[SeanTek]

Hi All,
 
I am thinking about purchasing the Brave Soundtrack but am not sure if I should go Lossless or not. I don't want to start a flame thread or anything; it's just the first time that I've bought music in awhile and I want it as high quality as possible.
 
I read this thread: http://www.head-fi.org/t/533181/how-to-purchase-apple-lossless-audio
 
And it looks like Lossless is not available on iTunes. As this is a Pixar release (and Pixar<->Disney<->Apple in many ways), you can bet that they will never bother to release it on hdtracks.com or whatever.
 
Should I go with 320KB MP3 (Amazon), 256KB AAC (iTunes), or get the CD and rip to Apple Lossless/FLAC? Size, of course, is not a concern at all. My point is that per the prior thread, the MP3 or AAC versions may be closer to the original masters than the CD version (which could be downsampled from the masters to 44.1KHz/16-bit stereo), especially in light of the source for this particular soundtrack.

 

[GabCM]

I thought everything sounded at their best when it's lossless or uncompressed.

 

[OJNeg]

Remember, you can always compress from lossless to lossy. You can't go backwards.
 
If you care about owning (physical) albums, you'd buy the CD and add it to your collection. If you plan on ripping it first thing and throwing it away, save yourself the trouble and get the 320 MP3 from Amazon.

 

[SeanTek]

The issue raised in the other thread was that the original masters are probably an extremely high resolution, such as 192/24, which would then be downsampled to CD quality (44.1/16). Thus, even though CDs have "lossless" audio (they can represent any frequency up to 22.05 KHz), there would have been loss from the original masters (that no end user has access to, so it's kind of like a unicorn).
 
I guess what might be relevant to this discussion is: other than the raw bitrate, what are the features of AAC 256KB and Amazon MP3 320KB? For example, does AAC from the iTunes store attempt to capture 24-bit/96KHz audio? If so, then even though AAC's compression comes into play, it has the potential to be closer in fidelity to the original master. (Then, of course, it depends on what kinds of tweaks the AAC producers did, if any.)
 
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/02/mastered-for-itunes-how-audio-engineers-tweak-tunes-for-the-ipod-age/
is an interesting article.

 

[StratocasterMan]

Amazon does not offer 320 kbps constant-bit-rate MP3. Amazon generally uses 256 kbps variable-bit-rate MP3, aiming at an average of 256 kbps.
 
Taken from Amazon's web site today:
 
 

[size=small]Bit Rate:[/size] [size=small] Where possible, we encode our MP3 files using variable bit rates for optimal audio quality and file sizes, aiming at an average of 256 kilobits per second (kbps). Using a variable bit rate allows us to allocate a higher bit rate to the more complex sections of music files while using a smaller bit rate for the less complex sections. The average of these rates is then calculated to produce an average bit rate for the entire file that represents the overall sound quality. Some of our content is encoded using a constant bit rate of 256 kbps. This content will have the same excellent audio quality at a slightly larger file size.[/size]

 
Google Music, on the other hand, does offer 320 kbps constant-bit-rate MP3.