Ok I think maybe I'm not quite normal but I do all my music listening using the PC as a source. I got rid of my home CD player which was a decent Yamaha unit. I'm just wondering out there if anyone has done some real testing to see how close MP3 quality comes to CD. I did some of my own listening tests and found it close enough that I can dump the CD player.

Just today I have decided to convert all my CD's to MP3. My choice of software was AudioGrabber. I also got the latest reliable version of the lame DLL which Audiograbber will use to encode with. I decided that space is not as much of a concern as quality so I set it to 320KBPS with Stereo (not joint stereo). I used to use Blade for encoding before and it was good to but most people seem to feel that LAME is better so I switched to that.

As for sound card, I have an OEM version of the Audigy which seems good. Its not as good as my old ISA card which was a Guillemot Maxisound Home Studio 64pro (long enough name?). That one seemed just a tad better for music playback but new MB does not have ISA..oh well.

The soundcard feeds an old Rotel RC-870BX pre-amp which in turn goes to an old Soundcraftsmen PM860 205wpc power amp. The speakers are ones that I built myself which turned out very nice. Vifa 1" silk domes, Vifa 5.25" woofer. The crossover is a simple 6db/oct. The thing is damn heavy because I went mental and built the cabinet out of 1" MDF except for the front which is two layers of 1" (2" total). Its also braced internally. Didnt want resonance. Anyway it was my first attemt at a full range speaker (not just a subwoofer) and I didnt want to comprimise. Anyway it turned out great. I had a pair of Sound Dynamics speakers which these replaced.

So now I'm just wondering if all that was worth it. I mean now that I have the better speakers, if I was to get my Yamaha CD player back, would I really hear a difference at 320 KBPS?

Does anyone else have a high end sound setup which they use their computer drive and how close is the output from a quality soundcard to being anywhere close to audiophile levels?

Wow that was a long post. Sorry guys. Anyway give me some opinions.