“Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.”
You’re not alone, but it’s not so much a limitation of MP3s (you can always throw bitrate at them; somewhere around 200 kbps they become acoustically equivalent to CDs; somewhere around 350 kbps they become nearly equivalent to master tapes) as of either storage space or expectations.
Also, the codec is the least notable part of the medium, and easily swapped. Apple seamlessly juggles AIFF, Apple Lossless, MP3, AAC and more within iTunes; other programs do even more.
Byrne’s entry is a little odd in that it understands the problem (typical MP3 encoding rates make for noticeable sound deterioration) without understanding the fundamental problem (bitrates rather than the nature of the format, or even the medium).
You can scroll right easily by holding down the SHIFT key and using your scroll wheel. (Firefox users trying this will end up jumping to old Web pages until a) Firefox releases a fix, b) they change their settings like so.)
