Hi Alex
Where are you streaming that the 128kbps streams sound acceptable?
SoundCloud, Bandcamp and YouTube are my main sources of listening nowadays. In order of preference is SoundCloud and Bandcamp with YouTube coming last. Although that is based mostly on how I think audio is processed by YouTube. The reality is I can hardly discern any real difference in sound quality of my own music which I post across all three platforms.
Soundcloud sounds absolutely awful to me.
I am sure we all have different expectations.
I have had a poke around your website to find out more about you as a person. You appear to be a professional mixing/mastering engineer. So that, alone, suggests to me that you have had the necessary training to be able to carry out that work and you would have developed a more critical ear in the process.
You also look like a young person. Although I cannot find an article in the internet to back this up, youger people hear higher frequencies, 10kHz and above, better than older people. I did, however, find this article, which may be related:-
en.wikipedia.org
I am 59. About eight years ago I had a hearing test for work. I have a marked problem in one ear, which doesn't hear much over 10kHz. And my other ear isn't much better... Anything about 14kHz is lost to me. I am guessing that that is a problem brought around by listening to music turned up to eleven and never wearing ear protection at heavy metal gigs.
I am also very much a hobbyist and totally self taught in everything I do, music related.
In that part of my post you quoted I mention that "Years ago, before I knew what I know now about mastering for steaming, 128kbps files could sound terrible, especially things like cymbals." That may be in partly because at that time my hearing hadn't deteriorated to the point that it has now.
I will point you to a recent post that was raised about this very subject on the ambientonline.org website, where I am an active member:-
Tonight I was in the rare mood to listen to my oldish tracks on Sound Cloud. After some time really enjoying the music I suddenly realized I was hearing all the detail and nuances I don't remember hearing when streaming off SC. I really think they have improved their streaming quality 100%. My...
www.ambientonline.org
It is suggested by one member there that, in his opinion, SoundCloud is now sounding better than ever. Better than Bandcamp.
cheers
andy