[fl00r]

I will be honest to you: my entire ‘CD’ collection consists of stolen mp3’s from irc. Did you know that in Holland it isn’t a crime to download from mp3 sources?

BUT:

I’m sick and tired of the inferior quality of my downloaded files…. I didn’t notice the poor quality until I got me some ety 4p’s

Please tell me to find a place where I can find decent (i.e. .wav quality) music files of all kind.

Thanks

P.s: Don’t get me wrong, I’m willing to pay for it

 

[fl00r]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr.Radar Otherwise you'll have to go and buy...//hfimage.head-fi.org/smilies/frown.gif[/img]

 

[quke]

Almost any music store is a good place to look for some CD-quality music. Ripping poor artists like Metallica is bad mm'kay?

Sorry about not being informative, but I think this thread is moving somewhere near the edge anyway. The Head-Fi policy isn't exactly supporting some DC piracy hub, is it?

 

[abstruse]

Hey Floor,

[/rant]
I don't know were you read it, but downloading mp3's isn't legal over here in Holland. Well technically the act of downloading music isn't illegal. But having illegal content or your computer(warez/movies/mp3) is strictly prohibitted by law. And you can be fined and even put in jail for that.

Ofcourse that wouldn't happen if you just download some mp3's every now and then, But big downloaders and especially uploaders of unreleased material, are getting actively hunted down, arrested and fined.

Ripgroups and warez HQ's/topsites over here have taken big hits cause of this active policy. For instance there have been big raids at the university of Twente. Cause believe it or not this have been the headquarters of the warezscene for many of years. Providing illegal ripgroups terrabytes full of dumps and phat pipes.

My advice for you is to pop in those etys and have yourself a nice walk to your local recordstore(preferably an independant one and not; i beg you not one of those money sucking greedy pig chains like FRS). (i bet nijmegen has a lot of good indepandant record stores) and there you can buy a wealth of music in every possible genre you can think of. And you would do the musicians a favour by paying for their music they struggeld years and years for to get signed and put on cd

I don't wanna be a troll and start a huge flame war, and i respect your honestly and openness about your download activities. But still i think its wrong.

To put things in perspective i don't think its wrong to download mp3's. Hell i've been downloading unreleased material straight from the source for many years but i only do this to audition music before i buy it. To be honest since i have internet acces my cd collection had growed very quickly, cause i get introduced to so much great music that i never would of heard if it wasnt for the net.
So to me downloading music isnt wrong as long as you use it to sample new music.
[/rant]

pfff is het ook zo benauwd in Nijmegen?

abstruse

 

[fl00r]

I realize that mentioning mp3 and download in one sentence caused some misunderstanding.
Anyway, to get thinks clear: I’m looking for a legal site (like i-tunes) to download my music from. And yes, I could go to the nearest cd-shop to buy me some cd’s but I think it is easier to stay at home.

Sorry for the commotion I caused. I didn’t mean to upset you.

 

[abstruse]

Hey Floor,

if anyone shoukd apollogize it's me

i have a natural tendency to overreact.

For me it's a reward to go to the recordstore and browse through all the cd's. Hell i even make an 3 hour train trip once awhile to visit my favourite recordstore in Amsterdam.

Well i don't know any sites where you can download mp3's for money.
But if you don't feel like going out to get music, their are alot of good online vendors with huge collections of cd's and sometimes alot cheaper then in the store,cause they don't have alot of overhead costs.

My favourite is:

nlstore

They are very cheap and have a huge collection, they even sell japanese imports.

But you can also order at Bol.com

There are a lot of good other online vendors.
Check em out !

Happy Listening

 

[NPoet]

Well there is allofmp3.com... granted it's not legal (in the US atleast) but it is in Russia, basically I've used it to fill out my collection with a few lossless files mainly singles and what not, the only problem is A. You don't get the physical cd (I love my cd's

) and B: They only have the top 100 or so albums in lossless format, and lately, the top 100 is crap... though that's just my opinion

I for one am a huge fan of my Plan 9, my local cd store... it's like christmas everytime I go in

Though other then that, online cd vendors are better for getting the hard to get cd's, as I will only deal in lossless formats or cd's, I don't know much about any of those other sites that are for lossy downloads

 

[fl00r]

Quote:

Originally Posted by abstruse Hey Floor, if anyone shoukd apollogize it's me i have a natural tendency to overreact. For me it's a reward to go to the recordstore and browse through all the cd's. Hell i even make an 3 hour train trip once awhile to visit my favourite recordstore in Amsterdam. Well i don't know any sites where you can download mp3's for money. But if you don't feel like going out to get music, their are alot of good online vendors with huge collections of cd's and sometimes alot cheaper then in the store,cause they don't have alot of overhead costs. My favourite is: nlstore They are very cheap and have a huge collection, they even sell japanese imports. But you can also order at Bol.com There are a lot of good other online vendors. Check em out ! Happy Listening

Thanks for your links Abstruse. I will check them out to see what the can offer.

[/OFF TOPIC] It's a shame that there's no Dutch equivalent of this quality board.
Enne, het benauwde is eraf hier in Nijmegen

.[/OFF TOPIC]

 

[Ferbose]

Sorry I know nothing about buying CDs in your part of the world. But my friend recently demonstrated to me that when medium-quality MP3 is back converted to WAV files, not much sound quality is lost. The comparison is done through Benchmark DAC1 and AKG K501. Actually, back-converted WAV file sounds about almost the same as the orginal CD through my SACD player's internal DAC. The recording is the best violin recording I have in my collection, which is a good source for evaluating sound quality differences, IMHO. Of course, the convenience of MP3 is lost, but sound quality can be gained.

 

[fl00r]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ferbose Sorry I know nothing about buying CDs in your part of the world. But my friend recently demonstrated to me that when medium-quality MP3 is back converted to WAV files, not much sound quality is lost. The comparison is done through Benchmark DAC1 and AKG K501. Actually, back-converted WAV file sounds about almost the same as the orginal CD through my SACD player's internal DAC. The recording is the best violin recording I have in my collection, which is a good source for evaluating sound quality differences, IMHO. Of course, the convenience of MP3 is lost, but sound quality can be gained.

Hmm, that’s odd. I always thought that ones you ripped a cd to .mp3 there’s a loss of quality that is irreversible?

 

[Rempert]

Hmm, that’s odd. I always thought that ones you ripped a cd to .mp3 there’s a loss of quality that is irreversible?

You are correct. When you use lossy compression, a lot of information is no longer there, and you can't get that information back by uncompressing the file. That is what mp3 "players" are doing anyway, they are temporarily decoding the .mp3 stream into a .wav, and they are basically doing it perfectly, so there is not much to be gained by doing the conversion permanently.

If the .wav file mentioned above sounded nearly identical to the original, then it stands to reason that the .mp3 file it was made from would too.

 

[Ferbose]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rempert Hmm, that’s odd. I always thought that ones you ripped a cd to .mp3 there’s a loss of quality that is irreversible? You are correct. When you use lossy compression, a lot of information is no longer there, and you can't get that information back by uncompressing the file. That is what mp3 "players" are doing anyway, they are temporarily decoding the .mp3 stream into a .wav, and they are basically doing it perfectly, so there is not much to be gained by doing the conversion permanently. If the .wav file mentioned above sounded nearly identical to the original, then it stands to reason that the .mp3 file it was made from would too.

I guess I may be wrong. I have quite little experience with MP3. Yes, I am aware that MP3 is lossy compression and some information is inevitably lost when it is converted back to a WAV file. But one of my friends told me that using MP3 player playing MP3 files sounds worse than the same palyer playing the WAV file generated from the same MP3 file. May be this is only true on his particular software/hardware setup. Sorry for the confusion.

When I did the MP3-->WAV vs. orginal CD comparison, the difference exists but it is really small. Therefore I am planning to get some legal and free MP3 files on the net and back convert them to WAV files to be played on my stereo rig.

 

[remilard]

if you transcode mp3 to wav the best that could happen, and what should happen, is that the quality remains unchanged. The quality could, but should not, get worse. The quality will not get better. Placebo effect.