i have some newbie questions, sorry if it is tedious to answer
(im not concerning sample rates in these questions e.g. 44.1khz)

1)do bitrates of wav files vary, or is there a standard?

2)can the human ear hear the difference between a wav and mp3 320 bit

3)what about between a mp3 128 bitrate vs 320?

4)lets say you burn 10 wav's songs to a cd, it's the same as burning 10 mp3's (any bitrate quality) right, because it gets converted into analog audio and then to cda format anyway?

1) Wav files all have the same bit rate. It's something like 1141 or around that.

2) Yes. MP3's cut out the high and low fequencies that you can't hear so this means your bass won't be as deep and I've also been told that high frequencies that you can't hear help round out the music too.

3) The quality. 320 will have deeper bass and an overall better sound to it than 128.

4) No. Like I said before, MP3's cut out frequencies where as WAV files don't. You aren't getting the full sound if you covert you files to MP3 and then burn it to CD.

) i thought it was 1400. no biggie, whatever it's high.

2)the whole reason why mp3s work pretty well and are small files is because of how your ears or should I say auditory cortex (brain) works. There are certain things in an audio signal that can be cut out and you won't even nottice. If you cut the right things you won't really hear much of a difference because you brain will tend to interpolate some things and "fill in gaps". That's how hearing works and how vision works as well. MP3's take advantage of that to dump alot of information that wav files and CD's have.

3) ohyeah. what (e) said.

4)I'm slightly confused what the question is. I think you mean that if you have mp3's and you convert them to wav and burn them, will they sound the same as the original CD in the store would. I think the answer is no. I have lots of CD's that started out as mp3s and I think they do sound slightly different.

It really depends on what you are playing the music on too. If you are playing music through a small stereo or a portable music player etc then mp3's are fine but if you start playing mp3's (especially at 128 or less) on a larger stereo or on a good audio system then you can really notice the difference in sound.

Very true, I tend to try and rip CD's at least 160kbps... also, the type of encoder you use can make a huge difference, Ive found. Some encoders are efficient then others, and with the least efficient ones, you're not really getting the bang for your buck, if you know what I mean. Even though the program annoys the f-cuk outa me, Musicmatch Jukebox has one of the best encoders I've found so far.

I use the Creative Audio Converter that came with my soundcard, pretty versatile and works very well.

It doesn't work for wma or mp1's though

You don't want wma or mp1 anyway...two bad file formats there.

I agree with Frogi too in saying that different encoders do different quality. Some make the mp3's more bassy, some make it more tinny sounding so I guess you've got to trial a little bit.