Entertainment For Lively Minds
Legal Lossless Downloads
I like the idea and immediacy of downloading albums, but having recently updated my whole iTunes library of CD rips to Apple Lossless, I would like to be able to purchase and download in this format.
There are some albums / artists that provide download versions in lossless - Real World Studios are a good example and I purchased both the latest Decemberists and Elvis Costello albums as lossless from the artist directly (via Topspin Media ?). But overall the vast majority of stuff is still either MP3 / AAC via iTunes or MP3 via such as 7 Digital.
Is there any reason for artists NOT to provide high quality download versions these days ? Surely the bandwidth / storage space is more that adequate now ?
Secondly - any other good sources of legal purchase of lossless albums ?
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Maybe it's because
99% of the population can't tell the difference.
Maybe it's because
99% of the population listen on crappy little headphones through crappy little players in crappy audio environments, which is why they can't tell the difference.
99%
of people don't really listen to music, they just hear it. A lot of people don't really have much appreciation of music, it's just something to occupy their ears and they are undiscerning (if that's a word) about what they occupy their ears with. This is hard for us music lovers to grasp but is nonetheless fact. iTunes etc. aren't in business to please audiophiles, they're in business to make profit. If a large enough section of the market they are targetting with their product (which is the music) demand audiophile quality, they'll supply it to them at a price. Presumably audiophiles aren't a big enough market yet.
On another tack, the time of life I seem to recall getting most excited about music was in the old days of the Dansette record player, which was lo-fi in the extreme. The records sounded wonderful because pop was new and exciting and hearing something new was an amazing experience. Now I've (mostly) heard it all before and my jaded palate demands stereo and clarity.
The issue of bandwidth
is still of great concern to ISPs who end up having to introduce traffic shaping to cope with demand for both legal and illegal downloads. My download speeds have dropped alarmingly recently so I suspect this is happening to me.
Plus you can't beat having a hard copy of the music for backup purposes and the CD/DVD is still the best medium for this. Why spend hours downloading when you can achieve the same result in minutes?
Perhaps it's a good thing if 99% of the population can't tell the difference. If they start to download lossless files instead we're all stuffed. I've already been told my ISP is going to clobber me at the end of the year when my contract ends, mainly because of my son's downloads.
My understanding is that the uptake of the iPlayer
and similar TVOD services is having a big effect on the ISPs and the backbone networks.
Something Is Going On,
I suspect, as my download speeds have also taken a hammering over the last week or two.
Having recently upgraded my ISP contract to allow for a healthy monthly download quantity, I have since discovered that downloads race along overnight, while sputtering to a crawl during the day. Not wishing to run the machine (something of a monster) overnight very often, and being subject to the vagaries of a rural electricity supply (i.e. very frequent power cuts), this is not an ideal situation. If this goes on, I may have to resort to stealthy countermeasures to further disguise the P2Pness of my packets.
Anyone else suspect their traffic has recently been subjected to aggressive shaping during the daylight hours?
Audiophobes!
Indeed. Sub-human scum.
Even on a decent system, most people can't tell the difference between 256kbps mp3 and wav in a blind test. I'm pretty sure I couldn't.
You can repeat the mantra all you like,
but I know what my ears tell me.
I wonder if your ears...
...would tell you the same things if your eyes weren't involved, Foxy? Confirmation bias is astonishingly powerful. Of course, you might really have exceptional hearing, in which case, my commiserations. I'm very happy with my normal ears, not least because they let me buy cheaper hi fi and music! ;-)
The vehemence that sometimes surfaces here
in the lossless v compressed debate mystifies me.
I don't see what's wrong with trying to listen to music at the highest sound quality possible. I also don't see why someone can't enjoy music just as much over cheap headphones. It's up to the individual.
I've got a pretty high-quality hi-fi system. I don't wear designer clothes, I don't have a flash car, and I'm really not trying to impress anyone. I LOVE my hi-fi because I love listening to music and it sounds great.
If there wasn't a difference between compressed files and lossless files, I'd just plug my iPod straight into the amp and listen away. I don't do this, purely and simply because lossless tracks sound WAY better on my system. For me, the compressed songs on the iPod are ideal for listening on the move and in the car, but they sound flat and lack punch through my hi-fi. I'm not imagining this. The difference is clear. So I rip CDs at lossless, stick them on my network drive, and play 'em at full quality.
I don't think I'm better than anyone else for doing this. I don't think anyone is scum for not doing it. It's the CHOONS that are the most important thing, after all. Getting them to sound great is an enhancement, not a necessity. But it ain't a crime!
So, in answer to the OP: for the moment, chrisf, you'll probably have to do what I do if you want lossless downloads - buy the CD and rip it yourself.
Well said
Very well said. I have much the same feelings - I also stream all my music from a networked drive to a reasonable HiFi and the CD's are mainly just put on the shelf. Now this is my default means of listening to music, I want it in the best possible quality I can.
I do feel I can tell the difference and I have sufficient storage space (one of the perks of working for a hard disk company) so why not go lossless. I had previously ripped my whole CD collection (at approx 2000 CD's) as MP3 and have now virtually finished re-ripping as lossless (I'm up to U - although those "Various Artists" are going to be a bugger...). I would not have engaged in this mammoth task if I didn't feel it was worth it.
So, I'm still buying the CD and ripping myself to get lossless, with the occasional glimmer of a nice pristine downloadable version being available (kudos for Mr Gabriel for both his Real World releases in lossless and the Society of Sound subscription service).
I live in hope that Apple with move its whole iTunes store to lossless... although when that happens I dread to think of the affects on my bank balance.
Ears
The funny thing is if you have spent any extended time playing loud music either as a listener or a gig goer but especially as a musician you're probably not hearing the full frequency spectrum. So for a lot of people around these parts it probably doesnt make a huge difference....
Me
Definitely - I've lost the top and bottom ends of my hearing range. So MP3 sounds fine to me.
Lossy and lossless.
Plugging iPods straight into amps in decent systems tends to sound shit because iPods have crappy DACs. I know I've posted this before, but for those who haven't read it.. I use a Sonos to listen to streamed music and stuff from my hard-drive, compressed at 128 or 256 kbs. The digital output from my Sonos box goes through a Musical Fidelity X-DAC and then on to the amp. You cannot tell the difference between the digital streams and my CD player. The high-end hi-fi shop where I got the thing does this as a demonstration, pitching a Sonos against a £5k cd player. You can't hear a difference.
Greg Milner's excellent book Perfecting Sound Forever goes into this in great detail. Milner himself was mightily upset to have his prejudices upset when he found himself unable to distinguish compressed from uncompressed streams. People may be convinced otherwise, but this is confirmation bias.
I use Sonos, too, Lenny.
Streamed through a separate DAC and onto the amp. And if I listen to an album streamed through Spotify and the same album streamed on lossless from my network drive, it sounds different. Honest. You can come round and have a listen.
Different.
But better?
And have you tried it blind?
I know me and Bob clatter on about this but the science is on our side.
When I decided to go digital 5 or 6 years ago
I anguished over the best bitrate to use so I got the studio engineer to knock up a simple ABX box and did some blind tests.
We chose to do a series of trials based on sessions of 20 tests to prevent listener fatigue. The results seemed to indicate that , through my main stereo (QUAD ESL 57s being fed by matched QUAD valve amps using ordinary mains cable as speaker wire) I could pretty reliably hear a difference between a 128kbps mp3 and the original source. At 192, I could often as not hear a difference. At 256Kbps I could almost never tell the difference.
Consequently I went with 320kbps CBR mp3 using the LAME encoder. I'm more than happy with that.
Mains cable as speaker wire??
*ptschoshh*
Shame on you, Stimpy. My speaker cables are fabricated from the finest and purest copper, ethically sourced and never exposed to oxygen, extruded from ingot to wire only during the waxing moon. When I am not listening to music, they are kept in the freezer. They were priced by the millimeter and cut to length by a member of staff who had never heard any Take That using specially crafted titanium shears. When needed, one of a team of virgins (always tricky to find in Portsmouth) pulls on a pair of silken gloves to reconnect speakers and individual amps.
Hang on. Was that the doorbell going?
Speaker Wire
In blindfold tests, speakers connected with wire coat hangers sound as good as those hooked up with top notch speaker cable. Check it out: - http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/03/audiophiles-cant-tell-the-difference-...
On a similar note...try doing a blindfold taste test on red and white wines that are served at the same temperature. You may be surprised.
I've done that.
You can pick up the hefty reds from the grippy tannins but otherwise it's bloody odd. I was astonished that I didn't pick up on a very grapefruity sauvignon blanc.
I find it's best
to accept my own ignorance in these matters and to accept the results of stats and blind testing.
I've always thought I could distinguish between Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, but I've never tested myself.
Heinz 57
A few years back Heinz introduced good ol' 57 Ketchup in a variety of colours (same flavour, just weird colours). I tried the green one. It was inedible so long as my eyes remained open.
I know we're going round in circles...
...on this topic, but I posted a sound file on one of the previous occasions with rips at different bit rates. Anyone who thinks they can tell the differences can prove it by posting the answers.
Listen to it on whatever equipment you like. My own experience of this is that a fair few people will pick out the 128k file, but after that it's VERY hard to tell.
http://www.divshare.com/download/13699176-e7e
Just remember...
...that if you transfer the file to an iPod etc, don't compress it. Doh.
My understanding is a single sample, listened in isolation,
isn't a reliable test. As it was explained to me, you need to do a number of ABX trials over a period of time to establish if there's an audible difference on a given system for a given individual. Therefore, that's what we did and made my decision based upon our findings.
With the greatest of respect, I don't have to 'prove' anything to you.
Of course not...
... because that would imply that this is something other than a light-hearted, but hopefully informative and thought-provoking, discussion group. Which, of course, it isn't.
Go on - prove it. You know you want to.
But, for me, it *is* a light-hearted discussion group.
Nothing more.
But I would be interested in your findings if and when you do a proper, statistically significant, ABX test.
I meant...
...Oh never mind. Next.
Bleep.com
and Boomkat download stores usually offer a FLAC, and sometimes a WAV option (completely uncompressed Audio) although these come at a premium which means you may as well get the CD, and they only stock the more left-field/dancey end of things.
I'm not sure I can tell FLAC from 320kbps Mp3 but what I've never really considered is that I'm usually listening through a high-end sound card designed for music production , direct through a mixing desk (with nice EQ) into either headphones or into active studio monitors.
So although I'm not a HiFi buff and I don't have a domestic Hi Fi set up I'm probably getting a pretty good sound compared to an iPod through a docking system.
call me silly but
if you buy a cd why not play the cd rather than load it up lossless and play the resultant file ?
for the record - i prefer records
Because I can then get rid of the CD
and not have thousands of cheap plastic boxes cluttering up my home?
...thereby breaking the law.
Legally (and I reckon probably ethically/morally) there's no difference between buying a CD, ripping it, then selling the CD; and simply downloading the album from an illegal download site. I'm not saying this makes you a bad person, stimpy, just pointing out the direct equivalence of the two acts.
Mind you, it's also illegal to rip a CD whilst still retaining the CD which you legally own. That one's less easy to agree with on ethical/moral grounds.
I didn't say I sold the CDs...
Every few months, the local charity shop receives a sizeable box of 'played once' CDs.
For what it's worth, I split them between CRUK and the local hospice.
Plase don't misunderstand
I'm not launching a moral attack on you, Stimpy. But, regardless of whether or not you profit from the disposal of the CDs (and I think your modus operandi is admirable, personally!), the fact that you no longer own the CD, but retain possession of ripped copies of the songs, means you're in breach of the law. Doubly so, in fact, since you've already (technically) broken the law by ripping the CD even if you retained the CD instead of donating it to charity. The law's somewhat screwed up, isn't it?
*shrug*
I don't have a problem with what I do. I used to stress about it but gave up sometime ago when I realised 'everyone else' was doing far worse than me :-)
An analogy would be that I'm driving at an indicated 80mph whilst those who Bittorrent commercially released material roar past me at 100mph.
burglars unlikely to steal your cds
but they will your hard drive
or it will cark it
if it worth listening to it is worth keeping
IMO o'course
Which is exactly why I have spent the last two years posting
reminders for people to back up your hard disk, then back it up again, then keep one back up in a different place.
With Time Machine built into OSX there's no excuse for not backing up your hard disk.
Quite.
Incidentally, one of the best things you can do is have a redundant backup, like a Drobo. They're fantastic: you can hot-swap the disks in and out, which makes sending them to your mum's house or whatever an absolute cinch.
I have a distributed storage backup strategy.
Each album is encoded in wav format on its own polycarbonate disc, and these are stored standing vertically on edge on a rack system known as a 'shelf'.
I feel bad.
I've got a 500gb hard drive sitting unused behind my Mac. I should be more proactive on this. We are becoming increasingly blasé about our personal digital archives. For me it's not music, just photos. I should really stick them in The Cloud somewhere.
Plug it in and the Mac will ask if you want to use it
for Time Machine backups. It will then sort everything out for you...
I know, I know.
But it's still the whole thing of having it there. I want remote storage out there somewhere. Cheap.
It's not worth...
...having a remote internet backup until you've got decent upload speeds, Len. Even on my work's 10 mbps (both ways) connection, doing remote backups was painful - although some of that will be down to the shitty software tool my backup provider gave me.
Get BT Infinity or similar before you start considering reliable cloud backup. Until then, Time Machine. Your HD is far more likely to fail than your house is to burn down or be burgled.
It's just a matter of patience...
...I thought my connection was too slow to allow for a large cloud backup (I get roughly 1000k upload speed) but I managed to back up a 230gb iTunes library in around three weeks - just set up the backup software (Carbonite in this case) to upload in the background and then forget about it. It never affected my computer use adversely while it did it.
If you normally turn off your machine then just leave it on while this is happening. It's only this initial backup that's a pain - once the big chunk is complete set the software to backup changes and it will do these in small chunks and you'll never notice it happening.
I did check with my ISP before I started to make sure they wouldn't penalise me for the data traffic, but they were fine.
Bandcamp
to answer the op - bandcamp.com, perhaps - I know when I buy Amanda Palmer related stuff from said site, not only can I pay what I want, but I can download in more formats than I've ever heard of. Apparently there are more than 222,000 albums available through the site.
This one time, at bandcamp…
I bought Darren Hayman's January Songs from bandcamp and as badartdog says, the choice of formats was pretty extensive. I plumped for Apple Lossless but it was available in FLAC too, as well as a variety of lossy formats.
Thank You Sir
Just had a quick browse and it looks like I could be spending more time there.
I wasn't intending to open up the age old lossless vs MP3 debate as such. I've made my choice whether folks agree with me or not. I just wanted to express my frustration that having made that choice, the supply was limited (apart from DIY) and to look for more options.....
If physical CD sales keep declining
at the rate they are now I'm sure FLAC or some other format will become more ubiquitous from online stores as a substitute for CD. You're ahead of your time!
dont often hear that round these here parts
"Wasn't intending to open up the age old...debate"
HD Tracks
Not mentioned on this thread, but I have used HD Tracks https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php for Flac downloads of Raising Sand (very good), and Band on the Run (OK) and am currently investigating the Rolling Stones remasters. They also have a free sample Flac album to test the ears. Best used with Paypal I am told. Not a huge selection but some intriguing stuff.
An Engineer's Guide to the Secrets of iTunes and iPod
http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/itunes.htm
http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/ipod-touch-4g.htm#perf
http://kenrockwell.com/apple/ipad-2-audio.htm
He is using v expensive equipment and ears to measure this stuff, and it seems to be the case that the audio quality out of an iPod has less distortion than a $55,000 amp. And the quality from 128 kbps AAC is as good as a human will be able to hear!
That said, I encode at slightly higher than that, but I'm not sure why. The psychology is interesting - perhaps knowing that I can do it at a higher rate feels like the safe thing to do (like paying more for something gives it more perceived real functional value). But the truth seems simpler, quicker and smaller.
Here's a quote:
"As suspected, the iPod Touch has magnificent audio performance right out of its little headphone jack. I pulled my dirty little iPod out of my pocket in a lab, plugged it into an advanced analog laboratory audio analyzer, and played some test files.
Bingo! Great performance: flat response from 5 Hz to 22 kHz, 0.0073% THD + N from 128 kbps AAC files, perfect channel balance, and more.
Don't tell your audiophile friends about this, because they prefer to pay tens of thousands of dollars for bigger, uglier, heaver and more cumbersome ways to play music — that sounds worse! For instance, they'd love to pay $55,000 for a pair of Luxman B-1000F monoblock power amplifiers, but they have frequency response only half as good as an iPod touch (-0.2 dB at 20 kHz versus -0.1 dB for the iPod at 20 kHz) and more distortion. For audiophiles, it's all about the gear, not the music.
Not that there's anything wrong with the Luxman amps, there's just less wrong with an iPod. I remember the good old days when audiophiles were still protesting digital that they didn't understand; now they're still prejudiced against iPod simply because they are so small and elegant. Audiophiles equate mass with class; put an iPod in ten pounds of billet aluminum, and they'll pay".