Then again, music streaming services pretty much removed music piracy from mainstream usage altogether. Obviously people in this sub still pirate music, but it’s so uncommon nowadays, I’m sure many people wouldn’t even know where or how to find it.

On the one hand you’re right, but on the other I feel like a lot of stuff has become browser based (like text editors, code editors, even music editors and perhaps video editors someday), all thanks to Web Assembly and how complex a lot of web apps have become.

It feels like people use everyday stuff through apps, and more complex stuff through browsers nowadays. Roles may slowly invert at some point if it keeps going this way.

Holy shit, your country is deranged

There are a few key things that you’d notice between high quality and very low quality audio. Mostly, a loss of information, which would result in a muffled audio, a lack of crispy sounds and a loss of general clarity, as well as unpleasant distortion and other made-up noise at worst.

For 99.9% of people, it’s not really an mp3 vs wav/aiff comparison, but rather a kbps comparison. High quality mp3 (320kbps) is usually indistinguishable from lossless formats for most people.

For a good reasonable idea, compare 128kbps vs 320kbps at the bottom of this page and pay attention to the cymbals and other high-pitched sounds. You should notice that 128kbps sounds a bit more opaque, like it loses a lot of its spark, whereas 320 sounds crisp and clearer.

That being said, it’s not a huge difference unless you go below 128, and there’s no point in listening to wav and lossless files if you use Bluetooth, since Bluetooth hard-caps all your rates at 320kbps anyway. But I think it’s fairly noticeable anyway.

I’m pretty sure they can, they just don’t know it. It’s extremely obvious.