I have several apple lossless files that I have confidence with after listening thru headphone, main amp/secondary speaker output. I am not an expert but it sounds a damned site better than some mp3's conversions I've heard. Almost all mp3's crop the top of the frequency range. If you've lossed a certain degree of hearing sensibilities then you might not notice the differences (even if your ears had such training in the 1st case.) But perhaps after so many jams, gigs & rehearsals my ears might not be ideal. But all the same my ears are more rehearsed to hearing the difference compared to the average person. Subtle differences are oh so important to those musos that take the time to learn the diffrence. That's why people are wasting people's time converting decent songs at less than 192 or 160 vbr.