Comment by tammer

I find mp3 and aac compression artifacts to be monstrously irritating. I have no idea how the majority of the world seemingly can ignore them.

Further, I can hear a difference between 44.1kHz and 96kHz. Whether you can hear that difference is up to you. (The word-length is a red herring - there's no new information contained in a 24-bit recording vs 16.)

IMO anything less than flac and you're missing something. Higher sampling frequencies do add to the sound, but in a way that is almost invisible to the untrained ear. Perhaps these should be distributed at a premium the way SACDs and similar "audiophile" formats were in the past?