[lionel marechal]

I am not bying personnally from Itunes, but remember that with the CD, you get the jackets and line notes.
It depends on the genre, but for Jazz, you have often extensive notes on the sessions, the musician, ... They are very helpfull/important to approach a record/performance. Not all can be found in books or on the net.
Regardless of your opinion, enjoy the music the way you want to enjoy it
Lionel

 

[AndrewFischer]

Yeah. +1 on liner notes.

Apple are you listening? Liner notes can't be any harder than cover art.

 

[shellylh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ichiboy /img/forum/go_quote.gif Why in the world would you buy any of these? I mean at this price you might as well just buy the CD.

Well, there is the obvious reason that maybe you only want one song and not the whole album. I think itunes and other such setups are great for that reason. If legal sites will have higher quality downloads then people will not need to go to ``illegal'' websites to download a single song (at high quality). It is too bad that itunes does not allow you to choose between 128/256/lossless etc when you check out. That would be really nice. Perhaps someday soon.

 

[Orcin]

I tried upgrading my library last night, and I was only able to upgrade 5 songs of 151 purchased. I guess I am not a big fan of EMI's library. Of those five, I was only able to download three - the other two were stuck in the queue. I tried again this morning and the store was totally offline.

The ones I heard sounded pretty good though.

 

[cooperpwc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oicdn /img/forum/go_quote.gif iTunes rips are VERY clean, regardless of what many on here think.

I must disgree with that. I have Lovers In A Dangerous Time by the Barenaked Ladies with blatant distortion. My City Was Gone by the Pretenders is also flawed. Usually it's okay but QC is questionable IMHO. It's been a long time since I bought from iTunes.

 

[AndrewFischer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orcin /img/forum/go_quote.gif Of those five, I was only able to download three - the other two were stuck in the queue. I tried again this morning and the store was totally offline.

I've noticed some delays with iTunes too.

That's a good sign. It means Apple has once again underestimated the demand.

I'm sure it will even out as Apple adds more bandwidth.

 

[oicdn]

I completely closed iTunes last night, and restarted it. It qued me for my password and everything like when you originally install it. All DL's that were giving me problems, transferred great this morning. So I'de recommend a reboot of iTunes....bug free? hardly, that seems like a fairly large bug to me...

As far as the clean rips....I did notice alot of older albums, were of less than stellar quality. A couple Clapton and Bob Dylan songs came up a little crappy...but I'm guessing by a normal persons ears (read: non-audio critical listener) they probably wouldn't notice the difference with stock buds coming out of the HP jack, lol. But most all of my songs, of newer/more recent variety, came out fine....

 

[AndrewFischer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cooperpwc /img/forum/go_quote.gif I must disgree with that. I have Lovers In A Dangerous Time by the Barenaked Ladies with blatant distortion. My City Was Gone by the Pretenders is also flawed. Usually it's okay but QC is questionable IMHO. It's been a long time since I bought from iTunes.

I don't have those two.
Of all the music I've purchased from the iTunes store, only Sam Moore's "If I had no loot" has what I'd call blatant distortion. It is about 38s in. Anyone have the CD?

There is a message board that Apple employees monitor. I wonder if they would look into complaints about SQ.

Other questionable tracks all went away when I upgraded my DAC.

 

[TheChemist]

AAC 256, ugh. Dumb.

 

[AndrewFischer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oicdn /img/forum/go_quote.gif As far as the clean rips....I did notice alot of older albums, were of less than stellar quality.

I doubt EMI is providing new masters. An old Capitol master is going to be compressed to death.

 

[pentachris]

Just in case you thought that "DRM free" means "without any catches," you should read this.

Quote:

...all such downloads are watermarked, containing the user's full name and email address.

 

[lextek]

Nanybodt else getting "error 500 or 504" while trying to "ugrade" their songs?

 

[Rambaud]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lextek /img/forum/go_quote.gif Nanybodt else getting "error 500 or 504" while trying to "ugrade" their songs?

Yes.

It has taken over 15 hours to download 3 tracks.

I assume Apple has massively underestimated demand?

 

[melomaniac]

Apple is embedding personal information, such as the name and email address of the purchaser, in all of their AAC files, including DRM-free ones. See TUAW and Ars Technica. Also, I second all the abuse that people in this forum direct towards inferior compression schemes. Go lossless at all times!

 

[unclejr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by robm321 /img/forum/go_quote.gif That will be the paradigm shift.

(in regard to ALAC offering) I hope you're right about this -- what's the biggest issue, bandwidth cost? 'Cause movies/music videos/tv shows probably all require a big pipe.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lionel marechal /img/forum/go_quote.gif I am not bying personnally from Itunes, but remember that with the CD, you get the jackets and line notes. It depends on the genre, but for Jazz, you have often extensive notes on the sessions, the musician, ... They are very helpfull/important to approach a record/performance. Not all can be found in books or on the net. Regardless of your opinion, enjoy the music the way you want to enjoy it Lionel

Agreed. I am surrounded by wonderful liner notes/art/commentary that adds so much to the experience of the music. Nearly all jazz, by the way.

I don't buy music I really care about from iTunes, and I won't until these things are addressed (or if/when CDs disappear mysteriously off of the face of the planet).