Does it matter? Why is the anti-lossless crowd even louder than the lossless? What is it to you exactly? If people would rather pay $20 for lossless, vs $20 for not lossless, what is the issue? Sounds like you're getting more for your money in the former. While standard music CD's may be less noticeable, I can absolutely tell TrueHD / DTS Master Audio vs their earlier lossy counterparts on movie soundtracks. Of course this comes down largely to whatever you're playing it on, and most people really don't give a shit about sound to even invest in it. Personally, I think sound is 90% of the movie. Your super ultra turbo street fighter edition 8K tv doesn't make as much of an impact to me.

> If people would rather pay $20 for lossless, vs $20 for not lossless, what is the issue?

This is remarkably similar to the argument people make when backed into the corner for pseudoscientific health claims.

> pseudoscientific health claims

Such as the long-term benefits of anti-depressants? (What is and isn't pseudo-science depends on who you trust)

I can't hear the difference between a CD and a phonograph.

I can definitely hear the difference between an iTunes stream and a CD (maybe not in a car though).

Out of curiosity, what components are in your system that brought you to that conclusion? Hopefully you're not just restating something you read on someone's blog.

Well I can...but how can I prove that to you?

I think you'd have to be able to consistently pass tests along these lines - https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/...

Where's the evidence that they didn't cherry-pick examples that are intentionally hard to tell apart? It's also dishonest for them not to emphasize how important speakers/amps/etc matter in the test. Of course someone with Apple earbuds or "Beats by Dre" won't be able to tell the difference.

I didn't mean to suggest that the npr article presented _the_ authoritative objective test on the topic. I was only attempting to answer the original question of "how to prove it" - in that - I think its possible to construct such a test.

I've successfully ABXed a 320kbps mp3 (that I encoded myself with LAME) vs its original wav file, got it right 20 times in a row.

Although this was a specific audio file I downloaded that was a known pathological case for mp3.

That's probably why GP said "modern codecs", since MP3 has specific known flaws

I know 100% that you're wrong, but I don't blame you for making that statement.

The problem with "can't hear the difference" statements is that they're highly dependent on the system you're listening to. The vast majority of systems are not resolving to a degree that there is an audible difference between AAC or a lossless format.

On my system, there is a profound difference between FLAC (at any bitrate) and higher rate DSD. Is DSD magically better? Not necessarily, but in my case my DAC bypasses its internal filtering for DSD playback, which means I can move the interpolation filter over to my CPU, which, running at 4GHz, is better at it than a (SOTA) DAC chip running at a few MHz.

It's a complicated topic, and the only people I personally discuss it with are professional audio engineers or serious hobbyists. No one else cares.

On topic, TIDAL is great in the sense that it's not US-centric for billing (just take my money please) and streams lossless. It's like a CD store for ~$20 a month (the max they'll take from me). I'd gladly pay a lot more and given the economics of it I'm worried it will go out of business at some point.

If you're interested in the topic you can check out the Roon community, "minimum vs linear phase interpolation filters", "DSD upsampling" or check out the work of Ted Smith (MIT / software guy turned DAC designer).

You've got a 1-bit DAC at the end of the chain regardless. Making it sound "better" by filtering in a 4GHz processor is golden ear nonsense.