Can you tell differences in file compression?

I'm old school and like having hard copies of all my music. And, since hard drive space is so cheap these days, I don't see any reason not to run Flac on my PCs. Whether I can tell a difference or not, lossless brings me peace of mind and doesn't really hurt me in any way or have obvious disadvantages.

On the go, it's VBR mp3s, and it works perfectly fine.

 

I thought it was a fun test, and if anything, it goes to show how close to the original mp3 can sound. The differences that are there, I tend to notice better with prolonged listening to music I'm familiar with, rather than with straight up A/B tests. But I definitely don't think lossless is a requirement for the hobby. Just one more incremental improvement among so many others - and not the most important one either (at least not for my ears and equipment at this stage). Thanks for sharing this...

 

2/6 so no better than guessing. I was at work and I wasn't concentrating particularly hard, but I don't know if I would have done better had I been at home and really focused.

Some people are really good at hearing compression artifacts so I'm not surprised a few people here did very well.

 

Any compression algorithm these days is a far cry from the late 90's early 2000's era. Back then, a "good" 128 could sound better than a 320 with crapola compression.