high fidelity snobbery?

I read a comment online from someone that suggested digital music was not going to replace the CD because of the bitrate (quality) of CDs.

I've been ripping most of my music either with a variable bit rate (VBR) or at 320 kbps, which is higher than what I've seen available for digital download. Naturally, I started researching it more, and found that there are two codecs that prevent any loss of data from compression during ripping, and since winamp comes with a FLAC codec, I ripped a song at 320 kbps in MP3 format, and lossless with FLAC.

Then I listened.

And you know what? I couldn't tell the f'ing difference. I went back and forth over and over again, and still I couldn't tell the difference with my $100 headphones. Thinking it was because the music was pop-rap, I then tried a digital recording of Stravinsky's Le Sacre Du Printemps.

Then I listened again.

And I still couldn't tell the f'ing difference!?%#$! It took me over 15 minutes listening closely, one after another, back and forth, and eventually I actually could hear portions of the second movement, Le Sacrifice, where the tonality changed from a group of instruments to a more muddled sound. I had expected the difference to be in the deep bass sections or the high trebles, but this was not the case; the differences appeared to be highlighted in the middle sections, usually when there was unison of several instruments. Isolated sounds of solo instruments didn't seem to be affected; perhaps they lacked the complexity of sound that a group of instruments has, and therefore harder to recreate if you're compressing data?

The way I tested the music was to basically close my eyes and use the keyboard to navigate between the FLAC, MP3 and CD track. Yes, I pressed the arrow keys up and down in a manner to try to randomize and disguise which file I was playing. I ended up being able to hear between the three, which was the MP3.

Anyway, it led me to believe that, until I get my 12" sub-woofer and vacuum tube amp, I didn't have much to worry about, because on the face of it all, no one would never notice that you were playing music at 320 kbps mp3s, FLACs or CDs, and the only way to tell would be to listen carefully, side by side.