iTunes vs CDs

Well, the 256K format is better than the 128K, and so-called loss-less formats are better yet, but the big mystery to me is why most downloaders cannot tell the difference between even the 256K download rates and CD quality.. .
I am a musician, and I cannot tell you how painful it is for serious musicians and producers in the jazz and other non-pop music forms to be ordered by the record companies to increase the compression (eliminate the range between the loudest and softest music passages, so that everything sounds equally loud)in order to sound better in a bad-sounding format (MP3,every other compressed download format, including 256K) You lose so much dynamic range at these very low sample rates, so most of the music you all pay for is just plain missing. So you are now being handed an inferior product right from the start in order to fit your terrible format.. With CD's as the target, the mix was un-compressed, dynamic ranges were great, and the music was produced to sound great. Now you are buying a product designed from the start to sound less bad on your downloads, but just horrible on good equipment.

Thanks for contributing to the degrading of recorded music. May you all grow even deafer than you already are.

How many people prefer to buy CDs than buy from iTunes?

If I want the entire CD, I buy the physical disk. My need for instant gratification isn't so large that I can't wait for a CD to be delivered or I can get to a store. If I only want a track or two, then I'm much more inclined to purchase from a download store, though it depends on how badly I want the track. If I plan to play it a lot, I may still buy the CD, particularly if I can find it used.

However some people say the quality of iTunes is inferior to CD, as in if you burn an iTunes song to CD it will sound inferior to the quality of an official CD. Is this true?

Yes. Tracks on iTunes, and most other download services, are compressed, resulting in a loss of quality as compared with the original source. The quality cannot be restored when you burn the track out to CD; that quality, once removed, is gone forever. Whether you can hear the difference will depend on your playback system and your ears. iTunes Plus tracks, if available for a given track/album, have less compression and so have a higher quality, closer to original CD quality, but with a high-quality playback system I can still hear the difference when compared with the original CD.

For best quality, stick with CDs and import them yourself, either at a high bit rate or for best quality as Apple Lossless or AIFF, either of which will be identical to the CD (though the file size will be much larger than with a track compressed with AAC, the iTunes default, or MP3). If and when the record companies get their heads out and allow download stores to offer CD-quality downloads with the ability to burn a CD (MusicGiants, the only company that I know of that offers CD-quality downloads, is not allowed to enable burning to audio CD), then I'll probably buy all my content from the download stores.

Regards.

Yea CD's may be boring, and may also be concidered a "thing of the past" for many young people of today. However, if you buy the physical CD - not only will you have the superior sound, you will also automatically have your music nicely backed up.

I purchase quite a lot from the iTunes Store - however, mostly 'iTunes Plus' releases. I still don't understand why they still sell 128kb quality?. Most people of today have some sort of broadband internet provider (ADSL or fiber). And external hard drives are becomming cheaper and cheaper by the day.

I'm sure that most of us will import, store and also buy lossless format music in the near future.

BenjaminP77 wrote;

i am intrigued now to find out which of my purchases (if any) were from iTunes Plus but i am not sure how to find out.

It's easy to see. Just add the 'Kind' and 'Bit rate' collumns to your iTunes library view. If it says:

Kind: Purchased AAC Audio file
Bit Rate: 256 kbps

Then It's iTunes Plus.

Message was edited by: Thomas Sjöholm

I still don't understand why they still sell 128kb quality?

Because that's all most of the record labels still will allow them. There are apparently lots of issues between how Apple wants to run the iTunes Store, in terms of single-level pricing and who has control of how tracks are advertised and sold, and how the labels want things run, and one lever the labels are using is denying permission to sell at higher bit rates and without DRM.

and also buy lossless format music in the near future

I sincerely hope so, but I see no evidence that the labels are going to allow that without onerous restrictions on the features such as burning to CD. We'll see what happens, though.

Thanks for the info Dave. I see that the record companies still wants us to buy the physical CD's.
However, there are exeptions out there. The Classical music label Deutsche Grammophon who has been around since the dawn of time it seems, have realized that the music buyers are abandoning the CD format more and more. Therefore they have made it possible for the consumers to buy their products in most formats there is. CD, FLAC Lossless, mp3 320kbps and "Streaming" (which will be the next big thing acording to the record industry) Well, I hope not.

Have a look at the DG website: http://www2.deutschegrammophon.com/cat/result?SearchString=&ALBUM_TYPE=L

That's really great to see. Hopefully other record companies will realize that download sales save them money and so follow suit in the near future.