Our family bought some AT&T 3358 5.8 GHz phones to clear out the 2.4 GHz band a bit. The problem is they transmit in 5.8 GHZ but still receive in 2.4 GHz. They are good phones apart from this issue. So much for impulse buying...
I can hear the difference between the highest quality MP3 (lame --alt-preset insane) on just a handful of tracks using an ABX test. Asking the kind of subjective question you did is fairly pointless because everyone's ears are different.
One track where it is pretty easy to hear flaws in MP3 is a track from Autechre's Anvil Vapre EP - Second Bad Vilbel. The intro to this track is a codec killer (both MP3 and Vorbis). Admittedly this is an extreme sample of 'music' but it sometimes helps prove to doubtful friends that there are artifacts in MP3 files.
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A wired Squeezebox plus 802.11g bridge ought to do the trick.
Ick. Either there's something hideously wrong with the Sun logo gif or my glasses have fallen off.
Our family bought some AT&T 3358 5.8 GHz phones to clear out the 2.4 GHz band a bit. The problem is they transmit in 5.8 GHZ but still receive in 2.4 GHz. They are good phones apart from this issue. So much for impulse buying...
The Squeezebox does not have to re-encode AAC. You have a choice of simply decoding back to raw PCM or re-encoding to mp3.
I can hear the difference between the highest quality MP3 (lame --alt-preset insane) on just a handful of tracks using an ABX test. Asking the kind of subjective question you did is fairly pointless because everyone's ears are different.
One track where it is pretty easy to hear flaws in MP3 is a track from Autechre's Anvil Vapre EP - Second Bad Vilbel. The intro to this track is a codec killer (both MP3 and Vorbis). Admittedly this is an extreme sample of 'music' but it sometimes helps prove to doubtful friends that there are artifacts in MP3 files.
1. There is a rating system that can help but not prevent this.
2. No.