[GarageBoy]

Real curious what format and what quality their files are

 

[walkingman]

Tried it a couple of months ago

Lame VBR -V 2 quality if I remember correctly, at least with the albums I downloaded.

 

[Doo Doo Brown]

I use it sometimes. Most of their stuff is encoded at 192. It's a nice way to get a lot of music relatively cheaply, but in terms of sound quality, you're definitely paying the price. I just use it to keep up with what's new.

 

[Squirsier]

Their stuff is usually (at least for the past 2 years) encoced at VBR 320kbps. Been a subscriber since 2005, love the site

 

[Earwax]

Quote:

Originally Posted by walkingman /img/forum/go_quote.gif Tried it a couple of months ago Lame VBR -V 2 quality if I remember correctly, at least with the albums I downloaded.

Yes, the majority is lame VBR -v2. A very few were -v0 (the best vbr setting) I've encoded some of my own CDs at -V2 and also in .flac (lossless) and I am unable to distinguish the mp3s from the lossless.

I'm a recent subscriber to emusic and (so far) I'm very happy with the service.

 

[major_works]

I subscribe to eMusic and love it. I find lots of good stuff there. Quality is usually as stated by prior posters, i.e. good enough. Once in a while I've been disappointed with the bit rate of downloads but not often. When it does happen, it's usually with old back-catalog releases. New stuff on eMusic is almost always ripped at a pretty high bit rate.

What I like best is how seamlessly the eMusic download manager pops your downloads into your iTunes library. Works great for me.

 

[Pangaea]

I was a subscriber for awhile about 8-9 months ago but ult. gave it up due to the relatively low bitrate (it was still better than iTunes at the time). Yet I have gone back to it as I do not care as much about bitrates as I used to and actually their bit rates have gone up. It varies from recording to recording but it does seem to get above 200kbps and is usually VBR. As far as selection, SPOT ON.