To be clear, I don't think it actually is. I think many people don't listen in a way that any differences could be discerned. Streaming over your car stereo, go

To be clear, I don't think it actually is. I think many people don't listen in a way that any differences could be discerned. Streaming over your car stereo, going down the highway, for example. Or listening on a cheap phone with a bad DAC and cruddy headphones. I've read about various tests (usually not conducted with sufficient rigor to make me think too much about the results) in which people: 1. Couldn't differentiate lossless and lossy encoding 2. Preferred the lossy to the lossless. The former case isn't too worrisome for me. The latter case is, in that it signals that there is a discernible difference, and that we're habituating to compression. Yesteryear's LP pops and hisses replaced by crunchy, compressed cymbals. I am too young to be crotchety about the way music should sound, but I swear the music industry has turned me into this :-)