[…] Scientific testing by the European Broadcasting Union has indicated that HE-AAC at 48 kbit/s was ranked as "Excellent" quality using the MUSHRA scale. MP3 in the same testing received a score less than half that of HE-AAC and was ranked "Poor" using the MUSHRA scale. Data from this testing also indicated that some individuals confused 48 kbit/s encoded material with an uncompressed original.[…]
EBU subjective listening test on low-bit rate audio codecs
(Figure 8, page 15/45)
Results for 48 kbit/s stereo
