And you wouldn't gain much if anything with those albums, since as mentioned by others, the sound quality just isn't smashingly great in the recordings. Here's a question: How do the CDs sound to you? If they sound like crap to you, there's no file that's going to sound better, unless you have a $50,000 sound system and the best ears on the planet, in which case, by all means, get it in higher-than-CD quality WAV and see what happens. It sounds excellent in my 1987 car with the above-described system. It sounds pretty good but distorted and muddy at high volumes in my Jeep. It sounds intolerable in my 1978 car with crap aftermarket speakers. It's sounds OK on my iPod with decent headphones. When you say you have a nice stereo, how nice? Are the speakers components/coax, external amp, crossovers, etc.? Distortion, loudness, clipping can come from either the file, the sound system or often the combination. They don't stand out as the highest quality on my playlist. but I have pretty good hearing and no way are either of those albums outstandingly bad.

I'm not an expert and I'm at best an 'audiophile wannabe'. OoS, on the other hand, doesn't sound too great on those speakers but sounds brilliant in my car in AAC format. I also have Absolution on vinyl and it sounds pretty good on my three-way Bose's I got from my dad.

I also have a pretty nice head unit (all digital, doesn't play CDs) which gives me some control over balance and loudness.

Not an audiophile getup but pretty damn good. I'm judging based on listening in my car, which has Focal CV100 and CV130 Polyglass speakers, a Alpine PDX-5 digital amplifier and a Polk DB 12-inch subwoofer. I actually find the quality of both to be just fine in digital format, although of all their albums I think The Resistance has the best sound quality (and I have that in Apple Lossless).

Muse album absolution.mp3