Will the ipod be the death of the CD?

I think that it is misleading to make a blanket statement about downloaded music not sounding as good as music from a CD. I know that compressed music (e.g., music downloaded from iTunes) is compromised in ways that audiophiles find objectionable. However, in listening tests (playing music from my MacBook Pro into a DAC via Toslink) I played songs imported from CD's via Apple Lossless and included a song downloaded from iTunes in with these CD songs, and have yet to have listeners correctly identify the downloaded song. These listeners have plenty of experience listening to highend gear, so that doesn't explain this finding, and my system (see virtual system description) is reasonably revealing, so that doesn't explain it. Could it be that the music I've used for this test is all in a limited frequency range (i.e., male or female jazz, folk, or Blues singers mostly)that doesn't display the limitations of compression? I don't know the answer to my question, I really would like to hear what you people think might explain this phenomenon.

Jax2: Good suggestion (comparing a song from CD to same song downloaded). I'll definitely give it a try. The particular downloaded songs that I, and the other listeners, have thought sounded as good as ripped CD's might be "special cases" that would sound better than the average CD if imported like the other songs (I have only done this test for only a few really well recorded songs). But here's the thing: Something must be going on with some of the compressed songs that keep us from being able to know which is "obviously" the downloaded song, don't you think? I'd love to do the demo for you to see if you could identify the downloaded song. I think you might be as suprised as we have been for SOME of the downloaded songs. My thought is that maybe downloads aren't quite as bad as we tend to think if we can be fooled at least on occasion. At least that's one hypothesis. All of the 4300 songs I've ripped from CD's are in Apple Lossless because I could tell a big difference in that and the AAC settings when I originally compared the two. I personally can hear a significant difference between playing a song through my system via the iPod vs through the MacBook Pro, so I can hear the quality distinctions others do in these cases. I'm only perplexed by this occasional download phenomenon.