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Invisibleeligal
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Lossless Audio File formats vs CD
    #12328204 - 04/04/10 10:25 AM (13 years, 11 months ago)

Im looking to buy a new album. I usually would get a CD just because I never paid for downloaded music before, but maybe its time to embrace downloading music as the new form of distribution.

Im really only interested in paying for lossless (otherwise Ill just get the CD), but Amazon only sells mp3s and iTunes only sells m4as (aka AAC, 256 kbps, which might be close enough).

What are your opinions? Is m4a from iTunes good enough?
Are there any other sites which sell lossless albums, preferably at decent prices?
Or am I better just getting the CD?



PS: Do these downloaded albums (which say they come with the CDs digital booklet) have the full booklet or just the cover?


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\m/ Spanksta \m/

"do you have the freedom to do with your nervous system what you want?"

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I'll respect you if you let me give you a blow job"

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Offlineotispicks
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: eligal]
    #12328236 - 04/04/10 10:31 AM (13 years, 11 months ago)

the booklet is the full one with itunes. i think cds have better sound, but you might get a copyprotected cd which sucks


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OfflineArchman8403
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: eligal]
    #12328303 - 04/04/10 10:51 AM (13 years, 11 months ago)

I think part of the answer depends on what you are purchasing.  I am not the audiophile I used to be, but I do remember a few things.  If you are purchasing soundboard recordings of live performances then it would be better to go for the lossless format.  I personally think the lower end sounds cleaner and fuller on these recordings.  The artist that offer studio albums online in this format I guess would be something similar to the HDCD or previous attempts at enhanced encoding. 

I remember a really interesting interview with Neil Young about Greendale maybe being available in SACD format.  I think that was it, or something similar.  It was a technology that died like HD DVDs, or Beta. 

The easiest way I know to sum it up is: a song that's 2 minutes in time in mp3=2mb, and as you venture up through flac, .wav, and other formats you get an increase turning 2mb of encoding into 20mb.  That is similar to putting it on steroids and making all those binary ones and zeros sparkle extra bright packed with cerebral delight. 

I don't know if that helps you out or not, but hopefully there's something useful.  Try to find the Neil Young interview, or look up something about when Dylan reissued his catalog in enhanced cd format.  There was stuff reported then for the consumer base on what was being marketed to you and how it improved upon the common 128-256 frequency formats.


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The old ones are gone like phantoms and the savages wander these canyons to the sound of an ancient laughter. In their crude huts they crouch in darkness and listen to the fear seeping out of the rock. All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage. So. Here are the dead fathers. Their spirit is entombed in the stone. It lies upon the land with the same weight and the same ubiquity. For whoever makes a shelter of reeds and hides has joined his spirit to the primal mud with scarcely a cry. But who builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe and so it was with these masons however primitive their works may seem to us.

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Offlinegilesypopper
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: Archman8403]
    #12329136 - 04/04/10 01:11 PM (13 years, 11 months ago)

Someone recently gave me a generous itunes store voucher (enough to buy a good 10-15 albums with). I was grateful yet gutted that itunes doesn't offer FLAC/AAC Lossless downloads. I feel it's for me to decide how I use the music - i.e. if I want to compress down to 256kbps then I will, otherwise I want the recording best quality that's reasonably possible. Heck, even 320kbps would be an improvement. I think the point i'm trying to make is that I can always compress but never uncompress.

I like to think to the future. I'm thinking the tape vs CD argument but in 2030 when it will be something vs AAC.

Have you tried Boomkat.com or Bleep.com? I'm afraid they don't cover too much ultra mainstream stuff but they do have a good selection otherwise.


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InvisibleGlenners
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: gilesypopper]
    #12329231 - 04/04/10 01:28 PM (13 years, 11 months ago)

Go the illegal route and download the flac files.

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InvisibleChespirito
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: eligal]
    #12329796 - 04/04/10 03:00 PM (13 years, 11 months ago)

Always go for the physical media.  Then take it and rip it into flac for storage on your computer.  I just rip them using lame into an mp3 at the highest quality vbr however

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Offlineiateshaggy
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: Chespirito]
    #12331743 - 04/04/10 08:19 PM (13 years, 11 months ago)

i used to be a flac nazi because it is such a great format, but really, V0 mp3 (highest vbr bitrate) sounds just as great.  private torrent sites are the way to go on this.  ask a little and someone will hook u up w/ an invite.  paying for music these days is 2 levels more stupid than paying for porn.


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You are a filipina sex goddess who wants to fuck me until I fall asleep, so then you can tickle my balls and see if the legend of my diamond filled nutsuck is true.  I am a white man from costa rica, who smells like lime jello.


I can flash/jtag/repair 360's, pm for details.

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Invisiblefrith
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: iateshaggy]
    #12332807 - 04/04/10 11:32 PM (13 years, 11 months ago)

i wouldnt say that buying music is stupid. the problem is that the record companies get in the way of making progress on the digital download market.

stores are too proprietary, audio quality isnt good enough, the navigation of the store is clunky, etc..

eMusic is the closest thing to a well designed and managed music store on the net but it still has some major issues.

the best place on the internet for music is at what.cd. the reason they are able to deliver such a high quality, easy to use site is because they bypass the recording industry's insanely ridiculous rules that are required to run a digital music store.

if i there was a legitimate store out there that was as well designed and managed as what.cd then i would sign up. at the end of the day i do want to support the artists and not worry about any possible legal consequences.


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Invisiblekoraks
Registered: 06/02/03
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: Archman8403]
    #12333763 - 04/05/10 04:04 AM (13 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

Archman8403 said:
I remember a really interesting interview with Neil Young about Greendale maybe being available in SACD format.  I think that was it, or something similar.  It was a technology that died like HD DVDs, or Beta. 




It didn't die. It just settled in a small niche of audiophiles, with especially many recordings of classical music being available on SACD. Due to its backwards compatibility with CD, which is still the most widely accepted standard in the music industry, SACD simply didn't need to die like the other victims of several format wars. Having said that, the question is if SACD really brings that much to the party. It's unique selling point is that it is capable of recording and reproducing up to the 80KHz frequency limit. This, of course, does require some pretty decent amplification and it is debatable if the human ear is in any way capable of picking up such high frequencies. But then again, some audiophiles do appear to be enthusiastic about it.

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Offlineiateshaggy
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: frith]
    #12335327 - 04/05/10 12:45 PM (13 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

frith said:
the best place ... for music is at what.cd




it is as simple as that.  don't get me wrong, i believe in supporting the artist, that is why i go to shows, buy disk at them and get shirts and blow wads of money at music festivals.  maybe when the music industry learns to adopt the encoder quality standards that pirates use, they may start getting a little more traffic.


--------------------
You are a filipina sex goddess who wants to fuck me until I fall asleep, so then you can tickle my balls and see if the legend of my diamond filled nutsuck is true.  I am a white man from costa rica, who smells like lime jello.


I can flash/jtag/repair 360's, pm for details.

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Offlinesupra
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: iateshaggy]
    #12338362 - 04/05/10 08:47 PM (13 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

iateshaggy said:
i used to be a flac nazi because it is such a great format, but really, V0 mp3 (highest vbr bitrate) sounds just as great.  private torrent sites are the way to go on this.  ask a little and someone will hook u up w/ an invite.  paying for music these days is 2 levels more stupid than paying for porn.




i agree, flac is great, but V0 mp3 is just as good unless played through something where you can actually visually see the audio signals.  On anything you will most likely be playing music on, you would not be able to tell the difference, even on a set of $20k speakers, most people that say they could tell the difference, still wouldn't be able to.

peace

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Offlineiateshaggy
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: supra]
    #12339896 - 04/06/10 12:49 AM (13 years, 11 months ago)

V0 spectals vs flac spectrals.

V0


flac


--------------------
You are a filipina sex goddess who wants to fuck me until I fall asleep, so then you can tickle my balls and see if the legend of my diamond filled nutsuck is true.  I am a white man from costa rica, who smells like lime jello.


I can flash/jtag/repair 360's, pm for details.

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Offlinegilesypopper
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: iateshaggy]
    #12340204 - 04/06/10 02:12 AM (13 years, 11 months ago)

can you explain the difference between the 2 pics please?


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Invisiblekoraks
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: gilesypopper]
    #12340240 - 04/06/10 02:24 AM (13 years, 11 months ago)

V0 truncates anything above 19KHz, while FLAC reaches up to 21KHz and then does the same thing. In that part of the spectrum, 2KHz is practically no difference at all, so based on these graphs, I'd say quality differences are negligible and unlikely to be noticed by even very trained and young listeners.

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Offlinegilesypopper
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: koraks]
    #12340342 - 04/06/10 02:53 AM (13 years, 11 months ago)

thanks.


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Law breakers, law makers, let us fight them all, why not.

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Offlineph34r
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: gilesypopper]
    #12340526 - 04/06/10 04:09 AM (13 years, 11 months ago)

After listening to great albums like Dark Side of the Moon in FLAC, I found it quite difficult to go back. Anything below 800kbps bit rate I find noticeably less pleasurable. Standard CD bit rate is 320 I believe.


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"Yeah well, you know...that's just like...your opinion, man." - The Dude

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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: ph34r]
    #12340563 - 04/06/10 04:38 AM (13 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

After listening to great albums like Dark Side of the Moon in FLAC, I found it quite difficult to go back. Anything below 800kbps bit rate I find noticeably less pleasurable. Standard CD bit rate is 320 I believe.




The Red Book CDROM specification (CD-DA) specifies audio encoding for two channels of signed 16-bit Linear PCM sampled at 44100Hz with a 96dB dynamic range.  This is an equivalent bitrate of 1411.2 kbit/s: 2 channels * 44100 samples per second per channel * 16 bits per sample = 1411200 bit/s = 1411.2 kbit/s.

For comparison, SACD specifies audio encoding using 1-bit DSD sampled at 2822400Hz with a 120dB dynamic range.  The maximum stereo bitrate is 5644.8 kbit/s, which is four times better than Red Book CD-DA.

FLAC falls somewhere in between the two.  It uses PCM encoding from 4-bits to 32-bits in length with a sample rate from 1Hz to 65535Hz.  The maximum stereo bitrate is 4194.24 kbit/s.

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Offlineiateshaggy
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: Seuss]
    #12341537 - 04/06/10 11:18 AM (13 years, 11 months ago)

lol, are you a mod on what and waffles as well or did u wiki all that info?  btw, those spectrals i linked are of the same position of the same song.  looking at the black areas of the v0, there really isn't barely anything other than a marginal amount of sound in those areas in the flac rip.  here is the same song in 320 vs v0 just for fun.  v0 tends to be about the size of a 192 cbr rip.
V0


320


--------------------
You are a filipina sex goddess who wants to fuck me until I fall asleep, so then you can tickle my balls and see if the legend of my diamond filled nutsuck is true.  I am a white man from costa rica, who smells like lime jello.


I can flash/jtag/repair 360's, pm for details.

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Offlinegilesypopper
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: Seuss]
    #12342147 - 04/06/10 12:59 PM (13 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

ph34r said:
After listening to great albums like Dark Side of the Moon in FLAC, I found it quite difficult to go back. Anything below 800kbps bit rate I find noticeably less pleasurable. Standard CD bit rate is 320 I believe.




What do you rip to FLAC from? SACD? Or am I asking the wrong question here? Interested.

Quote:

Seuss said:
Quote:

After listening to great albums like Dark Side of the Moon in FLAC, I found it quite difficult to go back. Anything below 800kbps bit rate I find noticeably less pleasurable. Standard CD bit rate is 320 I believe.




The Red Book CDROM specification (CD-DA) specifies audio encoding for two channels of signed 16-bit Linear PCM sampled at 44100Hz with a 96dB dynamic range.  This is an equivalent bitrate of 1411.2 kbit/s: 2 channels * 44100 samples per second per channel * 16 bits per sample = 1411200 bit/s = 1411.2 kbit/s.

For comparison, SACD specifies audio encoding using 1-bit DSD sampled at 2822400Hz with a 120dB dynamic range.  The maximum stereo bitrate is 5644.8 kbit/s, which is four times better than Red Book CD-DA.

FLAC falls somewhere in between the two.  It uses PCM encoding from 4-bits to 32-bits in length with a sample rate from 1Hz to 65535Hz.  The maximum stereo bitrate is 4194.24 kbit/s.




Also, in your opinion, where does Apple Lossless (automatic bit rate) fit into your scale??

Thanks.

Edited by gilesypopper (04/06/10 01:09 PM)

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Offlineiateshaggy
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Re: Lossless Audio File formats vs CD [Re: gilesypopper]
    #12343636 - 04/06/10 05:03 PM (13 years, 11 months ago)

99.99% of good flac rip should come from a retail disk using eac to rip and it has to be configured properly for the drive doing the ripping.  alac and flac should yeild the same quality as lossless is lossless.


--------------------
You are a filipina sex goddess who wants to fuck me until I fall asleep, so then you can tickle my balls and see if the legend of my diamond filled nutsuck is true.  I am a white man from costa rica, who smells like lime jello.


I can flash/jtag/repair 360's, pm for details.

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