I generally listen to music in my car (decent stereo, the "stock" CD player and speakers that come with a Honda Pilot) and on my computer (good, but not great, Altec Lansing speakers with a sub-woofer).
It's been years since I've had a "traditional" stereo system, and I've never had an "audiophile" setup, so the concerns that group of folks would have over sound quality really don't apply to me.
If I am ripping MP3s from a CD, I never do it at less than 192 MBPS. An MP3 with a bitrate of 320 KPBS is the closest you're going to get to uncompressed audio from a CD.
When an MP3 is created, the "compression rate" tells the program how to sample the file...which pieces of information can be discarded to create a smaller file size. Once again, most people will not hear the loss of this data on an iPod, car stereo, etc.
If you Google...as an example..."Rhapsody MP3 bitrate," you'll get a number of search results telling you the bitrate of the MP3s they sell.
Here's the definition of bitrate:
Bitrate
Bitrate, as the name implies, describes the rate at which bits are transferred from one location to another. In other words, it measures how much data is transmitted in a given amount of time. Bitrate is commonly measured in bits per second (bps), kilobits per second (Kbps), or megabits per second (Mbps). For example, a DSL connection may be able to download data at 768 kbps, while a Firewire 800 connection can transfer data up to 800 Mbps.
Bitrate can also describe the quality of an audio or video file. For example, an MP3 audio file that is compressed at 192 Kbps will have a greater dynamic range and may sound slightly more clear than the same audio file compressed at 128 Kbps. This is because more bits are used to represent the audio data for each second of playback. Similarly, a video file that is compressed at 3000 Kbps will look better than the same file compressed at 1000 Kbps. Just like the quality of an image is measured in resolution, the quality of an audio or video file is measured by the bitrate.
http://www.techterms.com/definition/bitrate
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