Hi,

I was wondering if anyone here has done some blind comparisons of very high quality compressed music vs the originals off the cds.

I had my car broken into a couple years ago and the cd deck was stolen along with the original which was still in it. From that I learned to backup all my original cds, and keep copies in my car in case it gets stolen, damaged, etc.

I also keep a copy of all my cds in MP3 form on my computer encoded at 320kbps. I have also gotten pretty much hooked on buying music through iTunes and Musicmatch. I have no problem paying for the music I listen to, I just disagree with paying $20+ for a regular cd when DVD-A is around $25-$30. $5 to $10 for an album online is much more reasonable IMO.

The tracks off of iTunes is encoded in 128kbps MPEG-4, and Musicmatch is 160kbps WMA.

Has anyone actually heard a difference between the original CD and cds converted from 128kbps MP4, 160kbps WMA, and 320kbps MP3?

My Ascend / Hsu speakers should get here on tuesday, I was wondering if the albums I purchased online wouldn't sound right with such accurate speakers.

Cheers,
Ray