Pete,
I agree with the findings of the double blind test. What Nyquist's theorem proves is that digital recording will cause no loss of quality at all and therefore analogue won't sound better, but LPs & tapes will have the noise etc that we became accustomed to :o)

Sorry, already broke my promise above!

I originally got Cool Edit when it was shareware and upgraded to Cool Edit Pro, when it was released, via the internet from Syntrillium. Looking at an Aussie ad I think it's wildly overpriced here. BTW it's also a multi track recorder although I use Musicator Audio for that purpose.

The MP3 site has links for downloading software in a number of categories, including MP3 encoders & decoders/players. I found "Plugger", a freeware encoder to be the fastest. It runs like a DOS program, so you can write a batch file to process several files together. Winamp may be the best decoder/player. It's shareware but cheap.

If you decide to go ahead with any of this contact me & I'll give you details of the methods I use.

Cheers,
Alan