MP3 Help Needed

[FreddieFerric]

Hi guys. I find myself (oddly enough) in need of some pointers on the lowly MP3 format.

Here's my issue. The audio system in my car has a slot for a PCMCIA card adapter. I bought one of these 6 in 1 adapters that accepts SDHC cards. I was thinking of getting a 32 GB one to use in this system. The audio system, however, appears to only accept MP3, WMA and AAC formats.

First question: are any of these 3 "better" than the others? Also, it seems that the cars audio system will play these files at relatively high bit rates. It would seem sensible to me that the higher bit rate would translate to higher audio quality. So I guess the question is: can you compensate for the loss in sound quality due to the inherent compression of the file by saving the file at a higher bit rate?

My interest here is to try and preserve the best sound quality within the constraints that the audio system places on the file format.

Any thoughtful help or suggestions on this would be most greatly appreciated.