Some of my favorite debates online have been between engineers who work in the audio industry and golden ears who believe they can discern the subtlest nuances, allowing them to hear the improvements provided by $100/ft speaker cable and $500 power cords. These debates carry over into home theater as well, and I find it especially interesting when someone claims to hear a difference between Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA--both of which are lossless.

If the golden ear is willing to subject himself to a true ABX test, what has always happened in my experience, without fail, is that the golden ear is unable to pick out the "better" version reliably. Statistically, they do about as well as someone who's guessing, and that's probably because they are. They refuse to acknowledge that the differences they hear are purely emotional, driven more by belief than anything else.

I bought some pretty decent headphones a while back (Sennheiser 595's) and listened to a broad sample of my music collection, which I've ripped to AAC format using iTunes (256 kbps). I pulled out a few of the original CDs and did a very informal comparison flipping back and forth between the CD and AAC versions, and being honest with myself, I couldn't tell the difference between the two. In an ABX test, I'm certain I couldn't reliably choose one over the other.

And I lol'ed at the mention of Bose. "Better sound through marketing."