And even assuming that it's audible at 192kbit/s with a decent encoder, why not just use 320kbit/s MP3 which are still significantly smaller than lossless?
16bit lossless audio is great for producers, you have a lot of headroom for messing with it, re-encoding it, twisting it, amplifying it, mixing it etc... But if you're just archiving public releases for "consumption" it's completely overkill.
>It's like interlacing in movies or bugs at borders of contrasting areas of picture in jpeg
In what way? Interlacing is completely irrelevant in the context of audio.
I'm sorry if I come off as adversarial but it's a pet peeve of mine. The maths and physics behind signal processing are very well understood, if some algorithm induces a signal degradation in the audible spectrum it should be trivial to show it objectively with the right measuring equipment and/or the right mathematical equation.
Splash cymbals in particular sound terrible (or noticeably degraded) on low bitrate stereo MP3s (ie 128kbit/s). Some early encoders actually did a lowpass filter to eliminate frequencies above 16kHz, to mask the 'watery' high-frequency warble (see [1]). Note how even the Fraunhofer codec differs a lot at high-frequencies in the charts on that link.
Some of it is still noticeable even in lower bitrate AAC. I've got U2's Pop album on CD from 1997 (coincidentally the first album to be leaked as MP3 [2]), and even at 128kbps iTunes AAC the cymbals just don't sound right on 'Gone'. They're watery, like an audio version of a badly compressed JPG. I keep meaning to re-rip it at higher bitrate.
[1] http://archive.arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/1q00/mp3/mp3-3.htm...
[2] http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/652-a-history-of-digital-album...
With good headphones (I'm talking 200+ euros class headphones for example) there is a certain difference between even a 320 kpbs MP3 vs a 128 AAC.
AAC or OGG for example just has better usualy clarity in the sound, the bass is clearer and more distinct and the hihats and other hi sounds aren't muffled in the background or don't lose their clarity like they do with MP3s.
And like the parent wrote, once you have heard those 'signature losses' of the mp3 codec, it's very hard not to notice them.
Still, when I get new stuff, or rip now, I try to do it at least at 192 or 320, since space isn't an issue any longer.
As for me, flac is better for storing sounds. Stored flac has no artifacts (if obtained without them), I can recode it to mp3, vorbis, opus or something else, and get artifacts from that codec, but not artifacts from mp3 plus artifacts from that codec.