Old55
I'm not that big a fan of MP3's. I found a player that I can load WAV files on and put them on a 32G SD card. Thee's plenty of room on it and I cog an unexpected benefit in that I just copy the files--no conversion needed.
I have not had issues with them.
My listening habits, are about the "experience", not anything else. The best music, for ME, induces visuals and many other things that make my mind trip like crazy. Sometimes it leads me to writing, other times it leads me to just closing my eyes and fly away!
The problem here, that I have been telling folks about, is that the "inner experience" has more to do with the music itself, than it does with how it got here. I couldn't CARELESS if it came by boat, or airplane, or spaceship! The important part of it is that IT GOT HERE! I took a good listen to Steven Wilson's redos in KC, for example, and what he did had ZERO effect on me, and the same for his work on Gentle Giant. Sometimes, giving it the illusion that the bass guitar got moved 5 feet to the left does not necessarily change anything in the music at all.
It goes back to my earlier days in listening to music, and in specific the "Firebird Suite" and the 3 recordings that we had at home. They were the same piece of music, but the Bernstein interpretation is different than the Stokowski, from the Karahjan! But, even though the "accents" (as I call them) in different places, would seem to change the music visuals for me, because they are different, in the end, they didn't. I still had the same visuals, but the car was green instead of coral blue, for example!
I, HONESTLY, feel that we're not discussing the music, when we concentrate on is mp3 good or bad. Who gives a fart? It's the music that matters, and where you and I should be concentrated on, not the "result". This was the reason why I enjoyed, way back when, so many bootlegs ... because it had nothing to do with the fact that they were recorded on someone's shippidycrap hand cassette recorder, but the feeling and energy and emotion of the music and concert itself was priceless.
If you don't know the difference between the real thing, and the "recording", you are not fit to be a musician, but a technician or engineer on someone else's music. You can't be in the 4th wall and outside and inside at the same time. These are "polar" opposites! Or as the Firesign Theater used to say, how can you be in two places at once and nowhere at all, at the same time? You CAN'T! And this is what I was trying to convey to RAIN when he was busy "channelling" that piece of music he talked about. Stop 4th walling it. Stay inside and get more of it out! That's your ONLY secret to life in the music!