[macalicious]

Besides having a lossless compressed audio file, I often wonder, if one can actually hear the difference between a well compressed mp3 (say, converted from a flac) and the actual original flac? Is there a real benefit for the average consumer? The problem I see is the quite large file size.

[throwaway2048]

FLAC is intended for music archival storage, so its not really about perceptual loses, but preventing things like generational loss if you are using music for stuff like mixing/re-encoding etc.

[jlarocco]

Even if I could hear a difference, I'm certain it would be drowned out in "real life" situations where I'm listening to music.

Riding my bike or walking down the street, I'm not going to notice tiny artifacts in an mp3...

[mitchi]

I have invested a lot of money into good headphones and good speakers and I can't tell the difference between good lame mp3s and flac...

[pja]

Blind test? HydrogenAudio forums will tell you that if it's not a blind A/B test you can fool yourself very easily.

You might also like to try AAC (or ogg) at a similar bitrate: MP3 has a couple of encoding peculiarities that are an unavoidable function of the format & if you know what to listen out for they're fairly obvious even at higher bitrates. (I'd still be surprised if you could tell the difference between flac and 320kps mp3 in a blind test though.)

[macalicious]

I think you misread "can't" and "can".

[pja]

oops: Mea culpa.