wav v.s mp3 comparison question

When you put your songs on your final product CD, those are the wav. files. Correct? But when you put them say on myspace, those are limited to mp3 files. Correct? It seems the waves are larger and better quality. Correct? So when you download a song or album from say amazon or itunes is that the lower quality mp3?

You are correct.

Many "MP3" players will let you load waves too.  I have a Sansa Sandisk and I load waves on it all the time...along with MP3's.

The trick with MP3's is to use the highest bit rate you can. I use 320kb rates and the results are fairly good.

Some sites like soundclick will limit the size of the file you can upload to 10MB on free accounts. That has blocked me a time or two..... all I do is convert it a second time from WAVE to MP3 using the next bit rate lower.... 256kb (? I think) which makes for a smaller file and that usually fits.

Some sites will automatically encode a 128kb version from your higher bit rate file. Sound click does this.

Some sites will allow the higher bit rates and that makes for a better sounding tune.

When you put your songs on your final product CD, those are the wav. files. Correct? But when you put them say on myspace, those are limited to mp3 files. Correct? It seems the waves are larger and better quality. Correct? So when you download a song or album from say amazon or itunes is that the lower quality mp3?

Correct on all counts.

However, it is possible to create an MP3 whose perceived quality is comparable to an uncompressed wave and still be quite a bit smaller. Many online downloads are going to be aggressively-compressed files, trading quality for size. This is especially true for streaming samples like the ones you can play on Amazon. But if you pay for a download, it should be a much higher quality, perhaps even indistinguishable from the original wave.

Herb - i think Soundclick will even dither your 256kbps down to 128 regardless of being less than 10meg, the paid-for Soundclick you could have higher quality, but last time i looked that didn't seem to be an option anymore...
anyhow, you'd have to have a darn good ear to hear much difference between 320kbps mp3 and a dithered 16/44.1 wav...personally i think 24/48 does sound better, but unless you have dvd-a that isn't much use as end-product!