Bud,

That was a really interesting exercise!

It turns out that, for the most part, I can't hear the difference between a 320 kbps mp3 and a wav. When I listened to the samples, the best that I could do was to narrow it down to the two best sounding ones. Then I couldn't choose between those two. The final decision was nothing more than a coin toss. Interestingly, out of the 6 times, I only chose wav once and the rest were 320 kbps mp3s.

That doesn't surprise me because I already know that I can't hear too much above around 13,000 Hz. I also know that one of the ways to increase overall mp3 quality is to filter out the high frequencies so that data bits are not needlessly used up in recording information that many people won't even hear. If my understanding is correct, this would mean that a 320 kbps mp3 that has been set to compress only those frequencies less than (say) 15,000Hz will probably sound the same to me as a wav since the bits of data in the mp3 have been used to maximise storing my 'listenable' frequencies of music.

Thanks for sharing the link.
Noel


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