a modern audio codec at 320kbps bitrate is more than good enough.
Lossless is useful for recompressing stuff when new codecs come out or for different purposes without introducing artefacts, not really for listening (in before angry audiophiles attack me)
MP3 V0 should already be, and is typically smaller.
That said, it does depend on the quality of the encoder; back in the day a lot of MP3 encoders were not very good, even at high quality settings. These days LAME is the de-facto standard and it's pretty good, but maybe some others aren't(?)
When you say you "can absolutely tell the difference", what score are you getting that proves you are doing better than guessing? And with what type of lossy encoding?
I truly appreciate you calling me a liar though; really adds to the conversation.
Don't want to sound snarky, but these are only "decent" (the succeeding MRx24 add an actually designed waveguide) and you'll never hear the sound of a DAC unless it's very badly implemented or has SNR troubles that show with ultra sensitive IEMs.
Anyone who has read enough of the research in the matter will tell you that the codec itself is an improbable culprit. The way it's encoded and the test setup usually are "at fault" in this situation.
But for Vorbis, AAC and Opus with decent encoder/bitrate, I doubt it. Baring killer samples like castanets showing pre-echo issues inherent to some MDCT based codecs.
Vorbis fooled me at 160-192 territory... over a decade ago.
Opus is very hard, even at 128kbps, tested relatively recently (3-5yr ago)
You're right I shouldn't be making crappy posts and will try better in the future.
I went through it, and could tell mp3 (lame) from lossless, with high confidence. Many people I know and trust not to make shit up have done the same. Parent likely did the same as well.
However, I cannot ABX Opus from flac. It becomes impossible for me somewhere 100 to 160kbit/s depending on song, weather and luck.
mp3 is quite good for a codec from 1991. But it is deeply flawed, and compares quite poorly to what we have today.
This pretty much means they don't need it. And even if they're all trained, there's still very much a good enough for many situations. I don't need to waste data on lossless if I'm streaming to my phone in a noisy environment, even with noise cancelling. Add to the fact that 99% of Bluetooth headphones are lossy anyways and you're left overoptimizing.
Sitting on a beanbag at home with a pair of Hifiman Susvaras or some other overpriced headseat, that's maybe another story...
Perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, Bluetooth headphones is actually a use case where lossless audio helps the most, as you're avoiding double-lossy compression. SBC XQ isn't that bad, but it gets much worse when what you feed it is already lossy.
But why would I bother recompressing when the various media players in the house can deal with the FLAC files just fine? On a typical home wifi network, a track probably transfers in about a second.