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At up to full CD quality. Here is the link
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Do you think a 256 aac file created from master tapes compares favorably to a lossless file created from CD.
See the Apple website:DRM-Free Songs from EMI Available on iTunes for $1.29 in May
It is certainly a move in the right direction. What bothers me is the price increase. Still less than CD quality, no CD, no booklet and the price is actually higher than the CD in many cases. It's just too easy to convince people to pay for less.
Die gefährlichste Weltanschauung ist die Weltanschauung derjenigen, die die Welt nicht angeschaut haben.
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)
that's what i rip my poorer quality recordings to.. it's not bad! I'd buy that for a dollar (.29)..
admin - audioreview.com
but 256kpbs, even in AAC format, isn't full resolution is it?
first of all, DRM is a scourge and needs to be eliminated. Anything that stops my legal fair use needs to be eliminated.But also, 256 AAC is better than the best MP3 bitrate... and 320k mp3s are perfectly enjoyable on my desktop system, made better by a good non-os DAC... I wouldn't be doing critical listening with mp3s, but the convenience is nice for casual listening.
What I am saying is that today we have 256kbs AAC files, tomorrow we will get FLAC or completely uncompressed. Most americans on broadband only have about 1mb of usable downlink on average... but as this average increases, so will the file size that is tollarable for the average guy to download.
I would not be too critical of this move, because we need this to be on the road to eliminating DRM and to also eventually have those non-lossy formats someday. The record companies need to see that DRM only makes their product worse.
With the recent demise of Tower Records, I really miss buying music that does not sell in the Big Box places. If I could buy an ape or flac file that I could unpack and burn to a CD, and if it was priced commensurately with the inconvenience factor (that is maybe 1/2 the store price), then I'd buy loads of them.Getting rid of DRM is a start. But 256 kbit is not for me. Will the companies provide people what they want before the pirates monopolize the whole market?
I don't know. Given the track record with TV shows, where pirates provide full access on demand on youtube and bit torrent, my money would be on the pirates.
Their plan is simple. Frustrate the consumers with years of DRM-only 128 kbps lossy files at ridiculous price ($1/song), then pretend to be the good guy and savior by offering to get rid of DRM and raise the price to $1.30/song. The masses weep in joy and gratitude..For comparison, an average uncompressed song runs in 1000-1100 kbps range (compared to 256 kbps being offered here.
Normal people ( i.e. , 99% of Apple's customer base) who listen to music on normal systems (read: not hyper-revealing audiophile systems) can't tell the difference between 256 kbps AAC and lossless. I can't on my decent audiophile quality system and I can clearly hear differences in music reproduction caused by everything from power supplies to cables.
i can certainly, easily hear the difference between aac and lossless, but i still think 256 aac (w/vbr) is good enough to rip most of my music to. I think it's the best compromise between conserving space and preserving quality. For my "reference" type recordings i use lossless, but the most other stuff 256 sounds great.and i don't think it's that most people can't tell the difference. it's that they never bother to compare it to anything better. Also, if you're system is really crappy, that's a factor too. But if you sat someone down in front of a decent system and compared 128k to 256k to lossless, i think anyone could hear the difference. but if you never heard lossless, how could you know what you're missing?
admin - audioreview.com
especially with the compression artifacts that are imbedded in most all 128kbps files I have ever heard.I just disagree that there are meaningful differences between 256kbps AAC (vbr) files and lossless in terms of sound quality. If you can hear it, more power to you...but after giving it more than a little scrutiny, I find that the difference between the two formats is knowing that there is a difference, not one that you can hear. For some people, especially audiophiles, that's enough of a difference to be the difference . And as cheap as drive space is, I can't really say I can find fault in the logic.
I agree with all the above but would only add that this makes for a nice bridge to a price increase all around at some point when they eliminate the "old/obsolete" downloads
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