Difference between wav and mp3

[RainbowStorm]

How do you describe the difference between wav and mp3 (320kbit/s) in terms of sound quality?

In my book (when using my Denon hifi system) the space between tones is much cleaner in wav. The high-end is thinner and the low end is a bit smoother. This yields a much cleaner more ambient sound. Mp3 files are more compact and thick sounding overall. You can't hear the ambience quite as well, the hi-end is dramatically distorted. The muddy air between tones and the rather sharp high-end yields a clearly less beautiful sound. I hope the mp3 format will soon be gone...

I hope it will be gone soon, too. Meanwhile I'll use and really dig m4a/aac.
It's all a matter of bandwidth until we can get uncompressed audio via the internet.

As for difference: uncompressed does sound a bit cleaner, brighter and more "detailed" than mp3 to me. Which is pretty obvious especially with lower bitrates (lower meaning 128/160/192). 320kbit/s mp3 was my "standard" for compression before aac came along. When space is not an issue I like using Lossless now or 320kbit/s aac if space is an issue.

[tamakid1292]

wav is uncompressed
mp3 is some parts that you dont here very well are just taken out of the song