Audio Blind Testing

[Sonicularity]

Live music is rarely superior to recorded music captured in a studio, in my opinion.  Unless you have the perfect seat at some acoustic music venue that has exquisite room treatment and a super quiet audience, not sure why anyone would strive to recreate a live experience.  

[Sonicularity]

A good recording converted to a high bitrate lossy compression file played over most modern DACs with just about any ordinary amp that can handle the peaks and does not clip will sound identical to almost everyone on this planet with nearly every transducer available.  Math, a rudimentary understanding of a human's physiological and psychological aspects of hearing, and the technical specifications of the hardware used to play sound have confirmed all of this to be a generally acceptable fact to most sane individuals.

[Sonicularity]

Google streams mp3 at 320 kbps CBR encoded using Lame 3.98.2 and I doubt many here could identify a difference between that and any other higher bitrate lossless or HiRes version on any equipment with practically every song.  With most of the music it is technically ridiculous to even attempt such a feat, as there is not any reason why the mp3 version would not be absolutely transparent from the lossless version.  There are some tricky songs to encode given the format's limitations, but the instances where a difference might be identified are amazingly small and mostly go unnoticed.   Where is the evidence to show otherwise?  I've been looking and still haven't found any.   Bob Stuart even found that mp3 is preferred over HiRes when he submitted his meta-analysis marketing paper.  With training even...training on something.

[Sonicularity]

50 minutes ago, davide256 said:

When you hear more detail/tone color structure than could be heard before. Of course most of us weren't in the room for a recording, so we don't know what the actual limits were... all we can do is keep trying to improve with A/B comparisons using familiar music to test tweaks and new gear. It's actually very important to listen to good gear you can't afford, that will help you to remember what is possible when choosing within your price range. Our memory "notes" are  a key part of being a competent audiophile

 

Ignoring the issue with regards to the limitations of the microphones and the equipment used to record the sounds, it appears that you are essentially outlining a plan where people should make sighted A/B comparisons based on price, information from advertisements, and anecdotal reviews heavily influenced by bias?

 

Why not just sort the list of products by price and choose the most expensive product that someone can afford?  

[Sonicularity]

I think a better way to think about transparency is using a scale of quality from 0 to infinity, where a human's perception of audio transparency can fall no higher than 80 on this hypothetical meter, and we are discussing equipment that measures between 100 and 1000 on the scale. 

 

You can't get more invisible with regards to a human's visual perception.  We can't see mid infrared (MIR) with our eyes, it is invisible to us.  Far infrared (FIR) is even lower in frequency, and we can't see that either.  From a visual perspective, MIR and FIR are the same and offer no identifiable difference  between each other as far a being more transparent to us.

[Sonicularity]

29 minutes ago, davide256 said:

If one is visually influenced then one is either a novice or judgement challenged. All visuals mean to me is (a) will it fit in my space (b) is it so ugly I can't stand to be in the room with it.

It seems you believe ego purchasing logic = audiophile purchasing logic .

 

Visually influenced to me means that the listener is making no attempt to isolate their hearing and are forming an assessment about audible differences that are wholly unreliable.