But it blows away anyone who hears it. Just takes some smarts in setting stuff up and getting good used equipment.

Just another part of the cheapening of everything in society , and why music isn't appreciated as much anymore. No wonder everyone has depression.

Reminds me of the lengths people go with their peripheral purchases to save 1-2ms of input latency for playing games with like a 20 TPS tick rate on a wifi connection

Depends on the song really, if it's just a standard pop song it's mixing will usually come through just fine on a shitty MP3. The more layers a song may have the muddier it gets at lower bit rates. Like I've found the noisier spectrum of punk always benefits from higher bit rates.

I noticed something similar with video. Like, if I am paying attention, the difference between the highest quality encoding and the next level is usually visible.

However, I have a harder time telling the difference if I don't do a side by side comparison.

And even when I can easily tell the difference, once I'm watching the thing, I get into the story and I don't care anyways.

Obviously a slightly different criteria compared to music, but people do make a big deal out of stuff that even they don't actually care about.

I downloaded the same track from soundcloud at 320kbps mp3 and bandcamp FLAC and played them at the same time in the VDJ changing from one song to the other and couldn't feel any difference (the graphic Soundwave was also exactly the same). I had not tried it in actual club environment, but when the mp3 is really compressed it shows visually on the Soundwave

I kinda want to start a snake oil audio cable company. It's gotta be one of the easiest paths to retirement

Yep, and an especially fun fact is that people with high-end equipment prefer MP3 over lossless.

I recently switched from 320kbps to lossless, and there are very few moments where I can tell a difference. The biggest one is in the cover of "Tom's Diner" by AnnenMayKantereit. There's a section of the song at 320kbps where it goes almost silent, other than faint whispers of the band counting out the silence, but in lossless you can hear them actually singing the song quietly