edvin, I'm sorry I have to correct you - CD's are way beyond 320kb - CD's are closer to 9.5MB/minute (that's bytes(B), not bits(b)). Think about it - old CD's could hold about 680MB of data and a CD can hold about 72 minutes of music - 680MB/72min = 9.44MB/min.
The bitrate of an MP3 file refers loosely to it's quality. The higher the bitrate the more data is used each second to encode the audio. 320kb is a (perhaps) "near CD quality" MP3 encoding rate. Since MP3 is a "lossy" compression technique the lower the bitrate the more actual audio data is discarded and the worse it sounds. If I can, I always try and get MP3's at 320kb or at least 256kb (192kb if it's a must have and I can't find anything better). Personally I think 128kb MP3's sound like garbage. Many people do not care about the quality and are only concerned with size (faster download, and can store more on their players, etc.) in which case 128kb is an acceptable tradeoff.
I'm still waiting for an online music store that let's you purchase a low quality MP3 version of a song for portable players, etc. and a high (CD) quality WAV file for burning to CD. Once I can get that for $1 a song I'll be hooked. Paying $1 for a 128kb MP3 seems silly to me.
-Chuck
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