Members aliengroover Posted May 17, 2007 Members Share Posted May 17, 2007 Heard about this last night, and didn't see a post about it: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/05/16/amazon.music.ap/ I guess it's a move in the right direction for them, but I think that at some point one of these guys has to consider offering a choice in the quality of a download.Peace Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Billster Posted May 17, 2007 Members Share Posted May 17, 2007 Eventually physical product for music delivery will be totally outmoded. iTunes and Amazon will be the Borders and Barnes & Noble. Don't know where the quality will go. I've stayed out of the "Quality vs. Convenience" thread. I do know that right now iTunes and other virtual stores are selling convenience as much as music. Once the physical product falls off the map, maybe the quality will become a part of the virtual retail competition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 17, 2007 Members Share Posted May 17, 2007 On the quality front, the best DLs I've got are the LAME-encoded VBR files I bought from eMusic when I was a subscriber under their old, quasi-unlimited plan (those were the good old days). When I play those files, the difference in quality between them and, say, the 160 kbps ABR WMAs I bought from MusicMatch or that I hear over my subscription service is sometimes enough to make me stop for a second and go, Oh yeah, this is from eMusic. No wonder it sounds noticeably better... The high frequencies sound less hyped and far more natural. The current eMusic purchase plan is kinda wack (and the price went "up" so extraordinarily with the new system that it'd give me pause to re-up with them) but the price per song (assuming you can find what you want in their catalog oriented more to lesser/obscure releases and old catalog) is fairly reasonable (around 25 cents a song, IIRC) and the quality is about as good as you're going to get in a data-compressed file format. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Cry Logic Posted May 18, 2007 Members Share Posted May 18, 2007 flac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members monstermaker Posted May 19, 2007 Members Share Posted May 19, 2007 Quality and a diverse library would be nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members alphajerk Posted May 19, 2007 Members Share Posted May 19, 2007 FLAC is a PITA... at least with WMP. i dont like the other players out there really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Cry Logic Posted May 20, 2007 Members Share Posted May 20, 2007 There are many who think the converse is true. WMP is a PITA. You do realise it's just a codec issue yeah? Get the right codec and flac files will play fine in WMP. This is a direct link to the flac installer on Sourceforge. Or go to the flac download page itself here,where you can choose a different mirror to the default one in the link above. It works seamlessly for me using WMP 10. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 20, 2007 Members Share Posted May 20, 2007 I think WMP is a PITA. And I'm no MS-basher. (I mean, except when it's warranted, of course.) BTW... I'm beginning to think that some of the mastering/remastering/total brainless squashing/hyping that goes on does NOT sit well with compression schema like WMA, even in the mid-fi (160kbps) range. Some of the recent releases (some new, some remasterings of classic tracks where I can go back and compare in some cases) I've heard REALLY sound very unpleasant over my subscription (160 kbps ABR). When the "un-remastered" versions are available on the service I compare them and, wow, they're not as bright, their not as loud, but they don't make you want to rip your ears off the sides of your head and FedEx them to the head of the RIAA, either. "Remastering" is a cancer on the intdustry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members alphajerk Posted May 20, 2007 Members Share Posted May 20, 2007 what is wrong with WMP? winamp crashes my machine... itunes is a resource hog, even when not running... and flac doesnt work flawlessly with the proper codecs, i have those installed... there is no progress bar to zip around a file... inteh tags are almost non-existant... etc. i can PLAY them, but dont prefer them. i havent had anythign b ut good luck with WMP and MCE. i really dont understand what has everyones panties ina wad about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Cry Logic Posted May 20, 2007 Members Share Posted May 20, 2007 That's funny , the progress bar works fine for me with flac in WMP 10.As for tags...well they don't work with wav files either but it doesn't change the way they sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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