I recently had a $25.00 credit with Amazon and decided to use it to purchase music. The entire process was easy and fast. I bought Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, and Queens of the Stone Age albums. At the same time, I bought a Rodney Crowell album from iTunes. All the Amazon downloads were MP3 256 kbps while Rodney was the typical AAC 128, and you guessed it, the MP3s sounded dull in their range even at the higher bit rate.
I burned these to CDs, and they still seemed to have lower fidelity- not horrible, but noticeable. I then read an article on the comparison, and while I knew Apple used a better format, I had no idea how much better.
Lesson learned.
