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Can you tell the difference between 96/24 and 44/16 and mp3?

It depends on the music. I've done many tests downsamplng from dxd to 96 and 44 and sometimes I can pick them out with high accuracy. I can almost always pretty much instantly spot various mp3 codecs, but that's because I've learned to spot the differences between mp3 and full pcm. When you know the 'tell's on mp3coding its remarkably easy to do.
 
guest said:
24 and 16 bits FLACs, no can tell. Ditto same files with varying degrees of FLAC compression.

MP3 and 4s @320 compared to above, yes can tell the lossy algorithms at work.
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I can only tell the difference between MP3-320 and the inferior MP3 with lower bit rates, rather easily. Between MP3-320 and FLAC, I can still tell the difference but the quality between the 2 formats is closer, more difficult to tell them apart. The prominent difference is in bass quality. With the higher bitrate/larger size of FLAC, the bass quality is more developed, slightly more nuanced and tuneful. With MP3-320, the bass is slightly less developed and textured with reduced layering and detail. The difference is more pronounced with high quality music ie. instrumental jazz fusion, acoustic etc., less apparent with rock music.
 
There’s a big difference in my system between playing flac and wav of the same recording.

On the fly decoding of the flac really messes up the rhythm compared with playing the straight wav.

quality of mastering/conversion generally makes more difference than high bit depth/rate.
 
Darth Vader said:
This site gives people the chance to try the different formats for themselves. However there is another variable - the kit used to play this stuff. It may well be that top end kit gives a different order than something a little more affordable. So as ever I don't expect a black/white answer.
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FWIW I'd also personally consider using a method of:

1) Start with a 96k/24 version.

2) Use 'sox' to generate a 'lower res' version.

3) Use 'sox' again to get a 96k/24 version of the output from (2).

Then compare (1) with (3). This ensures your playback system is treating both versions as 96k/24. If you can hear a difference, also examine in detail what *subtracting* (3) from (1) gives you.
 
I agonised over this a few years ago, and did some blind testing on my wife, who could identify differences between the original 24/96 recordings, a 16/44 downsample, and a 128k MP3 quite reliably (though not between Flac and WAV), and rock and classical about the same. When she did the same tests on me, I could reliably pick out the MP3, but 24/96 vs 16/44 was better than 50:50, but not much.

One thing we did discover is what we called the talk-over test. We found that if we played music over dinner at full resolution through our pretty decent kitchen system, we would tend to listen to the music, but if we played the same music as MP3 we carried on with our conversation. Tried it out on friends (without their knowledge) and it seemed to work on them too, so at one stage we kept MP3 playlists for dinner parties.

However, the differences are quite subtle, and much smaller than the huge differences in recording quality we notice especially though our main system. Had a whole evening recently where I was convinced there was something wrong with our system, then suddenly a track came up on Radio Paradise (Flac) that showed that the others were just poorly recorded, or encoded, or something.
There are so many other variables that drawing conclusions that have any validity is almost impossible, so we just don't worry and enjoy the music. I do buy the occasional 24/96 recording, but most of our listening is via Tidal limited to 16/44, and we don't lose any sleep over the bit rate.
 
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