Lossless audio - is it really that important? - Yes it is!

[stevei]

Just saw this news article today:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/04...quality_claim/

The survey it refers to is around 10 years old, but it found that 128kbps AAC audio is, for most people, indistinguishable from CD quality. This means that there would be little advantage in listening to lossless audio vs 64kbps per channel encoded with AAC.

Now, DD 5.1 at 640kbps is over 100kbps per channel, admittedly not AAC encoded, but I would be surprised if it performed worse at this level than AAC at 64kbps per channel.

So I find this hard to reconcile with the claims I've read from people that lossless audio sounds so much better. I've never personally had a problem with the quality of 448kbps DD 5.1. Now I've heard 640kbps DD 5.1 I think it might sound a little bit better, but would be far from certain I could tell the difference in a properly conducted scientific experiment.

If you believe you can tell the difference between 640kbps DD 5.1 and lossless / uncompressed DD, do you also believe you can tell the difference between a 224kbps mp3 and the original CD?