I downloaded my copy of In Rainbows last night. I've listened to it a couple of times, but it was whilst working so it did not have my full attention. It's definitely Radiohead. It is not a massive change of direction by any means. That's not necessarily a bad thing as what they were doing was good to my ears. I'm happy with it so far and will wait to see which tracks grow on me most.

I've seen some comments around about the bit rate of the files. I've not confirmed myself if it is CBR or VBR. I can't see any reason why it should be the former. Is there any software or hardware in use that doesn't do VBR? It's going to give you slightly better quality for a given file size. I'm fairly sure that the old BBC Beethoven downloads were something like 128kb CBR, which is just silly, especially for classical music. I accept that your average listener would not know what I am on about, but I think it matters. They may have been brainwashed in the past that 128kb in some form was 'CD quality', but it isn't. Higher rates definitely sound better to me, but I would struggle to tell a CD from anything over 200kb. As for recent claims that MP3 and other lossy formats only contain 10% of the information, that's rubbish too. Most of what they get rid of is what you can't hear.

There's a lot of rubbish talked about audio quality in general. A recent Slashdot story generated a lot of discussion of 'audiophile gadgets', from $7000 speaker cables to $500 volume knobs, to magical digital clocks, to system upgrades over the phone?!?. Various examples listed here. I'd love to have a reasonable set-up to listen to my music on, but I'm not sure I could bring myself to spend more than a few hundred on a CD player, amp and speakers, with some reasonable cables. Still, I suppose it's not a crime to take peoples' money if it is given willingly.