I have been buying my music from Itunes for quite a while now and putting it on my Ipod which was nice and simple, and since Itunes plus has been about the quality of the music wasn't bad on my Ipod,
Then I got a sony walkman and eventually got my music across to media player and on to my walkman, and I was happy with the quality of that,....Untill I listened to a sample bit of music that comes loaded on the walkman, it makes the sound quality of the rest not quite so good, I have always used good earphones (U-E superfi , sennheisers etc ) and thought I had it sounding good, but listening to the demo shows it can be better,

So what is the best way of purchasing music, Itunes, other downloads or go back to buying a hard copy and ripping it to my computer.

would be greatfull for any advice ( not to technical please I am not a computer genius)

cheers steve

I buy my music on cd and on Itunes but most of the time I use Itunes now and quality wise the cd copies sound better sometimes but I find Itunes + just as good in quality on my Ipod and Iphone.

I buy CDs and then rip them to iTunes. I don't really want to buy already compressed music.

Hahahaha! BUY music!!!

Play.com is a good place to buy music, Great quality, DRM free and cheaper than CDs.

When I do buy music I use http://www.legalsounds.com/

them Russian sites are great!!

thanks for your answers, I am not sure which way to go yet,...I use two computers in my house my mac that has got Itunes installed and thats where I load my Ipods from, ... and my pc which has media player on it and thats where I load my walkman, ... If I continue to download music to my PC .( lets face it its easier than going into town and buying a hard copy ) and then Burn it to disc and then rip it on to my mac, is the quality going to be worse than if I just purchased a CD and then ripped it to both machines.

steve

Ditto

me too. id much rather have a proper physical copy of my music - i like collecting real cds.

as for the compression thing... you still are buying compressed music, even with regular cd's... but yeah I agree with you.

Thats why when Im at home I listen to the actual cds. because you can tell the difference between a CD and a MP3 on a decent(ish) hi-fi.

By the CD and then rip, iTunes while it is great and easy to use has a major draw back. The sound quality is crap and how many other devices can support the format? I can not stream them my 360 and if I get a different brand of player in future I don't want to lose quality by having to convert something that is already compressed.

Like others, I buy CDs and then rip them to my PC, I refuse to buy compressed music, especially with DRM. However, I also have a Napster subscription for streaming, but just use it to try out the music before buying the CD. I also sometimes buy FLAC downloads from Bleep.com.

CDs aren't compressed (I guess they are dynamically compressed like practically all recorded music, but that's entirely different to the kind of compression that mp3's etc go through)

oh right. I maybe a bit confused then I just remember looking at a graph like this one a few years ago - and was shocked to see how the audio was "compressed" (in my eyes) in comparison to the raw analogue audio.

Thats why Ive always though that the best audio quality comes from vinyl. (except the obvious snap crackles and pop's - lol)

But all this is by-the-by really. what the person really meant that it wasnt complessed like mp3's were.

I wouldnt really be very happy about paying about £10 for an album and only getting mp3 quality, either.

Actually, that's a completely different issue altogether. When we're talking about mp3's the compression removes information that isn't supposedly perceived by the human ear. The more compression, the more information is removed. Dynamic compression is the flattening out of volume changes, hence why a recording can contain a singer whispering, and then the next moment shouting, and yet without the drastic volume change you would expect in real life. Practically all recordings, vinyl or otherwise, have some compression at the recording and mixing stage.

There is additional compression added at the mastering stage to increase the perceived loudness of the music which makes them sound better on poor hifi but poor on good hifi. If you've ever noticed the difference between listening to a recording on a CD, and listening to it on radio 1 (which has even more compression) that's due to the extra compression radio 1 use for all of it's music. Vinyl doesn't have as much of this type of compression because it can't cope with it. If a CD is compressed as heavily as a CD the needle would literally jump out of the groove!

MP3 compression isn't meant to be heard and certainly not improve. Dynamic compression is designed to make an audible difference and improvement as well as beinig necessary for the recording process

The article you posted refers to inaccuracies in the sampling process due to the digitalisation of the analog sound and isn't actually compression at all. However, the article is actually completely wrong. Sampling a recording will provide an exact replica of the original soundwave up to just less than half othe sampling rate frequency. For example, CD is sampled at 44.1khz, so the result will provide an exact replica of the soundwave up to 20khz (the highest frequency humans can hear). DVD-Audio has a limit of 192khz, so the result is accurate up to approximately 90khz. There's a lot of debate about whether increasing the sampling frequency so that it samples frequencies higher than the limits of human hearing is worthwhile, however, the objective evidence would indicate not.

http://mixonline.com/recording/mixin..._new_sampling/

However, music mastered for DVD-Audio/SACD is often mastered to be played on good hifi and so doesn't have the dynamic compression typical of modern CDs, so will sound better, even though the improvement has nothing to do with the actual technological difference between CDs and the hi-def formats

Unless you download the first copy in a lossless format, yes.

You'll be taking a lossy formatted download (MP3, AAC .... they're both lossy formats), burning it to WAV (you don't get the quality back when doing this) and re-encoding it as lossy again.

Quality drop may not be huge (although it might be if you don't do a good job of re-encoding them), but it'll be there.

Play.com is pretty good. DRM-free MP3 and sometimes cheaper than iTunes. Not as integrated though. You have to unzip them then drag them over to iTunes, drag the artwork in or get iTunes to collect it. I still find iTunes a lot easier, download and its all there. I am looking forward to Amazon MP3. Unless it is easier and quicker than Play.com though I will probably stick with iTunes.

I have got over 7GB in iTunes Store purchases now. That must have been expensive. Dammit, iTunes, you make it too easy!

As for CDs. I have brought maybe 2 or 3 in the past year. I just can't be bothering with CDs anymore. I'm not going to lie though. I have downloaded a few albums using BitTorrent, I'm a bad bad man I know