Right. I used to DJ throughout college and tried out a variety of formats. At high amplification, artifacts become apparent. VBR0 and 256kbit MP3s did not hold

Right. I used to DJ throughout college and tried out a variety of formats. At high amplification, artifacts become apparent. VBR0 and 256kbit MP3s did not hold up, at all. Even smaller speakers and headphones didn't hide some of the compression artifacts for me. 320kbit CBR MP3s were... I'd say, generally OK if you did not plan on skewing their tempo much outside of a very small range (give or take 5% speed). Really bad artifacting becomes audible quickly beyond that range. Maybe it was placebo, but I also found differences between FLAC and 320kbit MP3 discernible when working on big, more powerful speakers. But, with FLAC, it didn't matter if the sound was played at 10% tempo or extreme amplitude, audio was always crisp, clear, and free of compression artifacts (obviously). On my laptop speakers or earbuds, no way would I be able to tell the difference between any of these today.