I agree with you that the differences are only distinguishable at home: the car is such a bad listening environment (shape / size / speaker placement / speaker quality / electrical noise) that the differences are probably hardly noticeable even if one were able to eliminate engine and traffic noise (even tanstaafl. may agree . . . do you Doug?)

Not really, Henno. Yes, the typical slap/dash car installation, put the CD player in, play it through the miserable factory speakers, then crank the bass up as high as it will go so the subwoofers in the trunk can annoy the neighbors.... you're right.

But I have seen cars in competition with incredible sound systems -- one Lexus that I know of has a system that we onlookers estimate at over $40,000 (the owner won't say one way or another) and while my own system is pretty good, the Lexus puts it to shame. You've told me a little bit about your own home system, and yes, it probably is better than even the Lexus... but from your description, there probably aren't very many stereos on the whole planet to equal yours.

A car can be an excellent listening environment IF PROPERLY CONFIGURED for the very reasons you cite as making it a poor environment. The fact the the environment is so.... finite means that you can do some very specific tuning without having to deal with the variables involved in a large, unsealed room. It just takes a bit more work to find the right speakers to work with the amount of air volume in your car; the right locations for the speakers to work with the shape of the interior and the rake of the windshield and the different materials and reflective surfaces; some of the best quality speakers available are made for in-car audio, such as MB Quart; the same could be said about amplifiers. One of the things that is driving the push towards quality car audio is the audio competition environment; many cars do a quite respectable job of filtering out road, engine, traffic, and electrical noise, and by the time you have the volume cranked up to 90 decibels or so (for some reason the very ambience of a moving car seems to encourage playing the music louder than you would at home, irrespective of any external noise) all you'll hear is the music, you won't hear anything else, and that music can sound very good.

Whether you'd pick up on the subtleties of 192Kbps vs 128 Kbps.... I have no first hand experience on that. I think I would. Little things like the brightness of the treble might give it away. Toni (oops, pardon me, Tony) might be able to verify an analogy: is a comparison between 128 and 192 Kbps similar to a comparison between the original Rush CDs and the re-masters? If so, then I can absolutely promise and guarantee that I will be able to tell the difference, at least in my car.

tanstaafl.

ps: sorry to be so slow in responding to this -- I've been "off-line" for the past two weeks...

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"