Originally posted by: Trooperman
I can very easily tell the difference between mp3 and uncompressed WAV. Especially with orchestral music. I don't know how to describe it... cycling? Wahwahwah.... It's very obvious.
I know there are different methods of encoding mp3's, but based on the mp3's I've heard, CD's beat mp3's any day.
In fact, I was in the car with a friend and he had on a Star Wars soundtrack CD. I could instantly hear it was a compressed copy. I asked him about it and sure enough, it was not the original album. He had burned mp3's.
I have to agree with Arnie; I love the physicality of a disc, not to mention the liner notes and the case and so on. I don't like downloading music.
Did you ask him what bit rate he compressed it at? Sure, if it was 128k (the default in 99% of programs) or lower, it's pretty easily noticed. At 192k or higher, it's indistinguishable. In fact, a lot of people, at one time, were encoding at 320k to lose as little quality as possible. It turns out though that 192k is the sweet spot for mp3. Lower bit rates will sound worse. Higher ones won't sound any better though.
To my ears and on my speakers (no, I don't have a $2000 speaker system and I won't buy one) the mp3s encoded at 192k are indistinguishable from the CDs. Having them as mp3s lets me take them practically anywhere. The CDs not only have to be handled more carefully, but they're harder to transport.
Besides, I honestly wouldn't want to risk scratching any of my discs, let alone my Star Wars CDs. Rip them to the computer once and then put them away.
Originally posted by: Arnie.d
Originally a Compact Disc was to be 115mm/60 minutes. But Philips and Sony decided one disc should be able to contain Beethoven's 9th symphony (which is 74 min.) so playing time was strectched to 74 minutes (120mm). Also the size of the hole is based on a 10 (guilder)cent coin from Holland (one of the inventors of the CD is from Holland).
And then that got stretched up to 80 min sometime around 1999. At least it did with CD-Rs. 
