Old Rips: May They Rest in Peace - Members of the Napster generation, who blissfully piled up free tunes while they could, are realizing that the quality of low-bitrate MP3s sucks. Part one of a three-part series. By Dan Goodin. Plus: The Digital Audiophile's Toolbox [Movies & Music]

Finally a breakthrough with mp3s has come about us. An expert team of programmers of computer science and mathematics has been rigorously working on a new compression method called "lame."

This method works a little bit differently then previous methods of sound file compression. If you were to compress your favorite cd to 128kbs wmv or aac format it would sound a whole lot worse than the original cd in a car stereo or other high format music device. Lame successfully takes advantage of new high fidelity speakers and media players so that the quality of the music isn't hurt as much. In different tests performed, people couldn't even tell the difference between the cd quality music and the lame compressed quality.

So finally we have evolved the process of music quality compared to the recent evolution of video quality. Video quality has continually gotten into smaller mediums with better resolution and more vivid imagery. But music for the past ten years has only been put into smaller formats and lost most of the quality of the music itself. This is something I have been waiting for a very long time. I have complained over and over that I would not buy a portable music player device for the mp3 format until mp3s were at least as good as cd quality. I guess now it is time for me to give in and head to the apple store to purchase an ipod so I can join the rest of society. Thank you technology, this is another successful day to add to your diary.