IMHO:

1. You're in a car. The car is usually MOVING, or you wouldn't be in it. Engine noise, tire noise, wind noise, traffic noise, etc, etc, are many orders of magnitude more noticable than CD vs mp3 at *any* bitrate, but especially at 256kb CBR, or something like that. I've never been able to understand this discussion and I usually stay out of it. A car is NOT an ideal listening environment in the best situation. People do the same thing with home stereos, too, spending thousands of dollars to get a tiny fraction of the difference that making easy changes to their listening room would make.

I, respectfully, submit that this all has *nothing* to do with sound quality...

2. Analog recording doesn't mean lower quality than digital recording. Some recordings suck. Some are even released out of phase (I have no idea how this can happen). I agree that many CDs sound bad. If the source sucks, it will still suck as an MP3, obviously.

I really doubt that, even on a many-thousand-dollar car audio system, many people could reliably discriminate between 256kb/sec mp3 and uncompressed files played from the same source. I'm sure some could. I'd bet my next paycheck that they couldn't at 70mph.

Jim