Why I wont buy music from iTunes

thefiend1

Hey,



Im not sure how everyone feels on this subject but I thought id give my opinion. I decided to purchase a movie soundtrack on itunes recently (for the first time) - and much to my surprise, I found that all the music was at 256kbs and not lossless or LAME encoded...I was extremely disappointed in this because the music was not at the same quality as CD. *zips up flame suit* I consider myself an audiophile, and appreciate top notch quality sound - and im just not getting it from iTunes. I went out and purchased the CD and compared the two - with notable sound differences. I decided to see if maybe it was just that album that came in 256Kbs but, I was disappointed yet again.



I understand that the idea of encoding it this way - so that more songs can fit on disc, or ipod, blah blah blah, but to me, id rather purchase something with top notch sound fidelity that is a little bit bigger in size, than to have the latter.



Call me crazy

SpamSandwich

Quote:

Originally Posted by thefiend1


Hey,



Im not sure how everyone feels on this subject but I thought id give my opinion. I decided to purchase a movie soundtrack on itunes recently (for the first time) - and much to my surprise, I found that all the music was at 256kbs and not lossless or LAME encoded...I was extremely disappointed in this because the music was not at the same quality as CD. *zips up flame suit* I consider myself an audiophile, and appreciate top notch quality sound - and im just not getting it from iTunes. I went out and purchased the CD and compared the two - with notable sound differences. I decided to see if maybe it was just that album that came in 256Kbs but, I was disappointed yet again.



I understand that the idea of encoding it this way - so that more songs can fit on disc, or ipod, blah blah blah, but to me, id rather purchase something with top notch sound fidelity that is a little bit bigger in size, than to have the latter.



Call me crazy

You're welcome to your opinion and there are others who feel the same, but iTunes is also the top selling digital music store, so... to each his own.

Marvin

Quote:

Originally Posted by thefiend1


*zips up flame suit*

*lights up flamethrower* Damn, outta fuel.

Quote:

Originally Posted by thefiend1


I consider myself an audiophile, and appreciate top notch quality sound - and im just not getting it from iTunes. I went out and purchased the CD and compared the two - with notable sound differences.

There are measured differences between them:



http://www.stereophile.com/features/...cd/index1.html



but it should be indistinguishable to most people and that's what itunes is for - the mass market. Most people don't understand what compression is or how it works and so if Apple put uncompressed on itunes, consumers would just think it's the best value for money then wonder why the downloads are slow and they can't fit as many songs on their iPods. Plus it would increase Apple's bandwidth usage massively.



If you can really tell the difference to the point that it is frustrating to listen to, you have to keep buying CDs or use a service that offers lossless audio. Or, become one of the mass market and try to ignore the differences in quality. If you look for problems, they are just ready and waiting to show up in much the same way if you freeze-frame 720p streaming video and compare it to 1080p Blu-Ray. If you don't go out of your way to spot to the differences, most likely you won't even notice - if you don't hear the original then you won't even know how it should sound.



Sometimes it's psychological in the same way that placebos have effects on health. If you know that you are listening to compressed audio, you know there's some information been taken out so when that matters to you, your senses are more tuned to finding an issue with it. Are there specific audio artifacts that you are noticing independently of audio comparisons?



I don't think Apple will change their stance on it but you never know. As iTunes grows, they may add it in at one point. I thought they already offered the option but maybe they removed it.

rokcet scientist

It is remarkable that we had CD quality audio 30 years ago, that was last century!, and then collectively lowered our standards and accepted the waaay inferior audio quality of the digital formats (like MP3) of the 21st century...



I know of no other way to get CD quality audio files than to manually copy/rip/convert them off of original CDs. But that road is endangered: as iTunes will be selling more albums, by next spring, than there will be physical CDs sold, the CD, as a format/medium/carrier of audio is clearly on the way out.



And then where will we get high-quality audio files from?

bdblack

umm... because nobody needs high fidelity to listen to their crappy Eminem and Lady Gaga music?



so where do we get our high quality files? umm... CD's and Bit-Torrent :P



Neither are going anywhere for a long long time.



Also, some progressive artists actually make high quality lossless files available for download right from their websites. Some even give out garageband files for remixing



Think about it this way... if iTunes replaced the CD, what replaces iTunes?



We must wrestle our art and culture free from the control of the evil corporations!



Viva la Revolution!!!

tonton

As home bandwidth increases, so will the demand for higher quality downloads. Be patient, Kimosabe. We will have lossless downloads LONG before the CD dies.

bballboy

convenience is the name of the game--I'll sacrifice some sound quality in order to download from my desk, or wherever with my iPhone.