Hear What's Missing?

You may not have realized that the song playing through the earbuds of your MP3 player is actually a lower-quality, digitally compressed version of the original recording.

But try playing that same MP3 file on a high-end home stereo system and you'll likely hear some hisses and snaps and pops in the music -- even if you bought it from a download service such as iTunes or ripped it from your own copy of the original CD.

MP3 music files, much like the Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) formats, are created by removing some of the undetectable data in the music track through a process known as "lossy compression."

What that means is the track has been reduced to about one-tenth of its original size, which makes for faster downloads and allows thousands of songs, instead of hundreds, to fit on a portable player.

So, what's a music aficionado to do when he or she wants the best of both worlds: high-quality music and portability? Actually, there are a few options.

The latest comes from a Nevada company that last week launched Musicgiants.com, a music download service designed for those folks who want high-quality digital music tracks.

For a $50 annual membership fee, users can download high-quality tracks for $1.29 each -- a bit more than the 99 cents that iTunes and others are charging for a single track but much higher in quality.

The average music file available via Napster, iTunes, Rhapsody and others is compressed to anywhere from 128 kilobits per second to 192 kbps. The files available on Musicgiants.com are compressed in a range from 470 kbps to 1,100 kbps.

Even if you don't know what a kilobit is, there's a standard rule of thumb for understanding digital music downloads: the higher the number of kilobits, the better the sound quality.

But be forewarned: A higher number also makes for a larger file, and that means hard drives are filled faster and portable music players will hold fewer songs.

Because higher-fidelity formats produce files approximately half the space of the CD track but are still substantially larger than an average MP3, the tracks downloaded through Musicgiants.com are ideal for someone who has made the investment in a home stereo, said company chief executive Scott Bahneman.

It's not a bad way to go. But there are other ways of maintaining the superior quality of original recordings and still reduce the file size on a computer: using file formats known as "lossless," an industry buzzword for files that preserve songs without compacting them so much.