[Yenasty5]

Hello everyone, im new to the forums and to HQ audio in general and i have a question i'dlike to ask.

Anyway, i've been thinking about moving from downloaded music to CD and buying a decent set of headphones.
The main reason behind this is basically that i'd like to listen to my music at the highest quality and how the artist originally intended for it to be heard.

Other reasons are the safety of always having the music in it's CD in case something happens to my PC, and just having the album in my hands all that.

Basically what im asking is: is it worth it dealing with the shipping and extra cash to own the CD or is the difference between 320 kb and CD too minimal to distinguish?
 
 
Thanks in advance!

 

[skamp]

is it worth it dealing with the shipping and extra cash to own the CD

Owning the CD gives you the freedom to encode your music yourself, using the codec of your choice, at the bitrate of your choice. And you can always change your mind whenever you want. Also, it's legal.

is the difference between 320 kb and CD too minimal to distinguish?

In most cases, yes. There are so-called "killer samples" that can be distinguished, but they are rare and very specific, and you have to know what to listen for.

 

[Yenasty5]

would you recomend to get a better set of earphones instead?

 

[skamp]

Getting better headphones will definitely yield a (much) larger increase in quality than going from 320kbps MP3 to lossless.

 

[Yenasty5]

i see, thank you very much!

 

[khaos974]

I would say that only you can tell, try ABXing the original files and their 320 kbps compressed versions. IMHO, the real plus for lossless files is that you aren't tied to a file format, the day Flac becomes obsolete, you still can convert your files to another lossless format while keeping the metadata intact.
 
If you want the convenience of downloading files instead of purchasing the CDs, Qobuz.com sells lossless files and has a very large catalog.