Thanks again for all your help and suggestions. I may actually end up simply using 256kbs MP3 but as suggested, I need to prove it to myself. As someone who works with clinical trials everyday, I understand and occasionally use SBTs when evaluating components or tweaks.

First though, I need to figure out how to make the test disc???

Well, I ripped two songs and then encoded it into a wav and into a 256kbs MP3. When played back on my PC, I can tell no difference between the two. I'd like to see if I can tell the difference on my real system, but I'm not so sure how to burn a CDR so that the files remain in their current format?

I tried simply burning an audio CDR but all the files look identical with track1, track2 and all the files being shown as 1k or 44b in size regardless.

Did I make a proper copy of these files or did my burn program convert the files all into standard CD resolution?

Could someone tell this rookie how to step by step burn the encoded files from my hard drive to a CDR?