5 comments

[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 27.0 ms ] thread
tl;dr - 128kbps CBR audio has such bad quality nobody should use it, but all options of higher quality are indistinguishably different to the masses.
Why didn't he randomize which order the samples appeared in?
"I think it's clear from the basic summary statistics graph that only one audio sample here was discernably different than the rest – the 128kbps CBR".

Well, no, it isn't clear to me, at least not with the data in an un-sorted table. But visually, yes, it is clear: http://i.imgur.com/08s2S.png

It's been a number of years since I compared, but I ended up doing rips at 320 VBR (or CBR -- I'm forgetting, at the moment) with the setting that allows bandwidth to fluctuate to whichever of the stereo channels momentarily has a greater, calculated need ("stereo" or "joint stereo").

Yes, the difference was noticeable, on a well-regarded iAudio player using decent can headphones. At 320, I was finally, really happy with the resulting rips. Though I'd still archive in a lossless format.