Quote:
Originally Posted by Mperial
You would be surprised how difficult it is for human ears (trained even) to identify the difference on anything but a very expensive system in the most optimal of listening conditions.
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I totally agree that a car stereo system is not the place to listen to hi-fidelity music. Also most listeners won't really bother about true fidelity and may have a hard time discering music encoded in a lossy or a non-lossy way. Also, the kind of music being played will have a big role as one will have a hard time telling the difference with pop/rock music. But that is besides the point. Personally, I store my music especially the classical ones in my iPhone/iPod in ALAC so I can carry it with me and play it in my hi-fidelity system or at my friends and now in my M5 with the B&O system.
And to answer whether or not I can tell if the music is saved as an ALAC or a 320Kbps mp3 when played on my M5 sound system, the answer is a definite yes. I had anticipated this in preparation for the European Delivery and recorded in ALAC and 360Kbps MP3 Dmitri Shostakovitch's Symphony No. 1. I had an assistant randomly choose what to play without my knowledge and I was able to tell which one was recorded in ALAC 100% of the time. When I did the the test the other way, wherein I did the random choosing, my assistant was only able to tell 40% of the time which was within the realm of probability/guessing. BTW, my assistant is more into pop/rock music rather than classical.