I just find it truly bizarre how the audiophile "high" end and the consumer quality "low" end are becoming more and more seperated.

On the low end some encoding schemas offer up to 20x compression with "acceptable" quality loss. Mp3 encoding is terrible from a quality standpoint. It sacrafices quality for small file size. The reasoning behind which is that the sounds the Mp3 encoding process removes in compressing the file would be lost anyway in real world playback. Even using VBR encoding, it still is far from audiophile quality.

On the high end is the DVD audio format. Boasting better than CD quality sound, but at the price of a massive increase in space consumed (storage space, not physical space).

Now does any of the current or upcoming encoding schemas occupy a quasi-middle ground. Namely, do any of them offer a compression ratio close to or better than Mp3 while at the same time offering audiophile quality?

Ogg Vorbis is a nice all around format, but still not exactly up to audiophile specs.

I have yet to check out Mp+ or VQF, but I will as soon as I get home.

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"I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates who once said, 'I Drank What?'"