Low bitrate MP3 files have really awful artifacts. Most notably, they just cannot deal properly with cymbals. Also, I remember that many early codecs would filter out anything about 15kHz or thereabouts, because you might as well prioritize the lower frequency bits.

MP3 once you get to 200kb/sec or thereabouts is really, really good. I've made multiple attempts to distinguish them from uncompressed originals and I can't tell them apart. And this is with really good headphones, offboard DACs, etc. -- the same sorts of equipment that generally get me annoyed at places where the mastering engineers made mistakes.

I have a buddy who spends serious coin on his home stereo / theater. Many of his purchases are entirely defensible and logical (e.g., acoustic foam discretely tucked in corners to absorb reflections). Other stuff, less so. Notably, he's bought into the high bitrate fiasco, saying all these things about jitter and filtering and whatnot that he presumably will never be able to hear. So far as I can tell, all that really matters is that when you buy high-bitrate music, you're just getting bits that was mastered by people who care, versus, for contrast, the modern phenomenon of over-compression. (Factoid: I have two releases of Count Basie and Oscar Peterson's "Satch and Josh", one normal and one on XRCD. The differences are subtle but present, but largely boil down to better mastering. It's all still red book audio CD on the client end.)

The sad fact is that most users could do themselves the most good by simply buying decent speakers and setting up their room well. Now that virtually all home theater cabling is digital, you kinda wish that Monster would just wither away, but there they are with über HDMI cables. It's just so sad. Meanwhile, Home Depot sells really great 12ga speaker wire in bulk, and it's trivial to attach your own banana plugs or whatever else.

Returning to Pono and the phenomenon that Tony cites, the underlying pathology here is probably some variation on people needing to "perform their wealth", combined with a related pathology of "price signalling". The former is why you've got so many people sitting in traffic in their AMG Mercedes and BMW M cars. They don't buy those cars out of some rational need. It's all about exclusivity and projecting that, yeah baby, I've made it. The price signalling thing is something you see every time you look at a wine list in a restaurant. You've never heard of any of them, but some are much cheaper than others. Do you splurge for the more expensive bottle? How do you decide? Hey, why would you buy that cheap speaker cable when you can buy the Monster cable? It's worth it!

*sigh*