Does encoding to a higher bitrate improve the sound?

[eucariote]

Seems that people who grew up with 128kbps & itunes *prefer* the sound of compressed music. Apple has blunted the development of the auditory system of a generation of teenagers (to the perception of details, sound localization and harmonics in music, things lost along with the higher frequencies), and the power of habit makes them prefer it that way

iPods and Young People Have Utterly Destroyed Music - Music - Gizmodo

 

[krmathis]

I think we should blame P2P file sharing services/applications.
In 1999 Napster opened their service, primarily based around MP3 files, and it all got very popular in short time (I remember those days). Some popular P2P services following Napster were/are Gnutella, eDonkey, Kazaa and BitTorrent.

The availability and relative small file size in turn lead to increasing popularity of the MP3 format.
10 years later will still suffer from it!

 

[rock&rollfrenchfries]

the difference is that napster was free back in the good ol days. itunes is charging for 256. and they never have anything available in alac.

i would consider buying music on itunes if they had alac available. instead i just buy cds and torrent flac... and use winamp because i have no real use for itunes.