Guys, a single speed CD's data is read at 150 kb/s. That's how much data is contained in a second of 44khz, 16 bit, stereo uncompressed audio. To prove my point, look at an 80 minute cd which is appx. ~700 mb's.
At 150 kb/s: 150(kb)*60(sec) = 9000 kb (1 minute of music)
9000(kb)*80(min)/1024(# of kb's in an mb) = 703.125 (size of an 80 mb cd)
1411 kb/s is something you see Microsoft Windows reference as the playback bandwidth of wav files, and to be honest I don't know where they came up with figure. IF your data was being read at 1411 kb/s, an audio CD would need to be over 6600 mb's!
The same mystery figure goes for mp3's and streaming music. Think about it. How many times in the past have you guys listened to an audio stream off the net claiming 48 kb/s quality or higher on a dialup connection? We all know that dialup cannot sustain speeds of more than 4.5 kb/s on a good day, so what gives. Sure streaming music and mp3's are heavily compressed, but an audio CD is not, so where does the inflated number come from in that instance? I've gone onto tech forums asking this same question and never really got a good explanation, so anyone who feels they can elaborate further, please do.
As for quality of mp3's, yes the higher bitrate the better, but you have to know that even your 320 kb mp3's are taking something away from the music, if they didn't the size of the file wouldn't be so drastically reduced. And regardless of the bitrate, during playback in your car or on your home stereo it still has to be converted back to the native bitrate of your playback source, which ends up to be 44 khz 16 bit stereo audio with a 150 kb/s bitrate.
