96 AAC VBR that good? Or am I deaf? Options

[Carsi]

Hi there.

This is my 2nd topic here at HA. My first post was about a Rammstein sample where i ABX'ed 20/20 at 128 AAC VBR. That's the only sample so far that I can ABX 20/20. I recently tried 96 AAC VBR, and it sounds surprisingly good. I can't ABX it :/ Apart from that particular Rammstein sample.

My question is this, I've finally re-ripped all my cd's to ALAC. If I convert them to 96 AAC VBR, would you say it would be transparent? I'm using Creative Aurvana Live headphones, not high end. I'm trying to fit as many songs as possible on my iphone 5 32GB.

[db1989]

The general consensus is that means drawn from large samples of other people using other equipment cannot be relied upon to predict anything meaningful about what you will experience on your equipment!

Even to obtain some general comments from others, you would really need to specify which types of music you will be listening to (e.g. classical is less likely to be audibly altered by lossy compression than is metal) and in which environments (e.g. artefacts may be masked in noisier places such as a car). But still, any ‘advice’ would be ultimately speculative in regards to your hearing and sensitivity to compression.