pS- Audiophiles don\'t use compression.
Yes they do.
You need to keep in mind that #1 there is no clear definition as to waht makes one an audiophile(long story)
#2 many people I know whom own $20,000 systems still like to use portable cd players/mp3-hard drive)(with separate mini headphone amp)
#3 alot of people choose to use there computer as a medium to stream-out audio to there a reciver, as comression allows them to store thousands of song on there HDD, rather than having to insert a cd for every song. Now you might ask why stream from the computer when CD\'s possses higher quality sound, the answer is simple: In my personal and professional opinion, unless you own expensive audio gear-above strarting at around the $3000 mark then a
properly ripped wav-converted to quality 8 mp3-Ogg will not have any difference to the ear than the wav. Alot of times the Placebo effect is the audiophiles worst enemy.
They largest blind study done(year 2000) by Harvard I believe, took somewhere near 5,000 so-called audiophiles, ripped the music(with the best possible program/settings(might hAVE been EAC) encoded in MP3 256kbits and the majority of them could not tell the difference between the CD and mp3. You see they never were told which was which. That\'s why I strongly believe in Blind studys, as the mind can no longer play tricks on you.