Rebuying all my old music purchased on iTunes on cd?

1000% waste of money. Especially if you only plan on listening to them (not converting to other formats for whatever reason).

Make sure you can hear the difference too, MAYBE then it might not be so wasteful. I personally haven't spent over $100 on music or tell the difference between FLAC and 256.

Also, spending the money (Anything over $100) on a headphone upgrade will give you a bigger improvement over lossless.

A good portion of my music can't be found on sale anywhere (small starting-out DJs) and another portion I get from my "Friends".

And make sure it's not the placebo effect, there is not many people who can CLEARLY tell the difference between FLAC and higher quality MP3, and I've even heard many veterans say that unless you have really expensive gear, there is no difference. Especially with the basy heavy Sonys, especially because the quality difference between FLAC and MP3 is mostly in the upper frequency range, which the XB500... lacks.

Pretty much if you're above 192 kbps on you're MP3, focus on First: your headphones, Second: Amp, Third: Source Player, and then finally your music quality. 

On a last note, pirating music doesn't hurt the artist. A tiny amount of the money from Albums and songs goes to the artist, most of their money comes from live tours, merchandise, and other licensing.

So if you pirate music, you're only hurting the Music Label (which frankly no one gives a damn about). You can more than make it up by buying an artist hoodie or etc.

It's ridiculous that you may have to pay over a thousand bucks to fill up an iPod, just no way. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by carlchip78 

The best way to show support for an artist is to buy their music, not a hoodie. I know many upcoming artists that play in small venues and don't charge much for admission but they do sell their cd's at the show. A lot of these guys don't work for a big record label, they produce the albums themselves. How are they meant to make a living if nobody pays for their music??

It's pretty obvious that buying a $60 hoodie will bring more revenue than buying a $12 album. Seeing how I'm seriously annoyed by the influx of people "wanting to pursue their dreams" and play in a band or etc., I'll only consider buying an album (And a hoodie) if they have serious talent. 

Besides, who in their right mind would make music their full time profession if they don't already have a sizable fan base? Dropping everything you have to follow the path of your dream seems pretty risky and irresponsible for me, especially if we cradle them early only to see them lose popularity over time and be left with nothing. I'm talking about pretty much every single teen band in existence that thought they were actually getting somewhere.

CDs are nice to have as back-up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chuckle490 

That's interesting Xinze, what type of up and coming djs' do you listen to? I'm planning on purchasing new headphones in the near future, something around the sorts of the ultrasone dj pro or the Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO. I enjoy the tangibility of CDs, also the flexibility. For tracks that are impossible to get on cd or impossible to legally obtain at lossless, is 320 kbps ok? Also would it make more since to have all files at 320 kbps, or is lossless really worth it?

Newgrounds audio portal is a really good example I can think of. You can easily dig deeper into artist's history and see if they have anything else of interest. The site also lets you directly download the music, so it's not illegal at all.

From all I've heard, stay away from ultrasone, they're not worth anywhere near their price. The Beyer 770 is my current main home headphone, the sound is pretty decent, but I moderately EQ them to get the best sound. Comfort is definitely what they have going for them, as someone who wears glasses, they're unbeatable from everything else I've tried.

192kbps is OK, but then bitrate isn't really the best way to tell quality. You can download off google a 320 kbps song that sounds like crap, but have a 128 AAC that sounds amazing. I've made an earlier thread about 128 vs 320, and I actually had a lot of people agreeing with me that there isn't much of a difference. I don't have any hearing issues, and I've done so many ABX tests that I just gave up trying to tell the difference.

Around half of my 800-song library is 320. Rest is mostly 192 and 256, with some stray 128 seemingly unknown songs that I ripped off youtube.

EDIT: CDs are nice to have if you can be bothered keeping track of where they are and have the room to store them, if you insist on getting CDs, just know that it's not that much of a difference on SQ.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chuckle490 

Thanks, I think I'm going to continue to purchase all the stuff I really care about on cd. But honestly, I hear so many people complaining about the quality of iTunes music, are you telling me that they are wrong and it's all a placebo effect? 

Those are usually the same people trying to convince you that silver cables offer a MASSIVE improvement over stock copper cables. They may change the sound a bit, increase bass response or whatnot, but the difference certainly doesn't need to be defined as an improvement.

Again, there are SOME people who can tell the difference between FLAC and well recorded mp3, while even more can start to differentiate if they actually learned what to listen for (Why bother, if it's just going to cost you more money and dig you deeper into a moneysink?) There are differences, but it's nothing dramatic at all and a huge exaggeration.

Placebo effect is HUGE on head-fi, and there's some pretty bad reputation going around for it.

Somewhat a source: I'm eighteen, younger than 80% of head-fi (at least) so I certainly have better hearing than the general population here. 

I've had people try to convince me they can hear the difference between lossless and mp3 on standard iPod docks and laptop speakers. No, just no. 

If you want to test for yourself, put two copies of 5 songs into an playlist, one is mp3 while other is lossless. Try to tell which 1 is lossless, it's pretty hard.

Really up for a challenge? Put the playlist on shuffle and see if you can tell if the song that's playing is lossless/mp3, without comparing to the other version. I'll place money that only 1% of people can tell the differences with properly encoded MP3.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xinze 

 

It's pretty obvious that buying a $60 hoodie will bring more revenue than buying a $12 album. Seeing how I'm seriously annoyed by the influx of people "wanting to pursue their dreams" and play in a band or etc., I'll only consider buying an album (And a hoodie) if they have serious talent. 

 

Besides, who in their right mind would make music their full time profession if they don't already have a sizable fan base? Dropping everything you have to follow the path of your dream seems pretty risky and irresponsible for me, especially if we cradle them early only to see them lose popularity over time and be left with nothing. I'm talking about pretty much every single teen band in existence that thought they were actually getting somewhere.

Supporting a musician is not just about the money. It's about showing appreciation for their art. Most musicians i know started performing way before it was 'cool' or profitable. I think that people's creativity should be given every opportunity to thrive.