I know that some here use get_iplayer to grab BBC files. Perhaps those people would like to know that the BBC are experimenting with 320k aac downloads.

To make use of them you need a 'dev' version of get_iplayer available from the git resource. There are only a few files available so far apparently but nonetheless, if you want to experiment, feel free.

If you want to know some of the background to compression etc, you might like to listen to this - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06tvgp1