I've been using itunes for years now and have my entire collection of cds and music that I have bought and downloaded on an external USB drive.
the sound quality has always been a little suspect. Mushy and electronic. Although it's worse with the items I've downloaded - 128, it's not great even with the burned music at 192. the sounds card in on the motherboard and runs to some yamaha desk speakers and to an input on my receiver to push out to the rest of the house. All the speakers sound the same -so it's not the speakers - is it the card, the program, the bit rate, or a combination of it all - any suggestions on how to get better quality of sound from this kind of set up. Thanks so much
You have it all wrong. It is the compression. You are removing bits from the original file. Use a lossless method and it should be better, but the key is the source. If your source is garbage, you will get garbage.
You also need to change your speakers and perhaps the receiver as well...Heck, change the whole set-up