Why is the quality of a MP3 digital recording worse that a CD digital recording?

An MP3 file is a digital encoding of a pure music file. You get to pick the rate of the encode. It can range from 32 to 320. While 32 is good for spoken word (a lot of old time radio was put out in that format to save space), your symphony orchestra sampled at 32 or 64 or 80 would sound pretty horrible. Of course, there are other compression techniques, but it's hard to play them on you MP3 player :-)

They claim 192 is "CD quality", but most encoding today is either 256 or 320. If you want to spend a half day Googling mp3 audio quality, have at it. Here's a start http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/11/30/...