I would imagine in most cases the quality of the rip wont matter if the production on the album, or song, isn't very good. A poorly produced and mastered album wont sound good whether it's 128kbps or a full lossless rip.

I think similar to a lot of things there are some people out there who can notice the difference, but the percentage is likely very small. Most probably are telling themselves it sounds better, but as the article points out they're likely guessing when it comes to doing A/B tests.