thebuzzard - You seem to have completely missed the point.
No one ever said anything against real-world testing. I am a member and have been a big contributor to Hydrogen Audio from over 20 years back. I've done more testing and have advocated more for testing than just about anyone I know.
My point was quite simple:
First, testing the difference is off-topic. Not only off-topic from the original question, but off-topic from continuing discussions where it was established, by the original poster, that FLAC is used as an ARCHIVAL format without concern for fidelity. Therefore, perception and subjectivity are implicitly unrelated to the poster's specific use-case.
The second point is that if you are going to test the difference then make sure you're doing it within the most relevant apples-to-apples context.
I do understand how it can be hard to accept when you don't possess the technical knowledge on a topic and rather than admit to that, you choose to ignore the point in favor of believing anything else that is less damning to one's ego. You also evidently don't understand the term "scene" in the context it's used here, evident by your wording of "in a given "scene"".
Simply put -- Contrary to your suggestion, the "scene" is not a context or environment.
The "scene" is the manner in which content originates and finds its way here to SoftArchive, in 95% of all cases. Therefore, the "scene" is exceptionally relevant to the original poster's concern, because it's the scene's rules and supply that directly affect his question.
It's also the scenes rules that establish an apples-to-apples basis for the FLAC-v-MP3 comparison in the context of SoftArchive or any site depending primarily on scene-based material.
For example, if the majority of scene MP3's are published at 320kbps, then SoftArchive's MP3 content would primarily be at 320 kbps. In that case, if you're doing a comparison, then the best bitrate to compare would be 320 kbps. You would not compare AIFF and suggest it's indicative of MP3, you would not compare 256 kbps and suggest it's better than most, etc.
It's okay that you didn't understand that. It's okay that you claimed people didn't listen to you, when those people were advocating for exactly the same approach and merely provided important data to do so accurately. There's nothing wrong with not knowing these things.
However, please don't insult others simply because they attempt to remain on-topic and educate others, simply to hide your mistakes or protect your ego.
My goal is to teach people about tech they are not familiar with -- perhaps if you would be more open to listening, you could learn something too.