You be surprised at what low bitrates you can get away with on (very) large soundsystems... Some of the MP3's we played in a £5m nightclub (with 2x 3 JBL Vertec speakers in vertical arrays) directly off a PC were of a truly awful quality when played on 'normal' systems (computer speakers, Hi-Fi, car) but it was barely noticable on such a mammoth club system! Combine that with the fact that most punters are three sheets to the wind anyway...
Make no mistake I'm talking about stupidly low bitrates!
I notice the difference more on a much, much, much smaller system I use every week. There I have to make sure all the tracks sound good otherwise the compression artifacts are very, very audible.
I'd say it all depends on the sound system... Most people can not tell the difference between a 192kbps MP3 and the original wav... some I know can't even tell the difference from a 128kbps MP3, mainly because they don't know what they are listening for. |