MP3 isn't the only digital audio format, just the most dominant. There are several less-compressed, or "lossless," formats, including Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), and WMA (Windows Media Audio) Lossless. I have heard demos of these formats (albeit on servers hooked up to pretty good stereo systems), and they do sound very close to CD-quality (though they still fall short of higher-sampling formats like Super Audio CD, or SACD, and well short of vinyl LP). The downside of less compression is that you can fit far less data—and thus many fewer songs—in the same amount of storage space. The upside is that the result sounds much better. One question is this: As iPods and other devices can hold more and more data, will the record companies—and will consumers—use this data to hold more songs or to improve audio fidelity?