You don't need to spend thousands of dollars to hear the difference between different bitrates. You need trained ears more than anything. Entry level setups with a headphone amp/DAC and good headphones can be had for $300 or less. Companies like Fiio sell decent headphone amp/DACs that cost $100 or less, some as low as $50, possibly less. Headphones made by a reputable company like AKG, Sennheiser, Grade, and Audiotechnica, etc. can sound twice as good as a pair of Beats at the same price. A pair of Sennheiser Momentums can give that fun, bass heavy sound signature with better sound quality at the same price. Last I checked they had been built with better materials than that icky glossy plastic used in Beats as well. My first decent pair of headphones was the Sennheiser HD 200. It cost me only $100 and it was easy for me to tell between lossless and something that was a low bitrate mp3 or aac sound file, even without a headphone amp/DAC. You can get HD 200s right now on eBay for less than $100 and I've seen them be sold "buy it now" for as low as $40. Those thousand dollar, or more, setups are usually for professional mixing & mastering of music. Only extreme enthusiasts will spend that much, and if they are smart, only on the analog portions of their setup where it will actually be effective. Most audiophiles, even ones on enthusiast sites like head-fi, will recommend staying within a sane budget. They'll only recommend more expensive setups if you have tested your ears by listening to more expensive setups in a place that sells them and had a listening room for trying them out, and if you're ears actually hear a difference and if it really matters to you to spend that much money to listen to your music. Most setups I've see are definitely under a thousand bucks, with a majority that has spent less than $500 on a set of headphones. And these are just the hard core enthusiasts I'm talking about.