How do you differentiate the sound quality of the music on FLAC at approximately 155kbps from MP3 at 320kbps when listening to them on regular player?
@Hadron: Truth is, it's entirely subjective. What sounds good to you might not sound good to me, and vice versa.
Let's leave the subjective part out of it and go with sound quality when comparing the bitrates of the two audio files. I want your opinion on how to tell the FLAC 155kbps sounds better than MP3 320kbps in your ears for the same song. Let me quickly clarify one thing that we aren't talking about music taste as regarding how it would sound to a listener though.
@Hadron-Curious: I'm not talking about musical tastes. I'm talking about the logarithmic characteristics of the human ear and the subjective nature of music. Not everybody hears music the same.
In fact, I was saying that by just listening it's impossible for a normal listener to tell the difference, but I was just making wit. I even believe that most listeners can't tell the difference with lower MP3 bit rates, despite what they like to believe.
Perhaps, I still want a better understanding of the difference of sound qualities in real-life test. In this case it is the song being listened to by the same person in different formats. After trying out the two audio files(one in MP3 320kbps and the other in 155kbps FLAC) and now is to prove the FLAC sounds better than the MP3 at those two bitrates. How would the person tell the difference sound qualities to prove that one is better than the other in the ear? One person now telling the differences not different people.
I guess you mean the grounds, the people telling. The most people, they saying they can hear differences do not talking in logical/scientific way. It's like the magic in movies or mid-age or even the same for religion, actually. Some humans saying something is true because they believe its true, because they really want it to be true. Simple. They just saying "I can hear the difference" - They can't. Some other people telling the same points as for lower bitrates: The sound is more "clear", more details, more natural/real. In Fact, 99% of humans ears are not able to hear any differences. For 1% they can hear in some specific songs an abnormally in audio, any very rare acoustic high or low frequency that is cut by MP3-algorithm. It is a background noise or bug in record. Same as some animals flipping out by any specific wireless signal. Absolute nothing about any quality. I guess many people have just very low bitrated mp3s, for example in web you can find many 320kbps downloads and these are actually just 96 kbps (fakes, they created by editing). So they comparing FLAC (MP320 plus) with an MP3 96 kbps, and yea of-cause you can hear a difference then. For that there a many reasons I can tell on what you can take a look to hear a difference. For example - Compare the sound of something with a hand close to an ear. - Try to find out which specific instruments are used for a song. - Try to find out what some people whispering in an audio file. - In good quality you can hear many different ways of sounds: Highs, lows, clearness, deepness, all directions and very flexible. In classic music you have much of this flexibility, so there you can easy find the differences.
I was thinking of the analog of a famous painting, let's say by Rembrandt. It's worth many millions. People stand in front of it and comment in awe how bright the colors are, how masterful the handling of light, how enchanting the atmosphere created... Then it suddenly turns out that the painting is fake. People now will look the other way, disinterested and bored by it. Yet, it's exactly the same painting they were previously admiring and exalting. So, are they true art connoisseurs or just hypocritical snobs? I leave the answer to you.... Btw, what matters is whether YOU can hear a difference, not what others say.
According to me, I can't hear much difference between any of the above formats, and what little I do hear is not important to me. So MP3 at 192kbps is just fine.