[Richard Crowley]

"Dave" wrote ...
I guess my last statement of which you speak illustrates the depth of my
non-understanding. You have a source which is 64KHz or 64,000 samples per
second. It sounds pretty crappy compared to a commercial CD, which is
recorded at 44,100 samples per second.

Why is this?

I'm obviously missing something very very basic. I've heard it tossed
about that 192Kbps is about where you need to be with mp3 encoding rate
for CD quality, yet CD's are recorded at ~20% of that sample rate. ???
Regarding my last statement, I meant that I didn't want to make my 32kpbs
feed sound any worse.

Sample rate of 44,100 K (CD quality) = 1,411.2 Kbps !
(assuming 2-channel stereo @ 16-bit depth)

You seem to be confusing uncompressed sampling rate with
compressed bit rate.