Most humans on this planet aren’t able to audibly hear the difference between a redbook CD and a ‘high-res’ format in a blind test. The same is true for DACs and Stereos. There’s an incredible amount of audiophile snake oil that companies pump out because it makes insane money from people tricking themselves they can hear a difference (psychosomatic effect from spending so much).
What is readily perceivable is the difference between a good mastering and a poor mastering, which can effect any format. An old vinyl with its 60db of dynamic range has an inherent limitation of how loud music can be mastered which normally was a downside, but became an asset when CD’s began to go through the loudness wars in the 90’s and 2000’s (where CD’s were mastered to ‘brick wall’ the audio, removing dynamic range in favor of boosting gain so it would sound better in cars or poor equipment), so for music from that loudness war era, the vinyl often sounded significantly better just due to the better mastering, despite the worse theoretical specifications.
It’s also pretty much impossible hear to the difference between a high-bitrate compressed format (like 320kb mp3, vorbis ogg, or opus) or an uncompressed FLAC (I’ve tried, I couldn’t perceive any difference, try it yourself in a blind test where a friend switches between them), so either will be ideal for a phone, where you’re unlikely to be carrying around big bulky headphones that could take advantage of those high-res formats anyway.
Most humans on this planet aren’t able to audibly hear the difference between a redbook CD and a ‘high-res’ format in a blind test. The same is true for DACs and Stereos. There’s an incredible amount of audiophile snake oil that companies pump out because it makes insane money from people tricking themselves they can hear a difference (psychosomatic effect from spending so much).
What is readily perceivable is the difference between a good mastering and a poor mastering, which can effect any format. An old vinyl with its 60db of dynamic range has an inherent limitation of how loud music can be mastered which normally was a downside, but became an asset when CD’s began to go through the loudness wars in the 90’s and 2000’s (where CD’s were mastered to ‘brick wall’ the audio, removing dynamic range in favor of boosting gain so it would sound better in cars or poor equipment), so for music from that loudness war era, the vinyl often sounded significantly better just due to the better mastering, despite the worse theoretical specifications.
It’s also pretty much impossible hear to the difference between a high-bitrate compressed format (like 320kb mp3, vorbis ogg, or opus) or an uncompressed FLAC (I’ve tried, I couldn’t perceive any difference, try it yourself in a blind test where a friend switches between them), so either will be ideal for a phone, where you’re unlikely to be carrying around big bulky headphones that could take advantage of those high-res formats anyway.