I've heard that the compressed mp3 is actually missing a lot of information that the original recording has.
How many of you have no problem listening to mp3's through you system?

This is a topic that comes up periodically. Last time Alan stated that in the tests he participated in, people were not able to tell the difference between cd/lp and high bitrate mp3.

I don't listen to compressed music on my Axioms, kinda defeats the purpose of having nice speakers. I leave MP3's for my cell/mp3 phone.

I've not had any issues with mp3's. They all sound just fine to me but perhaps I am not all that critical a listener. I have noticed that poorly recorded CD's sound so on my 80's, but I also could hear that on my M3's as well.

It really depends on how the mp3 was created. The higher the bit rate, the less information is missing from the track, the higher the perceived quality.

I remember reading a good idea - probably here - that involved making a CD with a single song, but with multiple mp3 bit rates, then playing the CD randomly in a "blind test" fashion, to see if you can tell what bit rate you're listening to without looking at the track number.

I only use mp3 for my (now old) portable player which I only use on planes - a decidedly less than perfect environment. Everything else is store is flac (fully lossless compression). Drive space is so cheap.

Why would you ever want to listen to lower quality recordings with such good speakers?

Try out a 128 bit mp3 for a song with a lot of high frequencies, cymbals and the like, then try a 256 or 320 bit file. I personally find that the dramatic increases in sound quality stop at about 192 bit, and it's pretty incremental after that.

What is "fully lossless compression"?

"Why would you ever want to listen to lower quality recordings with such good speakers?"

That's why I asked the question.

"FLAC reduces bandwidth and storage requirements without sacrificing the integrity of the audio source."

And the application of that is using a hardrive or can that also be used to burn cd's? What is the original source when using FLAC?

lossless means there is no compression, hence the term lossless.

That's incorrect, Randy. Lossless compression is still compression. The lossless means that no information is discarded by the compression algorithm. In other words, when the file is decompressed (which is done in real time during playback), the audio exactly matches the original.