From: Michael DiFebbo <medifebbo_at_rcn.com>
Date: Sat, 06 Jan 2007 10:38:30 -0500

Jankov Max wrote:

> There was once survey in a music-related livejournal
community with
> three wav files, one of them was direct cd-rip, another
was ripped in
> 320 Kbps, and the other - in 192 (two last then were
converted back to
> wav). To my surprise, most part of the users (which were
quite a
> professional music listeners) guessed right. So, at least
there a men
> that can hear the difference.

There have been plenty of double-blind studies done at
Hydrogen Audio that show that recent versions of LAME can
achieve perceptual transparency (i.e., the inability of most
listeners to distinguish the MP3 from the original .wav) at
around the -V5 setting, which is a VBR setting that averages
about 130kbps.

Foorbar2000 has built ABX comparison functionality that
allows you to easily conduct your own double-blind tests.
Try it. Rip a .wav to MP3 using LAME 3.97 and compare it in
Foobar2000. You'd be surprised at how difficult it is to
distinguish the MP3 from the original.
Received on 2007-01-06