As much as Im' a fan of studio monitors - they're built for the sound engineer to do his work, not blow his hearing, and hear the details he needs to hear. He'

As much as Im' a fan of studio monitors - they're built for the sound engineer to do his work, not blow his hearing, and hear the details he needs to hear. He's not producing music to be listened on those speakers, though - he's producing music to be listened to on a wide variety of playback situations, none of which match what he's working with, and he knows it. If he made stuff only to sound perfect on his gear, it would suck everywhere else. Instead, he makes things to sound good on whatever it needs to (whatever that is in a given situation, I don't know). That said - I'm the first to stand up and prefer a pair of nice towers and a decent amp, even if it's 20 years old -vs- some tiny "sound good" speakers. Those are fine for the family-room surround setup, with the big subwoofer that rumbles the house, but the secret bat-cave has only a nice little amp, a couple of nice towers (and a few good headphones for various types of music when it's quiet-time). mp3's, or any compressed music, are just fine if they've been recorded well, I think arguments based on those formats are ill-conceived; like anything, if you don't use the format properly it's not going to work well. I've found that a 192kbps mp3 can occasionally sound different than the source CD, but in a blind test I could only tell you that they were different - not which one was the CD - both sound good... and that difference could probably be engineered out in the majority of cases. Which isn't to say I don't have some humungous high-bitrate stuff hanging around - but I like to enjoy my music, not obsess over it or blow rediculous money on audiophile gear. (okay - one pair of really good headphones - so sue me)