ENCODING
Uncompressed audio takes up a lot of space, approximately 1MB per minute. As bandwidth and diskspace have become more affordable, compression codecs have become increasingly efficient.
We'll look at the most appropriate compression formats from the following standpoint: a) The PC has a reasonably good soundcard and is connected to a decent hi-fi (a good hi-fi amp and speaker setup will always sound better than PC speakers), and b) Disk-space is not a big issue.