Download Music Store For Music Snobs Opens Up
from the if-you-really-think-you-can-hear-a-difference... dept
It's fun when you hear music snobs complain that digital music just "isn't as high quality" as their precious CDs (or, better yet, LPs). There are differences, but in most cases they're almost impossible to hear. However, a new download music store is trying to take advantage of the snob-factor, and will be offering huge downloads of lossless versions of songs encoded at 1100 kbps rather than the customary 128 to 192 kbps. For the privilege of pretending you can tell the difference, you pay an extra $0.30 per song (which ought to make some people happy). Also, to prove that you really are serious about being a music snob, they require $50 upfront. Music snobbery isn't for cheapskates, apparently. Of course, the files are encoded in Microsoft's Windows Media Format, so they come complete with copy protection -- because, apparently, they think you're a thief and are immediately going to pass on these giant files to your music snob friends.
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I CAN tell the diffence
And oddly enough: The hardest thing to code using mp3 is not the music of music snobs, like orchestral music and jazz. It's actually metal. A really distorted guitar borders random noise, and random noise is almost impossible to compress, since there's no mathematical redundancy in the signal that can be exploited.
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Dumbed Down
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Re: Dumbed Down
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This has been done before
www.allofmp3.com
Choose your codec, choose your bitrate, tens of thousands of artists, for roughly 10 to 15 cents a song.
Maybe not entirely legal, but who gives a fuck, right? I sure as hell dont.
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Re: Dumbed Down
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Re: This has been done before
IANAL. This is not legal advice. See these links for more information.
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Re: I CAN tell the diffence
but let's face it, compressed music is listened to on the hop - sitting traffic, walking outside... if you sit inside with the doors and windows shut listening to music on headphones then it would become an issue.
I'm far more worried about the modern trend of record companies spending larger and larger proportions of their cash/effort on a smaller and smaller artist base... the problem isnt the codec, it's what new releases are availible to rip!
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Other reasons for doing this
Anyway, the reason I would want either uncompressed or lossless compressed files has nothing to do with listening quality, rather it gives me the ability to create any compressed format that's most useful to me. Try transcoding an AAC to an OGG to an MP3. Or re-encoding to a different bit rate. The quality loss can be dramatic.
In a nutshell, that's why I buy (used) CDs. I always have a good quality, uncompressed original to work with.
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It's not about the quality (to me)
The problem I have is by paying .99 cents per song, I'm paying the same cost that I would for a CD, so why should I get less quality? I also don't have a permanent backup if I pay .99 cents for a song online. I'm only allowed to download the song one time. If I buy the CD, I have a permanent archival backup. (As permanent as a CD can be anyway. I have CD's that are up to 15 years old that still play just fine.)
Give me the song in FLAC format (lossless encoding), AND I want the ability to download the song multiple times should I need to. Once I pay for the rights to the song, I shouldn't be limited to one download. Granted, there are bandwidth considerations and I understand that. I'm not suggesting that I should be able to download the song every single time I want to hear it. But if my local file gets corrupted before I have a chance to back it up, or if I format my hard-drive, or if any number of other things happen 6 or 8 months after I bought the song, I want a no hassle, no questions asked, trouble free way to just redownload my songs. I don't want to have to beg the music store to let me download my songs again. Or worse - have to pay for them again.
Having said all that - I *can* rather easily tell the difference between 128, 256, 320, and CD quality in a blind test. By blind test, I mean if someone plays the same part of the same song encoded in various qualities and doesn't tell me which is which, I can - with 100% accuracy - determine which is which. And I don't consider myself an audiophile by ANY means. I have crappy computer speakers, I don't even own a home stereo, I have regular $20 Sony headphones for my iPod (I hate earbuds), and the stereo in my car is stock.
Finally, if you do any kind of audio or video editing, you will DEFINITELY want to start with the highest quality format you can find. For example, if you wanted to add a music overlay to a video you created, and you used your 128kbps encoded file that you downloaded (which I'm not sure you could even use due to the DRM), you'll end up with an extremely lousy sounding audio track on your video after you encode it - because you're encoding and already encoded audio track.
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What a dickhead article.
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Re: What a dickhead article.
1100, however, is kind of ridiculous. Diminishing returns, people; there won't be much of a difference between that and 800. If you like your music that high quality, buy the flipping CD.
(And if you say you can hear the loss in CDs, you *are* a music snob :P)
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snobs don't need it that high
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High fidelity, high dollar
The same rule applies here as with CDs: overcharge and the consumer will redistribute.
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Re: High fidelity, high dollar
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Re: It's not about the quality (to me)
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Re: What a dickhead article.
I'm a music snob. I want at least 32 bit resolution and 192 kHz sampling frequency thank you very much. The CD format is inferior and the result of the technical abilities and limitations of the industry in the late 70's.
The sampling of an original signal with 44.1 kHz Fs and 16 bit resolution is every bit as lossy as 44.1 kHz/16bit being compressed to 128 kbit/s mp3.
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Re: High fidelity, high dollar
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No Subject Given
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LOL
I think it is more important that kids be exposed to a vast variety of music, something enabled by MP3 compression, rather than a mostly imperceptable difference between uncompressed and compressed audio.
Appreciating music is less about a .5db artifact at 17khz and more about great songwriting, performing, and *inspiration*. I guess it is form over content folks; a classic music industry meme, and why the majority of music recorded on 96KHz 32 bit floating point pro tools systems is utter crap, while some kids with a hand-me-down 4-track casette working in their garage actually produce things worth listening to, transcoded down to a low bitrate MP3.
I guess we're all tragically scarred by the JPGs used in web pages. Now go buy your $100 monster cables and shut the heck up.
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Re: snobs don't need it that high
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320kbs
If you're a snob and think you can tell the difference with rates higher than that, you're a fucking liar and are WRONG.
Period.
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Re: What a dickhead article.
That being said, I'm perfectly happy with the sound quality of my CDs, and don't have any plans to replace them.
The truth is that while there are only a few people out there who care about that level of quality, (and I'm not one of them), it doesn't require "golden ears" to hear substantial differences.
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Re: I CAN tell the diffence
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Re: 320kbs
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