Listened on Focal Clear thru an Apogee Duet

first: I have done this test myself many times in various ways, including recreating albums as a mix of 16bit FLAC and v0 MP3 (track by track, not within tracks), putting them on, and listening on speakers. I can tell sometimes, but the v0 still sounds great.

I was able to distinguish the 3 rock recordings with confidence, high frequency transients sounded more impactful in WAV. The Queensryche in particular has a lot of (well applied!) dynamic compression on the acoustic guitar and vocal which really brings out those transients.

However, if I heard the MP3 in isolation I would not detect anything was off. They all sounded good.

The Morricone and Vangelis I had no conviction either way and I guessed wrong both times. I suspect in their recording/mixing/mastering a lot of high frequency sound was lost anyway. In either case, I don't know if the CD master was made from original tapes or not. I know the Blade Runner OST has had a convoluted release history. Morricone has a 2004 CD master which is pretty well liked.

"Moving Pictures" was recorded to tape, but was notably an early digitally mastered album. Maybe that has resulted in preserved high frequency sound.

Compressed audio is great, I love it and I use it a lot.

I use CD Quality for archival purposes and my home library.. for most of the past decade hard disks have been inexpensive. I convert to Opus 192 for mobile devices.

Another reason for CD Quality archiving - I have a long term idea of recreating a CD collection. I want to get printable CDs and burn the audio/print the art because I want my children to have the experience of going thru a shelf or flipping through a binder, putting the disk in the tray, pressing play. I always loved doing that.

Again, could I tell if I transcoded a well encoded mp3 back to redbook? Maybe not consistently, but it's more likely the transcode of mp3 -> CD would introduce more audible problems than the encoding of WAV -> mp3.

I managed only the Queensryche with my Sennheiser HD 490 Pro and Qudelix 5k. Thanks for giving the name to my vague feeling.