@Eric Larson: Vinyl sounds the way it does because of the turntable rumble. The low frequencies of the rumble, combined with the music, result in what are called "sum" and "difference" tones. They're very quiet, but we experience the effect as "richness" or "fullness". It's a pleasant kind of distortion, but it is distortion.

This test asks us to compare each track with what we expect to hear. How can that be meaningful with a pop recording, which has no real-world referent? If you want to hear MP3 fail most obviously, listen to recordings of a capella chorus or string orchestra. At mid to high volumes (of the performers, not the playback device) you can often hear what used to be called "flanging". Also: you obviously never listen to opera, or other continuous music split (gaplessly) into tracks. Everyone can hear the glitch at each track change, it's that obvious. This glitch is an artifact of the mp3 encoding format, and it cannot be corrected. Also: since you're including FLAC, including uncompressed (WAV) obfuscates the question. Personally: Since I frequently edit and/or mix, I store as FLAC and downsample to suit the playback device. I can't hear the difference between 192 and FLAC, but re-encode that 192 a couple of times and the result is disgusting.

@UK: some people's web access is limited by filters that scan pages for banned words. Thus the need for euphemisms.

The people opposed to Net Neutrality talk as if we can just switch ISPs if we don't like their "bandwidth shaping" policies. I have only two choices, many people have only one.