[ColdStream]

I once did a blind test on myself. A FLAC audio file and a 128Kbit Ogg vorbis file of the same track that I could switch between as I pleased but without knowing which was playing. Yeah, I cannot tell the difference.

I am absolutely sure others can, but not me. I also think credit goes to far better encoders today than what we had 25 years ago.

[bluescrn]

Hearing also degrades over time. In my 20s I was a lot more fussy about audio formats and hi-fi gear.

Approaching 50, with less sensitive ears and a bit of tinnitus, I’m happy with the convenience of Bluetooth headphones and whatever format Spotify uses.

[seba_dos1]

Opus - perhaps, but claiming that 128kbps Vorbis is transparent would be rather stretching it (unless it's a mono stream); though how easily it will be detectable depends on the kind of music used to test it. However, if you added, say, Bluetooth A2DP to the mix and made it go through a lossy encoder again the difference should be pretty obvious to anyone with good ears.

[MSFT_Edging]

I did this with a japanese punk band and when I finally got on a private tracker, I redownloaded them and the quality difference was night and day. I have a huge backlog of mid-grade MP3s from TPB back in the day and I'll occasionally download a second flac version of the albums just to get the dynamic range.

[Semaphor]

A lot of old stuff was also encoded way worse than one might think from the alleged bitrate. A while ago I went through a ton of old files, and everything that sounded shitty (or, far more commonly, stuff I downloaded but didn’t care about) got yeeted.

[t-3]

I can't tell the difference with most headphones, but with monitors or a good system in a good listening environment there are some details that get lost in compression, but there's essentially 0 difference from losslezd if I rip a CD to opus or mp3 rather than from a stream.

[BoingBoomTschak]

Properly encoded Vorbis, Opus or AAC (even Musepack) certainly reach transparency very quick, but who knows what horrible sources were used on non-official YT music? And what dismal remasters?

[archagon]

Yeah, but people aren’t uploading high quality music to begin with. It’s probably like two or three levels of compressed by the time you yt-dlp it.

[gfody]

crappy speakers?

[d3rockk]

I was about to say the same thing..

I use a dual A7X setup with a Sub10 Mk2 in a proper studio listening environment, and I can easily hear the difference between a low‑quality MP3 and a fully lossless WAV/FLAC. I do have trained ears, but even an untrained listener could probably notice that level of difference.

[BoingBoomTschak]

Define low-quality. Encoded at V[0-2] with a recent LAME, I doubt the difference is more than ABX nitpick material; and that despite MP3's inherent limitations (like https://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME_Y_switch...).

I use a pair of calibrated Genelec 8341 btw.