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Re: quality/perspective

We're about the same age, so tha'ts not really a factor......

I'm not comparing to vinyl(though those with far better ears than mine will argue that neither CD's aren't as good as Vinyl). CD Audio captures sound between 20hz and 20khz. AAC files from iTunes literally chop off everyting above 16khz (give or take 1khz). AAC files must be encoded at 192kbs to capture those frequencies. Not as efficient as Ogg Vorbis (requires 160kbs), but better than MP3 (encapable, as far as I can tell). Of course if you're only listening via headphones (and htose headphones are the ones that came with yoru iPod, or virtually any other earbud/IEM set) then it doesn't matter, since they all chop off those freqs anyway.

More than anything, however, I dislike the iTunes model (and now MS's model) for selling music. If you find out in 5 years that you think that Brand X has a the best DAP and you want a brand X, you'll have limited choices and they're all bad.

If you buy Brand X, you'll have to either rebuy all your itunes music or do a lossy trasncode to a format that Brand X can play back (so long as Apple refuses to license the Fairplay DRM, there's no incentive to support the format, since Ogg Vorbis is at least as good and has no royalties)

The latter will degrade your music even further than the original CD to AAC conversion, while the former could cost you hundreds of dollars.

Your 3rd choice is to stay with the iPod, even though you like BrandX better.

Now if Apple or MS was selling lossless files, I'd be ok with buying online (because if it's lossless, the DRM becomes irrelevant.....just burn it and extract it), but I only buy new versions of songs/albums if it's been remastered and I want the remastered version, not simply because I bought a new player that can't support the DRM.

Posted by: notsofast   Posted on: 12/11/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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