I agree - especially in the audio world, you hit diminishing returns very fast on audio equipment.

This is still not an ABX test though. Placebo effect is very real in audio, and unless you’re using a dedicated ABX test it’s easy to claim that you are just “better trained” than everyone else. Above all else, the most important factor for determining “audio quality” is just volume. Setting up a proper test with exact volume matching is vital, otherwise everyone always picks the track that sounds slightly louder.

If you do not even have high-end audio equipment but can tell the difference between a lossless and (transparent) lossy format, then it should not be difficult to perform an ABX test and confirm this. If you do not know what sort of ABX tests can be used for this task, it makes me wonder how you’ve come to this conclusion about your ears and your equipment in the past. The level of precision needed to definitively pick a lossless codec over a transparent lossy codec requires such extensive test setups in order to be statistically significant.

If anyone else reading wants to have some fun with a not-airtight ABX test, try your ears on these tests. It’s easy to handwave something like this due to it living in-browser and using hand-picked songs, but it’s still a fun experiment to try.