Sidivan
Fractal Fanatic
Who is listening to low bitrate MP3s anymore? Seriously...variable bit rate solved most of the problem and the near-ubiquitous high speed connections we have now have made delivering them a snap. When you do your critiques at least critique current consumer standards -- I'd say whatever Apple is selling in iTunes now -- they're all far from low bitrate encodes.
iTunes preferred format is ALAC, which is Apple's lossless format. MP3 is garbage now days with FLAC, ALAC, etc... Where all this "vinyl sounds better" nonsense comes from is shitty MP3's. People chose convenience over quality early on and are now realizing that vinyl does indeed sound better than the 40,000 MP3's compressed to hell on your phone.
A really good example is youtube. How many people use Youtube to show eachother new music? Millions. I even see it here on the forums, "Hey, check out this new recording" and people comment on how good the tone is or isn't. Do this: Go listen to your favorite song on Youtube, then listen to it on CD. There's a huge difference.