Do you hear the distortion on any other "ripped" music"? If so you may be hearing why I and others feel that MP3 files are not "audiophile" quality. Ethan is ignoring me, hah. So he may not chip in and tell you what you're hearing is the product of comb filtering or some other ridiculous reason.

The burn speed that you made the disc at might be too fast too. Try burning another copy at a slower speed. Say maybe half of the maximum of your burner.

try this: listen to any MP3 you have on your computer or burned on a CD and listen very closely to the cymbals (this is where it is most apparent, more so with crash cymbals) nearly everyone can hear high-frequency distortion on MP3s and other compressed audio formats. and of course once youve heard this, every little distortion, masking and yes even comb-filtering will become more and more apparent.

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try this: listen to any MP3 you have on your computer or burned on a CD and listen very closely to the cymbals (this is where it is most apparent, more so with crash cymbals) nearly everyone can hear high-frequency distortion on MP3s and other compressed audio formats. and of course once youve heard this, every little distortion, masking and yes even comb-filtering will become more and more apparent.

While this is more true for rates 128 and below, this is a good way to train one's self to hear some of the more easily detected compression artifacts.

And it is very true that once you learn it, you can't ignore it. At least that's true for me.

I remember when MP3 hit the street, people were cheering about 64kb/s quality for stereo. Now the same people are up to 192 or 320 kb/s for stereo.

Listener training at work.

Now, I can't wait to see what happens with MPEG Surround, Parameteric Stereo, and HEAAC in this regard. People like it now, or at least some, do.

as far as film goes 6-channel discreet PCM around 96kHz sounds like a good standard to me I suppose DSD film soundtracks would be a good option as well

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as far as film goes 6-channel discreet PCM around 96kHz sounds like a good standard to me I suppose DSD film soundtracks would be a good option as well

You might introduce a few editing problems there, though. DSD is an "interesting" format to work with, and that's not in a good kind of "interesting" unless you like very large, highspeed processors.

I've always heard MP3s compression MOST in cymbals and the upper harmonic information of acoustic guitars. Outside of that the compression also greatly reduces soundstaging depth as well.

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I've always heard MP3s compression MOST in cymbals and the upper harmonic information of acoustic guitars. Outside of that the compression also greatly reduces soundstaging depth as well.

Well, I think I just said that, but, yeah.