I am in general agreement with most of the comments with the exception of the "bass is not as good" comment.
Not agreeable with that one but I think its been addressed.
@highfigh said it perfectly from where I sit:
A person with normal hearing may not notice the difference- it's not the ability to hear, it's the learned ability to listen for differences. Knowing what to listen for makes far more difference than ability to hear.
I remember a kerfuffle a year or so ago as the estate of Michael Jackson sued record producers who remastered and butchered (so they said) one of his recordings. I happened to have the "remastered" one so I sought out and purchased an original from before the remaster and did an A-B test to hear the butchery. I was confident I would hear the audio massacre after hearing the court testimony.
What I found was I couldn't really tell any difference at all. I mentioned it on this forum and several folks with very very sharp learned ability told me exactly where to listen and for what to listen for. By going back with instructions and time stamps I was able to pick out the differences and shortcomings of the remastered work. I could then hear the small differences. Without that careful guidance however, I simply couldn't pick it out.
So
@highfigh has it nailed for me. It isn't pure ability to hear and it isn't the differences in the formats either. If there's a difference that's audible, trained ability to seek it out may show you the differences.
I have found that LPs sound very different from the digital versions and I know that part of/most of the reason is because the digital versions were remixed/remastered. These CDs weren't the earliest, but they were early enough that they don't sound as good as some of the better remix/remasters. I also know that when playing an LP, the cartridge and tonearm are subjected to physical forces that can greatly influence the sound but since my tonearm (Sony PS-X600 TT) has servos to counteract most of them, it's less of a problem. I also play bass and those frequencies have held my attention since I was <10 years old and I can definitely hear the difference between good and bad mixes or remasters- some remasters are great, but I wouldn't pay for others. Unfortunately, it's not easy to listen before buying new versions.
When listening to equipment that's being considered for purchase, I tell people that if the salesperson starts telling them what they'll hear, walk away or say "Stop- let me listen for myself". That's called 'pre-conditioning' and it usually leads to the customer deciding later that they don't actually like what they bought, but since what they heard agrees with what they were told, they paid for whatever it was. Amplifiers are less likely to sound very different, but when it comes to speakers and analog sources, I absolutely want the salesperson to shut up and let me listen. Many digital sources sound pretty similar, but some sound better- they're the ones that need scrutiny WRT the specs and how they handle the analog audio, if that will be used.
The one time I used cheap AV cables for something other than a VCR was when I bought my first DVD player- it sounded like crap and I wanted to return it and I was in the process of removing it from the cabinet when I saw the cables. I have never been one of the "AV cables need to be expensive and special" crowd, but I had a pair that had been used for my CD player which was in for service (lighting on the face had some problems, but it sounded fine), so I connected them and it sounded really good. I bagged all of the cheap cables and returned them to my AV distributor because I can't sell anything so bad with a clear conscience.
That said, I have a ReQuest music server that saves the ripped discs in two forms- .wav and MP3, of any resolution. The main reason it does this is so the .wav version can be listened to on-site but since it has a network drive, ports in the router can be opened to allow using their DDNS to listen to the music anywhere, as long as the listener is connected to the internet but all music can be saved as MP3 if the user wants a buttload of music on the server. Obviously, the MP3 will stream more easily if they're smaller files, but they can also be saved to a computer, USB, external HD or shared- the MP3 and .wav can be listened to by synching the tracks (like we used to when showing customers the differences between recordings made on a tape deck and the LP), making the levels match and switching between them- hte .wav files sound better when the rate is 256K or lower. For ambient music, 256K is fine, even 128K is fine if the music is playing in a place where ambient noise exists.
Gene interviewed a recording engineer in a podcast years ago and they discussed the losses in MP3 files when compared with the Redbook version- IIRC, a higher and lower rate MP3 were mixed together, one was was inverted and it allowed him to show what was missing- in some cases, so much of the sound was missing that it was easy to hear which song was playing.
