CD-R's vs. CD-RW's

Rockbox was not clueless>. He just said it bluntly. A CD file is about 50Meg, while the MP3 counterpart is only 4Meg! This means that there is less information in MP3.

If one cannot distinguish between a original CD recording and one made from MP3, either he is using a 'lo-fi' system or he doesn't have a pair of 'high-end' ears.

Obviously we have a few uneducated people when it comes to mp3's here. If you download a high bitrate file and you have a high quality soundcard they sound excellent. I use the TOSLINK output on my soundcard and feed it directly to my DAC. If the mp3 file was encoded properly the sound quality should be excellent. It's not as easy as just saying "mp3's suck". a 320 kbit/sec mp3 file is right around a 50% compression of the original. Compared to dvd's, minidisc, etc. this is a very low amount of compression. I've encoded several of my audiophile cd's to mp3's and then played them back side by side with the originals and only a couple of times have I noticed any difference and even then it was enough to leave me doubting whether or not the difference existed.

Grumpybb - what sound card are you using? For some reason the SB series (not exactly high-end) will only output 48K which obviously implies a conversion going on. I've hesitated to buy a high-end sound card for $400 or so because you're paying a lot for incoming sampling for recording and a bunch of stuff I probably won't do. I just want to read the bits from the CD and output them directly (digitally) at 44.1Kb, and am looking for an appropriately priced card that will do that well.

I am using the soundcard that came with my computer. It is a Sony VAIO PC-V308. It is 2 years old now. I don't think the newer VAIO's come with it anymore. I wanted to get a Zefiro ZA2 soundcard but my computer doesn't have any ISA slots which is necessary for the Zefiro.