Don't know how any of you can tell the difference with the constant ringing in your ears or is that just me.
A yes! Ringing in one ear and can't hear in the other. 
I suffer with tinutus in my right ear, and it is constant, though worse sometimes than others, but I still enjoy listening to music in spite of it.... not that I have as loud these days as I used to. Back in the day it was all about the bass and how loud it could go [and I had the system to do it, too], but nowadays it's all about the finer points and those sweet notes which simply weren't audible at 150db.
As for sound quality, the majority of my music is converted from CD to FLAC lossless files, so that way I'm not losing too much quality-wise. At the end of the day, however, it won't matter much if you have a high end media player but crap sound card and/or speakers. To truly experience high quality sound one needs to have high quality equipment from the media player up.
