Napster and Sound Quality

I have been using the UK version of Napster since July or so. I must say I really do enjoy streaming music this way. To pay a fixed fee for my music needs is just what I have wanted to do for a long time.

Sad part is that it costs money to transfer to portable device. Hmm. Well, still... nice to atleast have a lot of music available when I am online.

One thing that has been bothering me lately is the difference in sound quality between streamed and downloaded music. Streaming music comes in 96kbps whereas downloaded music is 128kbps. Difference is just huge on some tracks. Just listened to The Eagles / Their Greatest Hits, and the quality of the streaming music was directly poor. Download the files (free) then it is as good as anything.

I guess the reason why Napster does it like this is due to both bandwidth cost as well as pure load on the servers, something which makes sense... but then again, the streaming concept kind of dies when I have to download to have the proper quality...