I went into the mp3 listening without any preconceived notions of what i would hear, or at least i tried. I just did it on a whim the other day out of curiousity.
But the audible difference was so noticeable, i didn't need to do a true blind test. Again i used 2 cd players which i've already determined to be so close in performance that with my test cds, i could not distinguish a difference. I take the same music copied to 2 cds and start both in each cd player then swap back and forth between the inputs. This mostly eliminates the long wait for audible memory to lose any thought.
However, that being said, if we go back to the higher sampling rates, then i would agree for sure, blind testing may be the only method of discerning any difference.
