my MP3's play fine in iTunes, tinny online

I am trying to use short snippets of recorded speech on my site, using one of the built-in voices that came with my iBook G4.

I am able to record mp3's using WireTap Pro and they play perfectly well in my iTunes program. However, when I upload them to my server and then click on their links to play them, they always sound annoying tinny. I've tried every combination of settings I can think of in WireTap Pro and it's always the same:

My MP3 recordings sound fine when I play them in iTunes and they sound horribly tinny when I try to play the same file after it's been uploaded to my server.

Any ideas what's going on.

Thanks

everything gets downgraded when its uploaded for streaming.

Tinny online

I wonder what audio formats other sites use when they upload brief snippets of audio. I was hoping to use mp3 because it's a much smaller file than the alternatives. I'll have to switch to another format with a significantly larger file size (aif maybe) since the mp3 is just way to noisy to understand, even.

If you've recorded at low quality (anything lower than 44k, CD quality) to start with, your MP3 files will be of a lower quality (even if you converted to 320kbps). This in turn will lead to EVEN lower quality online audio.

I guess the main point of the presentation would be that you can't add bits in (converting up) to lower quality audio to make it sound better. You gotta start at the best quality possible at the recording phase.

Tinny cont'd

I guess I'll have to write to WireTap Pro and see if they have any ideas. I've switched every recording setting to the highest quality possible and it still sounds like the voices are underwater when I listen to them online.

WireTap Pro 1.20
settings I'm using:
16-bit
stereo
48 khz

320 khz

And I'm using 320 bits per second and have selected 'best' for encoding quality