Quote Originally Posted by Groundbeef
Also, I am not sure if you are aware, but you can select the amount of compression that you want your songs delivered to your computer with. I have selected 320kbs, but you can go down as low as 16kbs, but I cant imagine that rate is any good.
Just curious where you saw this? Are you referring to the iTunes Store? I don't see that indicated anywhere on the site. The iTunes Store support page reads.

"Purchased songs are encoded using MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format, a high-quality format that rivals CD quality. Songs purchased and downloaded from the Music Store are AAC Protected files and have a bitrate of 128 kilobits per second (kbit/s). The file extension is .m4p."

You can set iTunes to rip from CD at many bitrates but this, to my knowledge doesn't effect downloads from the store.

...and that bit about "rivals CD quality" may be true...if you compare it to wax cylinders...