Not convinced by Itunes.

tomstickland

Up until last week all my music was on CDs, which I tend to buy from Ebay or Amazon. I don't have an Ipod, but last week downloaded Itunes and a few tracks that were hard to find on Ebay. I downloaded two albums because I wanted them right then.
I quite like the concept and I could buy a Creative Labs player and replace my knackered car radio with a USB compatible one.
However, I do wonder about the audio quality of the files.
I listen to CDs on a hi-fi player with decent headphones.

If I burn an Itunes track to CD I assume that it will be more compressed and at a lower sample rate. How much worse is it?

Cat695

download from www.play.com they are cheaper 65p a track compared to itunes 79p a track and are not protected by DRM so you can use it anywhere

Also to answer your question you can choose the quality you want to download
"All the music files at PlayDigital are either recorded at 192Kbit/s or 320Kbit/s. The 192Kbit/s tracks deliver sound quality which is virtually indistinguishable from CD quality. The 320Kbit/s tracks offer extremely high quality sound files"

also if you delete the track off your hard drive by mistake you can just log back into play.com and download it again.....for free!!

plus they work on ipods/iphones

Marty999

tomstickland wrote: »

If I burn an Itunes track to CD I assume that it will be more compressed and at a lower sample rate. How much worse is it?

Yes iTunes does compress the sound files but personally I can't tell the difference. I think only the most demanding hi-fi devotee would notice any loss of quality and only at certain points during a track.

Marty_J

Personally I only buy iTunes Plus tracks which are encoded at 256 kbps AAC (the equivalent of 320 kbps mp3), and have no DRM, so they can be played in any AAC compatible player.

The audio quality of any compressed music file will always be theoretically inferior to a CD, but whether most people can tell the difference is debatable.

almillar

You're sort of answering your own question, you can't find them on CD, so online is your only choice. As Marty says, try for iTunes plus for best sound quality, but not all tracks are available like this. A 192k AAC track (the standard iTunes Store format) is high quality, and I don't think anyone could tell the difference unless in a quiet room with a well set up Hi-Fi. Even then, I doubt most people would on most tracks.
Alan

tomstickland

Not all the tracks are hard to find.
Thanks for the info everyone.
I'll do some background reading.

tomstickland

From wikipedia

• Apple has maintained tight control of its FairPlay encryption. Other online music stores cannot sell music files encoded with FairPlay, and competing devices from companies such as Creative Labs and iriver cannot play such files. This means that consumers who want to listen to songs downloaded from the iTunes Store must either have an iPod or convert the files to an open format.
• The iPod does not play files encoded in the Microsoft's WMA format or RealNetwork's Helix-protected format used by other online music stores. iPod owners who want to play music from other stores must circumvent the files' DRM.

In July 2004, RealNetworks debuted an application named Harmony, which converted files purchased from RealNetworks' RealRhapsody service into a FairPlay-compatible format that an iPod could play. In response, Apple accused RealNetworks of "adopting the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod."[48] and released a firmware upgrade that rendered iPods incapable of playing such files. On January 3, 2005, an iTunes online music store customer sued Apple, alleging the company broke U.S. antitrust laws by freezing out competitors.[49]
In 2006, a controversy erupted about a French draft law aimed at reinforcing the protection of works of art against "piracy", or illegal copying; some clauses of the law could possibly be used to request Apple to provide information about its FairPlay system to manufacturers of competing players. Apple and associated lobbying groups protested the draft law, going as far as to suggest that it condoned "state-sponsored piracy." Some U.S. commentators claimed that the law was a protectionistic measure against the iPod.

Looks like I'm going to be looking at play.

tomstickland

Interesting stuff

On February 6, 2007, Steve Jobs called on the Big Four record labels to allow their music to be sold DRM-free.[50] On April 2, 2007, Apple and the record label EMI announced that the iTunes Store would begin offering, as an additional purchasing option, tracks from EMI's catalog encoded as 256 kbit/s AAC without FairPlay or any other DRM.
On May 29, 2007, Apple released version 7.2 of its iTunes software, allowing users to purchase DRM-free music and music videos from participating labels. These new files, available through the iTunes Store, have been called iTunes Plus music by Apple.
In October 2007, iTunes Plus ceased to be a purchasing option. It instead became mandatory for all iTunes Plus licensed content. In addition, the price of iTunes Plus reverted to the DRM price.
Almost immediately after the launch of iTunes Plus, reports surfaced that the DRM-free tracks sold by the iTunes Store contained identifying information about the customer, embedding the purchasing account's full name and e-mail address as metadata in the file. While this information has always been in iTunes downloads both with and without Fairplay DRM, it is thought that it remains in the tracks as a measure to trace the source of tracks shared illegaly online, which the absence of DRM now facilitates. Privacy groups expressed concerns that this data could be misused if possessions carrying the files were stolen, and potentially wrongly incriminate a user for copyright infringement.[51]

Marty_J

tomstickland wrote: »

Looks like I'm going to be looking at play.

Care to elaborate?

Based on the quotes you posted, I don't really understand why.

tomstickland

Cheaper. Plus want to check out the DRM situation.

GunJack

for what it's worth..my tuppenceworth..

I'm firmly in the "Down with iTunes" camp - not only do they not carry much of my sort of stuff, but the DRM/encryption issues do my nut...i don't use an ipod (nasty crappy things) an if I'm buying tracks I want to use them wherever and on whatever I want, not some carpy proprietry player.....