I don’t really have MP3-only use cases anymore, but back when I did, it was mostly where transparency was achieved rather easily, like listening to music on the go with… non-perfect headphones, and on those cases, I went with lame’s -V5 IIRC which is closer to 130 kbit/s or so. For higher quality, but not lossless (storage was still expensive back then) I used Musepack. But high bitrate MP3 was almost never needed.
I don’t really have MP3-only use cases anymore, but back when I did, it was mostly where transparency was achieved rather easily, like listening to music on the go with… non-perfect headphones, and on those cases, I went with lame’s -V5 IIRC which is closer to 130 kbit/s or so. For higher quality, but not lossless (storage was still expensive back then) I used Musepack. But high bitrate MP3 was almost never needed.