So I got home from work early yesterday because I kind of ran out of stuff to do and I felt like utter crap like I was exhausted and someone had been beating on my joints and back with a sock full of sand and I went to walk my dog and despite the fact it was like 15 degrees I went from freezing my ass off to sweating during that short walk and when I got back in I took my temperature and it was 102F (38.8C). No wonder I've felt so run down the last few days! So back to the mp3 thing. Outside of a studio situation where the room is acoustically tuned and the speakers are studio monitors and the signal path is short and high quality I don't believe any of you could tell the difference between a cd and a 192kbps rip of that cd if the mp3 encoder is set to encode up to or above 20khz. I've noticed that the default setting for most encoders is to stop encoding above 16khz which is inaudible to most people but is pretty noticeable to me both in the sound of the instruments, etc. and the "warmth" of the recording. So let's say we're all over at some excellent bar that's got, say, a Klipsch speaker array driven by a couple of Crown amps that are 30 feet away from the NAD pre-amp, and the cd and cd-r are being played on a Pioneer DVD player. Between the ambient noise of the bar and the wiring and the crappy components I'd say in a series of blind tests you'd hit random. Same thing in my car driving down the road, smoking a joint, swigging on a half pint of Evan Williams (mmmmmmm), heading up into the mountains... Anyway, my mp3 player is really cool looking. It's got these light bars that move like meters and it scrolls the song names (doesn't do that with cd's unless you program them in yourself) and there's this SHDB button that boosts the bass to the point where a good 30hz B will make your bowels loosen... I don't usually play it that loud but you get the idea. Ok, back to bed. _________________________________ www.psychicreform.com Change your mind. _________________________________ Things are more like they are now than they ever were before. --Zippy the Pinhead _________________________________