Apple’s iTunes store (in partnership with EMI) is now hawking DRM-free music at twice the bit rate of its standard fare (256Kb/s vs. 128Kb/s) and charging a $0.30-per-track premium for it. We’re all for DRM-free music, but 256Kb/s still seems like a pretty low bit rate­especially when you’re using a lossy codec.

Maximum PC decided to test a random sample of their colleagues to see if they could detect any audible difference between a song ripped from a CD and encoded in Apple’s lossy AAC format at 128K/s, and the same song ripped and encoded in lossy AAC at 256Kb/s.

Check out Maximum PC’s Web site at http://www.maximumpc.com/article/ itunes_256_vs_128_bit for the results!