[Altenuvian]

blaming the decline of the industry on the sound quality of mp3 is plain bs. well encoded mp3 with bitrates higher than 169kbps have repeatedly been shown indistinguishable from the original.

for an informed discussion and public listening test you may want to check the hydrogenaudio forums:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showforum=40

more background info in this article on audio codecs by christopher “monty” montgomery of ogg-vorbis fame:

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

[mechanical_fish]

See "Loudness War", above, and the comments below that one.

Yeah, MP3s can be great if producers actually use them for greatness.