CDs ? MP3s?

I rip my CDs to my computer plus downloads (some legal)
CDs are in my car though

^ Did you ever consider the possibility that when you can hear a difference between CD and MP3 it might be simply because the MP3 was ripped from a different source? For example, maybe you have a remastered CD but the MP3 you found on the internet (legal or illegal, doesn't matter for this consideration) was ripped from a different version of the album, or even from an analog copy through tape or vinyl?

I'm very sure that if you rip a CD to MP3 yourself, with a proper, modern codec and at least 256kbit, you can't hear the difference.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ Altec Lansing? It's surely not a bad brand, but switching to a 2.1 system could be a huge improvement at little cost. My personal recommendation:

With these speakers Walter will already feel the difference between high and low bitrate files. Listening to his collection will not be as pleasurable any more

I saw this article in a hi-fi magazine once, where they had a variety of professionals testing different formats and set-ups. They were blindfolded, so they did not know which was which, and in the end, vinyl was the clear winner. I reckon it's because it does sound most like audio should, after all, it's completely analog, isn't it :D

anyway, I love hunting for old vinyls and then listening to them scratch on my player. Though nowadays old discs cost more than cds, easily. I can't find a copy of In The Court of the Crimson King for less then 30€ here. And they're all used of course.

^ My problem is that I'm a skilled and experienced musician ... and I've come to trust my ears. I don't hear a difference, you say you hear one. Between my own first hand experience and your claim, I choose my experience, especially since it is backed by the study I linked to above and many other comments that I've read - and heard - over the years. I've never ever met anybody who could prove that claim (that they could hear a difference between CD and high quality MP3), but there are plenty of independent studies that showed that people were not able to make the distinction.

And the whole vinyl thing has been discussed to death too ... the format is inherently inferior to CD. I love vinyls, I collect them and enjoy listening to them. There may even be some albums that I prefer to listen to on vinyl than on CD or MP3 ... but I'm sure that this has nothing to do with them being superior ... the mix could simply be different (vinyl is usually mastered differently than linear mediums).

^ You can still give emusic a try ... even if you only start with a download plan of 10-20 tracks per month, you can save quite some money. Over the years I downloaded 412 albums there, and I never ever encountered a badly ripped file. Rather the reverse ... some of their files are well beyond 256kbps on average. The new Peter Hammill album that I downloaded a few hours ago only has about 210kbps ... that's because there's not so much going on in the music frequency-wise (it's piano and vocals much of the time). Sounded amazing ... at least to my ears.

I prefer Mp3 to CD's now, in fact my CD's are beginning to gather dust and I would still put vinyl before CD as a preference