[vorbis] When will quality increase be unnoticable?

[Phaedras at gmx.net]

I started thinking about this after doing a little testing with AAC, MP3 and
Ogg Vorbis. I was comparing the different formats at similiar bitrates.
After a while I finally realized that they all sound more or less the same to me.
>From 160 kbps on, I usually cannot detect any difference between a lossy
encoding and the original source. If LAME is used, I have to strain to notice
anything at 128. Ogg Vorbis is the same at slightly lower bitrates.

I know there are enough people out there who, even without ABXing, could
tell me exactly what sounds different, but personally I have a hard time to
discern any changes made by a lossy encoder (at a decent bitrate) to a piece of
music. I also believe the majority of people feel this way. And so I wonder:
When will codec development stop concentrating on quality and start
concentrating on size? When I think about where Ogg Vorbis is right now and where it
will be at 1.0, I don't understand why one would even need these "discrete
wavelets" that are being discussed. Artifacts, like those that occur with MP3
seem nonexistant with Vorbis. I don't notice any high-frequency "squishyness"
How much more of a quality gain can even be achieved?


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