Thread: Can you hear the difference between lossy and lossless?

Hello, guys! I'm pretty curious about that question. A lot of people claims that they are audiophiles and easily here the difference between lossy mp3 ... original audio CD ... & Vinyl...

But maybe our ears just play tricks on us?:001_tongue: a self-suggestion...





Of course I can speak only for myself... I'm not an audiophile and I'm not that crazy to spend $$$ for buying Stax Sr-007 MK2 (say wassup to all electrostatic headphone lovers), just a music lover who wants to buy a good pair of headphones and stay happy with them...hehe, but anyways...

I have lossy and lossless music on my HDD... Even with my old and cheap audio system I can hear the difference between Mp3 V2 and FLAC/APE/WV or Vinyl... but NOT EVERY (well, pretty far from "every" in that case) song of course... still depends on a source and the equipment I use...

Who played with audio WinABX software and passed the test with 13-16 right answers? WEll, guess not me cuz I was to lazy to do this and finished the test after 2 sucessfull answers.


So, please - tell what you think and what your ears feel/hear.


Answer honestly;]


I didn't see anyone posted similar topic, so if I doubled it my bad...

I can hear the difference in anything lower than 192kbps compared to FLAC, WAV, APE etc. I can also hear the difference from V0 & V2. Alot of times it's in the audio level but you can manually normalize that. If you have access to a high end audio setup you can hear it as you crank it up.

I can hear the diference between MP3 and FLAC, thanks to my great sound system, but i can't tell the diference between a CD and a vinyl.

The Lossless - lossy diference is better perceived when the music has many diferent instruments and a big spectrum range, but again only a good sound system to allow it.
I mainly download FLAC for the quality and storage reasons, but, well, a 320 MP3 isn't too bad.

I can't hear the difference cause I don't have a nice sound system but I keep flac, ape and wavpack of my music for archival purposes. I might buy a real nice sound system in the future so lossless is a must.

It really does depend on the system you have setup. If you are using garbage speakers, everything is going to sound the same. Once you get some higher end stuff though, you do start to notice the difference.

but i can't tell the diference between a CD and a vinyl

hmm, heard about that on different audio forums...
but what I'm thinkin'

Original CD > sample: 44.100 Khz converted with EAC let's say into Flac ~`800 Bit Rate (without resample)

a new vinyl we just ordered from Ebay: sample 96.00 khz into Flac ~ 3000 Bit Rate (withou resample)

So 44.1 khz 800 Kbits Flac vs. 96 khz ~3000 kbits Flac and with some clicks of course (i luv them when vinyl plays > < )

I guess still it's possible to hear the difference, but I wonder, if anyone noticed the difference between 44.1 khz and 48 khz + (the same bitrate)...


Well we have a freedom of choice from different audio formats and PC hardware becoming cheaper and cheaper everyday .... Remember how much US $ costed 1 TB HDD
2-3 years ago?

So the size is not a problem... Mp3 is very spread, but let's see what happens in 10 years .)

big time, you need to have a good set of headphones with a low-high frequency range. most that you will buy will be like 21hz-21kz a good pair will be 10hz-21khz ish, you will hear things you have never heard before once you get a nice set. buying an expensive set of headphones and an amp would be ideal... but who has money for that right?

yes but still there are sounds we don't hear but only feel + and according to medical tests people hear high frequencies at max 16Khz (that's something a Dr. said when I was lying in a hospitale), but there are exceptions of course.

But I'm completly agree what y said , xdiabolix, [buying an expensive set of headphones and an amp would be ideal] for sure!

Playing on my home theater setup on low volumes, no.
Playing on my home theater setup on medium to high volumes, yes.
Playing on my Sennheiser HD595s, absolutely.