CD or Download

dan3811991119

What does most people in this forum use for music?

dan3811991119

See I was considering switching to mp3 downloads but I am very concerned about quality of the audio.

KxMx

Why don't you download a couple of freebie tracks from say Amazon and see what you think?

I buy the odd cd album but mostly I buy single songs as MP3's.

Broadwood

I always buy CD's because then you have a physical product and it potentially has the best sound quality for listening to in the house on a good hi-fi system.

But then I copy what I want to listen to in the car onto a USB stick at 192 kb/s mp3 format which is more than adequate quality for in-car listening. If your car is well sound proofed and has a half-decent stereo you need at least 160 kb/s to get near hi-fi sound from mp3. But higher bit-rates take up more space per track, so you fit less tracks on to whatever size of USB stick you use.

Buzby

I had a 1600 CD collection, which I abandoned and went to ITunes Match instead. True, it costs £21pa, but all my music can be streamed or D/ld and the space I got back was welcome!

MissAT

I use spotify and groove shark, spotify is a program you download and you can listen to free music, but you will get ads, or you can subscribe and have no ads, i think it's around £5 a month for a subscription.

groove shark is an online streaming one, it's pretty good although the cds tracks are usually not in order and it doen't always have the latest releases like spotify does.

almillar

CD all the way for me. Starting to feel like a dinosaur for that but I get it for the same price or cheaper and have the booklet etc to look through. I rip it and shove it in a cupboard though.
One hint for sound quality BTW - MP3 is ancient. If you can use AAC instead, it compresses more efficiently giving you better sound quality for the same bitrate, eg a 192kbps AAC file will sound better than a 192kbps MP3 file. Or go lossless...

-TangleFoot-

MissAT wrote: »

groove shark is an online streaming one, it's pretty good although the cds tracks are usually not in order and it doen't always have the latest releases like spotify does.

That's because all the tracks are uploaded by other people.

The way Grooveshark operates, is that (like YouTube), users upload content, which others can then stream.

Said people probably don't have distribution rights for said tracks and tend to forget the importance of metadata when uploading them. The result is - as you might expect - something of a mess.

dan3811991119

I downloaded my favorite album I thought it was low risk as I already have it on cd and was very happy with the quality.

Now its time to price up Ipods.

Edwardia

My niece downloaded and when her laptop malfunctioned she lost all her music. The household insurance didn't cover her so she had to fork out all over again..

Me, I buy the CD and rip then keep it safe in case I lose my music.

Buzby

Why didn't she re download it again? Or was she unaware she could do this?