should the sound quality on a bootleg cd purchased from a street vendor sound the same as the orignal recording? anyone have experience with playing these cds from a audiophile grade system? what do you guys think?

umm...no. But if it does sound as good, let me know which street you found him on.

If it's a copy of a commercial CD, then it would probably be comparable, but the odds of a street bootlegger working from an original CD are probably not good - just as likely to be made from downloaded MP3's, which would definitely not sound as good as the original disc.

I know some folks from the RIAA that would be happy to help identify the differences for you. I'm going to get preachy and ask why anyone would be so casual about buying stolen goods (that's fact, folks, not opinion). If it's too expensive for you, you can't want it that badly.

Just like knockoff purses and fake rolexes, you get what you pay for. If you're looking for quality, buy it in the store and give the artists their due.

Aww, come on, isn't that a bit harsh? Everyone knows that the markup on retail CDs in itself is pretty criminal, and only those artists who've been in the business long enough to have decent contracts actually see any of those profits. Just for the sake of argument, suppose you liked, say, Neil Young's music enough to go see a really good cover band that billed itself as such. Would you begrudge the band for charging admission to the show? Sure, it's not the real thing, but it's not the end of the world or anything.

The quality of the actual recordings is another issue, though. Mp3s have to be downloaded at about 192 kbs (I think) to be CD quality, but of course, you can't expect bootleggers to be that finicky. Most people won't be able to detect a difference in quality of anything above about 162 kbs, anyway; I know this because I've loaded stuff onto my wife's mp3 player (not an iPod, I might add) and only later realized that it was in that vicinity.