Foo - 320kbps vs 128kbps

Can you tell the difference?

http://mp3ornot.com/

I got it wrong. Oh well.

When I rip music off of my CDs, I usually use 320 or 256 kbps. Obviously I can't tell the difference in quality, but I've got plenty of space left on my hard drive for big files.

With my soundcard i probably could...that is if i had quality speakers.

I'm far from an audiophile but from what the ones i know have told me, you can't tell the difference on your average MP3 player and certainly not on your average computer speakers. I have a 1000watt RMS logitech surround sound system. While it's loud, the sound quality isn't all that great...thus i'm perfectly content with 128kbs for now.

No I can't tell, i have never been able to tell. **** I can barely tell the difference between a good tape and a cd.

I got it right, but not because I really heard any difference; they both sounded like crap through my pretty good headphones. I think the test was rigged in the sense that they chose a clip that minimized any differences that could be noticed (e.g., choice of instrumentation used in the clip), in order to prove their point. Since they expect you to not notice any difference, I made my choice based on what I think they expect you to click on (based on its ID and physical placement in the test). I then chose the opposite and I was right.

I believe the quality of encoding at a given bit rate can vary as well, so your own experiments in encoding may differ. <= Someone correct me if I'm wrong here.

I use LAME and alt-preset-standard, which is variable bitrate encoding.

As for a clip, a better gauge are clips that use synths for sound and a number of cymbal claps, because the audio range of cymbals are one of the instruments that most lossy compression algorithms distort.

I got it right! I guessed though as I couldn't tell.

I can tell the difference between 192 vs.128 with better quality headphones.

I got it right. I also am using in ear studio monitors and a 24-bit soundcard. The first one sounded a lot more full and you could hear it in the low end of the instruments. It was more crisp and full. BTW, they used a track that didn't have huge changes in dynamic range, so it was harder to tell the difference. In many cases, I can hear the difference between my 256 V0 rips and my FLAC lossless rips. A good example: listen to the entire 1812 Overture in lossy vs lossless with good speakers.

I got it right. Not a huge difference in that clip, but enough that I could tell which was which using the sound chip built into the motherboard and some $99 Sennheisers.

I rip at 192k right now, just to maximize the amount of music I can fit on an 8GB MP3 player, without it sounding awful. With hard drive space practically free nowadays, I'll probably eventually build up a system to hook to the stereo, and fill it with FLAC files.

I rip all my music in Flac. Not that I can tell the difference between flac and high bitrate mp3, because I can't. It comes down to psychology, I like to know that I have a perfect, unabridged copy of the original piece. It's basically a CD backup. With store so cheap, I see no reason not to.
I got it right with my decent headphones and what I would consider an above average sound card.

Not that I can tell the difference between flac and high bitrate mp3, because I can't. It comes down to psychology, I like to know that I have a perfect, unabridged copy of the original piece.Agreed. I don't consider myself an audiophile, nor do I have the Golden Ear®, and I'm pretty certain I couldn't tell a 320kbps MP3 from a FLAC file, but it's nice to know that it's all there. It doesn't cost any different ($0), so why not?

I can tell the difference between 192 and 128 pretty easily on my iriver with akg phones.

On my Samsung with earbuds, no difference.