I will always recommend some /r/symphonicmetal. Examples:

• Cryovile - 'Providence'
• Cecile Monique - 'Genesis'
• Nachtmuse - 'Sky Garden' (2017 demo version)
• Everdawn - 'Infinity Divine'
• Epica - 'Omega - Sovereign of the Sun Spheres'
• Within Temptation feat. Tarja - 'Paradise (What About Us?)'
• Nightwish - 'Planet Hell'
• Delain - 'Mother Machine'
• Ignea - 'Alga'
• Ad Infinitum - 'Marching on Versailles'
• Eleine - 'Hell Moon (We Shall Never Die)'
• Age of Athena - 'Together We Fall'

As the others noted, you may want to look for the songs on a higher quality streaming platform; YouTube links are mainly for convenience. I'm also quite interested in the AKG K712 Pro headphones, so I wouldn't mind hearing some of your impressions.

I download from Bandcamp or Tidal Store or rip from CDs. For streaming, Spotify and YouTube are the only platforms which still do not provide lossless quality AFAIK.

I'm curious about those Dekoni pads. Which variant are you using, and how do they affect the sound?

I'm curious about those Dekoni pads. Which variant are you using, and how do they affect the sound?

> Implying that a lack of familiarity with the tracks being tested might have a significant effect.

I never said that this was false, because it is also true. You know that feeling when you notice a detail in a song that you had never noticed before, even though you've listened to the song many times? Maybe that detail sounds better when it's lossless.

> FWIW though, I would agree that the best way to ABX is to do your own conversion from lossless to lossy locally and use an offline ABX tool.

This I agree, and with this method (using mostly /r/symphonicmetal which I normally listen to) I get consistently better results than the pre-made tests.

> Also, musical taste shouldn't have any bearing on sound quality comparisons.

It definitely does. Classical music and EDM, for example, have very different instruments and production methods, and some things you can hear in classical will respond to compression differently from things you can hear in EDM.

Honestly, I'd say it isn't as hard as Spotify wants you to believe. Online A/B(/X) tests like that one are also flawed for a number of reasons (for one, the selection of music samples is limited and doesn't accurately reflect what the user listens to).