Notes from conversation with Luis on MP3 compatible CD players:

CD-DA follows what is known as the "red book" format. Samples 16 bits at 44.1 Khz. (Human audible freq. are ~6Khz - ~ 20Khz, so 44.1Khz meets Niquist's law). This is also precisely what wav format is.
MP3 is an audio compression format, which approximates "cd quality" by selectively extracting most human discernable samples from wav.
.Wav files can be written to CD in their original CD-DA format.
.Mp3 files can be written to CD in either ISO-99* format, which is an audio filesystem format, or written as CD-DA (if your CD player doesn't recognize ISO-99*. Remember, this doesn't get you back the original wav quality - the quality is still mp3).

Input to an mp3 converter is (usually?) wav files. The "stream rate" decides how much of the original CD-DA quality is maintained.128kb(its)ps is a common stream rate. Obviously, the more the stream rate, the less the compression.

A standard 700MB CD can store around 10 hours of MP3 or about 1 hour of wav ! Hence the market for CD MP3 players.

New formats in the market:
Super Audio - samples ~32 bits at ~ 90Khz. Most CD players don't recognize this format
Quicktime audio - compresses wav to half the song's original size, without compromising audio ! (?)
Video CD - audio format recognized by most DVD players