@n80 It is neat to find another audiophile who also likes photography! I completely agree with your point about photography. Imagine choosing to buy camera A or B based on seeing a set of test images taken with both cameras where you have to look at black for 2 seconds every time you flip between them.
Where are the blind streaming quality tests?
I've been searching around for awhile now trying to find a good article/report on how many audiophiles on a decent system (at least $1000) can hear the difference between Apple Music and TIDAL and can reliably pick which one is "better sounding" in a blind test environment. It seems most blind tests I have found show that people really can't say one service sounds better than the others. But they often are using a <$100 audio setup. Many people on here claim that they can hear a huge difference between AAC and FLAC or MQA etc. but without any evidence or test results.
So I'll challenge everyone: get someone else to switch between lossless audio and compressed without your knowledge. Also have them sometimes just do a "fake switch" where they say they changed something but really kept playing the same thing. Or better yet use the NPR test online. Can you still reliably pick the lossless audio over multiple trials with a variety of music? Post which songs you used, if you guessed right on that track, and maybe a list of gear you used for your test. Let's see if we can get some real scientific results here!
So I'll challenge everyone: get someone else to switch between lossless audio and compressed without your knowledge. Also have them sometimes just do a "fake switch" where they say they changed something but really kept playing the same thing. Or better yet use the NPR test online. Can you still reliably pick the lossless audio over multiple trials with a variety of music? Post which songs you used, if you guessed right on that track, and maybe a list of gear you used for your test. Let's see if we can get some real scientific results here!