[salannelson]

Quote:

Personally, I would absolutely buy lossless 16/44.1 files from iTunes for the sole purpose of eliminating the physical CD.

Nooooooo

 

[Jazz1]

I've been filling out my music with used CD's from Amazon and ripping them into AIFF. When I use the "Ping" feature on iTunes I am finding that a lot of blues and jazz I like isn't on iTunes. So even if they go "audiophile" quality music this isn't going to be a total solution for me. Plus I still have the physical CD as a backup if my RAID 0, and RAID1drives fail. Which brings me to this iTunes feature that is missing. How about letting customers re-download the music they purchased if they lose the music? Yeah, yeah, I know they are afraid of piracy.  

 

[leveller1642]

You guys in the US are lucky. In Australia we pay about 50% more for a itunes album. I think they average about $17 here. and our currency is worth slightly more than the $US. About $5-10 more here buys a new CD. I buy second hand and pay around $12 for a new release and as little as $5 or less for something older. My point is, that to me at least, itunes is very poor value.

I'm not convinced by the people's arguments that 24 bit music will indistinguishable from 16 bit. They are working on the assumption that poor mastering will be a given. I think this could be huge if Apple uses their marketing muscle to create a market for higher fidelity sound. Could SACD or DVD-A be the new physical format?

 

[salannelson]

Quote:

You guys in the US are lucky. In Australia we pay about 50% more for a itunes album. I think they average about $17 here. and our currency is worth slightly more than the $US. About $5-10 more here buys a new CD. I buy second hand and pay around $12 for a new release and as little as $5 or less for something older. My point is, that to me at least, itunes is very poor value.

What?
 
It's not like iTunes has to ship the album to you. Why the higher price?

 

[leeperry]

 

it is possible the 24 bit files Apple proposes to sell could be lossy.

 
It'd take brass balls to sell 24bit lossy audio, considering lossy audio doesn't have a bit depth to begin with. 
 
And that macrumors.com link is nonsense, studios work in 48bit..or at least 64bit float.