If you are refuting something your own experience didn't hold true, you're literally diregarding yourself and what you heard yourself. If you, as an average user will hear the difference, then why would you assume other average users wouldn't.

I test things with a sample of around 35 people before making a "most people" argument, and the rate of success of a test must be over 70% , and usually 80%. For Mp3 vs flac, the rate with which they could tell the differences and which was superior was 75% with metal, 50% with classical (no bias, they couldn't really do it), and around 65% with pop, the Mp3 compresion algorithm clearly has a bias towards making changes that are not audible with classical but can show in highly dynamically compressed music such as rock or pop. The test we did was with Mp3 320CBR vs flac, and it was done using both speakers and headphones, both of which setups were midrange to get what a true average user would be like. The people were mostly young listeners, under 35.

Ogg at lvl q-10 is truly audibly transparent, no user including me can't tell OGG Q10 vs lossless apart, regardless of the music style.

I am not saying there is no lossy audibly transparent codec, but I know from experiment that Mp3 especially at 256 vbr is not audibly transparent if straining music is used, like dynamically compressed metal music. I think that if I mainly listened to jazz or classical, I probably could not tell them apart well, mp3 256 vs flac, even in my tests most users can't. But with rock and metal, they can, there's a strong bias towards those musisc styles in my articles too, since that's what composes most of my test playlist.

For the sake of experiments, try to experiment before leaning too much on other's statements.

u/blorg - This is exactly how I documented it too, and rings true with my findings. Two Android phones can show significant differences between how they handle AAC and the same for iPhone vs Android. iPhone always has superior AAC encoding regardless of the test.

I also agree that the high cutoff won't always matter as it is likely that most people can't hear above 18kHz or even 17kHz, but it shows the difference, and if you place them side by side you can hear some differences, it is not just the high end cutoff that's different.

Well, if you feel this way, you can enjoy MP3s the way you want, same for AAC or SBC codecs. At this point this argument is useless, most of the world is slowly adopting streaming, so a flac vs Mp3 is a useless discussion for any practical outcome.

As for Bluetooth, buy an android phone with multiple codecs, a headphone that supports a many of them and test, then you will know if there are differences.

My take on audio is to have subjective impressions with everything, because I fear that if something should be good, but in practice isn't, then I should call it out. For example, I had the poor experience of not liking some of the high-end audiophile software, and I prefer Foobar2000 over most other programs for listening music, not because it sounds better, but i tend to find the others cumbersome. As for Bluetooth, I think that there's a HUGE difference between what can sound best, and what will sound best in most average situations, like in an airport or a gym, where network congestion plays a huge role, which is why I tried to also include how it sounds to the ear, in real life scenarios, not just in theory.

Good point, will update the article to include that bit of information

aptX HD is theoretically the best sounding to date, while being the most stable. The idea that LDAC sounds better applies only when there is no network congestion.

LHDC can be a bit superior but it is not widely supported at the moment.

Yes, I also review cables. And as for Mp3, if you feel it is the same and if your ears tlel you that they sound the same, better for you, you can save some money.

AAC codec and AAC bluetooth are two separate things from what I can gather. In fact, AAC bluetooth sound is extremely different between iPhones and Android phones, as I pointed out there.

The sonic is based on double blind testing, but it is tightly connected to the available bandwidth, and this is because Bluetooth compression is something that has to happen real time and has to be a low power process, the nature of how it is designed means that it is less efficient than MP3 and AAC file encoding. We also have to take into account that the files are most likely already lossy in nature, so the quality of anything transmitted over Bluetooth is always lower than what was stored in the computer.

>ransient reproduction, while having a curve that facilitates mixes that will translate well. In other words, something that doesn't have exaggerated highs and lows, because then my mixes will be too flat. I was hoping these might be something to explore to this end, but it seems they're not re

WEll, those ones would theoretically have what you need, but the midrnage is somewhat thicker than what I consider perfectly neutral / spot on tonally, that may be visible in your mixes, which may end up sounding thinner, for you trying to get a perfectly balanced mix.

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S5X has perfectly fine treble and bass, like really nice, but that extra bit of thickness is audible. It is not like beats, or other commercial headphones bad, but it exists.

Hope it will be a lot of fun! I also should get a balanced cable, most dongles are made to sound better over balanced, guess they managed to convice us to join the new standard

Ah, gotcha, so instead of flat, it is actually rolled off by 4-5 dB

I plan on including some measurements in the future, but currently I'm learning on how to measure, to not make worse articles with measurements if those would be done imporperly.

Equipment that measures distortion and aspects like the slew rate of the amplifier can be rather complicated to use and pricey, and I do focus on the subjective part of audio, not because I have special ears, but because I ought to have average and similar hearing to most people so I can talk about most peole would hear as well.

Yes, that's a bit of a problem with it, I agree.

Yes, I figured it in the meanwhile, you can enable a system wide EQ on windows, with Peace and EQAPO. I disabled copying from the website because bots would steal content.

Yes, that can be a bit annoying, you can check out iBasso DC03PRO for a dongle with no cables attached

But they sell mostly hamborgars - so they are a fast food restaurant. Same for Moondrop, they sell mostly Chifi entry-level products, so they're mostly an entry-level focused company who makes one or two pricier products, which is why I'd say they're moslty an entry-level focused company.

I even reviewed an IEM , the Illumination that's pretty high-end, but I personally cvonsider it to be an entry-level company, because that's where they sell the most