[Samsung Galaxy S8+ Guides, News, & Discussion] mcbright80:
I have done the research up and down, sideways and backwards plus any other way around when concerning this argument and personally I can tell quite a few telltale differences in audio quality in formats, bit depth, bit rate etc etc and there IS noticeable differences.

The issue is, and reason, this debate is still ongoing is there are soooooo many factors/variables and/or conditions that come into play concerning any audio quality testing. It will impact what anyone finds in their results if they are even able to tell small, subtle variations in sound quality to the more obvious to start....if you have one person who is average and a layman to the technical information overall on audio then it wont make a diff or you have another who is fluent it changes the results substantially....then taking in account the soundbites format origin, how it was converted exactly from origin if it isn't lossless, what hardware/software was used to do so like using Audacity to convert/record/modify vs Soundforge, what computer/OS they used for conversion/modifications and testing with, were there any external DACs used, and audio cable connections used to route music, Headphone/speakers/bluetooth quality, etc etc its nutty....its super detailed, and change one variable in the overall process could effect things more than expected usually IE: reformatting a FLAC to MP3 then to AAC HE.

OH and i forgot that I found changing songs and stuff also will really give you more differences in results its crazy. I dont mean just change from certain genre types like classical or rock soundbites but from specific songs themselves can make a difference alone. I am still fiddling with options, formats and constantly changing songs of all types back and forth and back again while changing audio modifications one at a time....over and over and over and over.....seriously....so yes it does make a difference, it IS marketing BS in there too of course appreciate that level or need to but whether some audio bite is 24bit or 64bit or whatever is important, does make a difference in sound overall quality in the end but just may not be as important or useful depending on whom the audience or consumer is.

Besides....compared to the overblown bull of forever upgrading how many megapixels and such for phones the marketing on audio quality is barely a BLIP.....rarely do they ever put much info out on audio capabilities for those who would like it unlike camera capabilities. Every stupid review on any handset spends 1/4 of that review talking about how good the camera is on that handset, compares it to others WITH photos showing the degrees of differences in each handset, blah blah blah....just so some more narcissistic tards can have the best camera to take another 1000 selfies, pics of what they are eating or drinking at the moment or some other mundane crap they think is so relevant that everyone else HAS to see all the time....none of them know what any of the specs there are for more than the barest of reason but they give every detail though on review cause that sells.

Do these people need such high specs for their endless selfie takes...NOPE....unless you are a hobbyist into photography on whatever level/area or photography by trade then you won't really benefit from having 20 megapixels or apps that modify photos in such detail and so many really, esp if you don't fully understand those details. Its by far the hugest selling point on of any of the spec wars on phones than any other hardware part easily and all to get people to really need that upgrade for more megapixels cause more is better and they need more SELFIES and more megapixels is what the ads/salesmen say will give you that the best quality so the picture of their duckface pose or pic of what they are eating for lunch is clearer, crisper, and more detailed than the next persons on FB lol..and also warrants making handsets more expensive across the board for everyone even if they dont give a monkey a** about that addition....still gotta pay for it.

Don't let anyone talk about audio capabilities though cause that quickly gets little to no input or someone just pooing all over it cause its not important to them or they think its useless....=P.