[mark2410]

hmm could sony kill apple? yes

will they? hell no

sony is the only company on earth that can make software thats even worse than itunes

 

[fenixdown110]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mark2410 /img/forum/go_quote.gif hmm could sony kill apple? yes will they? hell no sony is the only company on earth that can make software thats even worse than itunes

LOL That is so true.

 

[earthpeople]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leveller1642 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Are you sure? I can't find any sign of itunes plus in the itunes store.

About iTunes Store authorization and deauthorization
There's some mention of bitrate and iTunes Plus near the bottom.

iTunes Store: iTunes Plus Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
But it looks like they've phased out the 128kbps. I had only heard they were introducting iTunes Plus, and didn't know they were replacing their music completely.

You got me there.

 

[cn11]

Quote:

Originally Posted by squid+ /img/forum/go_quote.gif iTunes standard is only 128kbps AAC. They've recently started selling music at 256kbps but for an additional fee. :\

Quote:

Originally Posted by fenixdown110 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I stopped buying from iTunes long ago because of that.

X2.

 

[majid]

Linn, Magnatunes and Chandos sell lossless (and sometimes even 24/96) downloads in standard formats like FLAC and AIFF. They are certainly more convenient than ripping CDs and you can't rip SACDs without hacking a player, possibly with a soldering iron. I tend to think of CDs as license tokens for digital music, the actual artifacts go in binders never to be seen again (apart from the SACDs, of course).

 

[bangraman]

Sony and software is an oxymoron. It'll never work since I'm not seeing any radical shifts to enable this to happen in a non-Sony-traditional manner.


Stringer was playing devil's advocate in an internal conference a while back about the irrelevance of Sony. Great idea to emerge from that... be the content guy, don't think further than that and play to your weaknesses. Oy vey.


Hang on to your Discmen guys, it could be a real piece of history. Given the hopelessness of the Sony management, all I see down the line is a future headline: "Samsung to rebrand all Sony divisions after takeover earlier this decade of the beleaguered former electronics giant, in a move to present a more unified corporate image to compete against Chinese rivals".

 

[tjohnusa]

Found this site on a search HigherFi MEDIA... lossless audiophile music & video downloads. the selection is limited but the tracks are $1.29 each and most albums are $15.00 They also have super HD for $20.00 per album. The download formats are in various formats.

Supposedly no DRM

 

[SactoMan101]

Lossless is great but since Apple does not support FLAC "out of the box," that's a non-starter at least in the USA market.

Besides, at 256 kbps VBR AAC encoding, the sound quality very good, and to tell the difference between that and the original requires audio equipment most of us couldn't afford to start with. That's why my entire CD collection has been ripped by iTunes 9.0.2 to 256 kbps VBR so I can put a good number of albums onto my two iPod nanos on an "as needed" basis.

(I'm seriously considering getting an 6.5G iPod classic--either 120 GB refurbished from the Apple Store or an all-new one from other retailers at discount--so I could move most of my CD collection onto my player).

I wonder is the Sony online music store going to use a special downloader program so the music downloaded--whether in MP3 or AAC format--will automatically copy to the iTunes playlist for easy copying to your iPod. (This is what Amazon did with their MP3 Downloader program--it automatically puts the music into your iTunes playlist.)

 

[krmathis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SactoMan101 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Lossless is great but since Apple does not support FLAC "out of the box," that's a non-starter at least in the USA market.

FLAC is not the only lossless audio codec you know.

..and if needed for compatibility with a certain playback software you can always transcode to a supported format/codec.

 

[chinesekiwi]

Exactly, you people do realise that AAC @ ~192 kbps is in fact better than 320kbps mp3......

Oh yeah, by the way, I don't need subjective ABX tests, spectrograms tell the story:

AAC is basically transparent @ ~192k.
Anyway, Foobar2000 + iPod plugin = so infinitively easier to use than horrid iTunes.

 

[Sorry About Your Wallet]

Quote:

Originally Posted by krmathis /img/forum/go_quote.gif FLAC is not the only lossless audio codec you know. ..and if needed for compatibility with a certain playback software you can always transcode to a supported format/codec.

Thank god for EAC.

 

[righteousball]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bangraman /img/forum/go_quote.gif Stringer was playing devil's advocate in an internal conference a while back about the irrelevance of Sony. Great idea to emerge from that... be the content guy, don't think further than that and play to your weaknesses. Oy vey.

The emphasis is mine... because... LMAO... that's so true.

Sony is beyond saving, and for Samsung's good, I hope they would never attempt to take over Sony. It's too difficult to do anything worthwhile with. I shall refrain from quoting how they said the Vaio W is macaroon-inspired... oops I did it again!

 

[bangraman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by righteousball /img/forum/go_quote.gif The emphasis is mine... because... LMAO... that's so true. Sony is beyond saving, and for Samsung's good, I hope they would never attempt to take over Sony. It's too difficult to do anything worthwhile with. I shall refrain from quoting how they said the Vaio W is macaroon-inspired... oops I did it again!

Yeah... sad but true.


That it's taken Stringer (who has always been a content guy, so effin' duh that this would be on the cards) this amount of time to say "OK then, we're doing content delivery and we're going to have a crack at doing it properly this time, honest" beggars belief, and what is more it has nothing to do in the overall strategy in relation to what Sony is good at doing.


What they need to do is a bit of a Honda: Let their engineers and designers fly a little more, without the restriction of the old-school content guys who have no clue what they're doing.


I'm not a manufacturer fanboi, but I'm slightly upset that a bunch of bean-counters and clueless media types have all but killed off my erstwhile favourite manufacturer. I'm not even buying VAIO's now, thanks to the increasingly crap build even on their flagships and (lack of) customer support

 

[righteousball]

Ooo, Honda. I'm a bit confused and I don't know what to make of Honda anymore, because I don't perceive anything they've made public this decade as innovation or strokes of brilliance.

Perhaps I'm just influenced by their too-many-to-mention exterior faux-pas, and my general ambivalence about cars in the 2000s also comes into play, but I'm still more impressed by their output in the late 80s through to the end of the bubble.