Newbie here that needs help downloading quality

[Slashn77]

Hey Everyone,
I am a noob to this audiofile thing however I do have a computer DAC/Amp Asus built in to my computer and now a Sound Blaster E3 because 90% of the time I listen to my music on my iPhone 6(about to be iPhone 7)

I am wondering first off since I've always illegally downloaded music into my iTunes but I want a program that allows me to put better quality music on it and still be able to put it o. My iPhone.
So I do I download ACC files or flac files on my computer for free and what other than iTunes should I be using? (I hear audio heads on here mention Monkey something but I forgot what the full name is.

Basically I want to get started now that I'm going away from my beat tours and got the senn momentums and will be getting another AT or Senn headphones for on ears or over the ears like my solo 2s that I got as a gift as I'm 25 now and no 25 year old in my opinion should be wearing beats lol

So please help me out here increase my audio experience. I don't want to argue headphones right now I want to learn what I need to go on my computer or phone to get better quality music!

Thanks!

 

[Music Alchemist]

Download music here:
http://www.head-fi.org/a/list-of-lossless-and-high-res-music-flac-alac-aiff-dsd-dxd-etc-download-sites
http://www.head-fi.org/t/644595/official-free-flac-file-music-sharing-thread
http://www.head-fi.org/t/731523/the-free-music-thread-100-legal-downloads-of-all-formats
http://www.head-fi.org/t/813479/the-bandcamp-music-discovery-thread
 
If on a PC, play music with this software:
http://foobar2000.org
 
Use a bitperfect output mode such as ASIO, WASAPI, or KS. I recommend ASIO (with Creative's drivers) for the Sound Blaster. (I have one too.)
 
I dunno what player to use on your phone, since I don't use portable players. I heard Onkyo is good.
 
iTunes is not compatible with FLAC files. You'll have to use some other interface to transfer FLAC to your phone. Or you could convert the FLAC files to another lossless format like ALAC, AIFF, or WAV. If you have a ton of music without enough space on your phone, you could also convert to lossy 256 kbps AAC. (foobar2000 can convert files, but I use dBpoweramp.) In that case, you would create a lossy copy of your digital music collection, with the original lossless files backed up.

 

[Slashn77]

Thanks for a lot of great info!
So I use that link to download them and then I put the files to foo bar and then put it into iTunes so I can sync it to my phone?
Is that the process I need to do?
Also I will have to convert to ACC as u said because until the new iPhone comes out and I can get more memory because I have 5GB left out of 32gb and I have about 600 songs.
Also is there a good budget friendly music player less than $200 that I can put all my quality music on that I can carry around like an iPod but not an apple product of course

 

[Music Alchemist]

Thanks for a lot of great info!
So I use that link to download them and then I put the files to foo bar and then put it into iTunes so I can sync it to my phone?
Is that the process I need to do?

 
Some of the threads I linked to have (perfectly legal) free downloads while others require you to buy the music. Downloading the files is the simple part. Then you need to figure out how to organize and transfer everything. I don't think you need to use iTunes. Here's a good search link:
 
https://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=ssl&ei=ckmBV6npEoXM8Af6m7oI#safe=off&q=foobar2000+transfer+files+to+iphone
 
But if you are rarely ever going to listen to music on a PC, I suppose you might as well stick with iTunes. You'd just need to convert any FLAC files to another lossless format. foobar2000 and other free software can do that. Or, like I mentioned, if you don't have enough space on your phone, you could use a lossy format instead.

 

[Slashn77]

Ohh those were four a you posted above I didn't check yet bc I'm on my iPhone right now. I thought iTunes compressed the files achromaticaly. Plus all my music is a collection from the last 7 years and everytime I want to add a new song and sync it to my phone it won't let me add songs because I lost the original files when my old old laptop crashed so It wants me to start over and make me lose 60% of my songs which sucks because I don't want to start all over because I like the throwback songs I used to listen to in high school and college

 

[Music Alchemist]

I thought iTunes compressed the files achromaticaly.

 
You can configure iTunes to not do anything you don't tell it to.
 
(It can also automatically compress files, which you probably don't want.)

 

[Slashn77]

You can configure iTunes to not do anything you don't tell it to.

(It can also automatically compress files, which you probably don't want.)

Thanks I'm giving it a try today and see what I can find on iTunes.
Once again foobar2000 is just to convert the downloaded songs to a higher SQ

 

[Slashn77]

I downloaded foobar thanks to alchemist! And at 16/128kbs because I didn't wanna do the 24/256 because each song would take up a lot of room o heard.
But now..
Now how do I transfer the songs in my iTunes to my foobar?
Or how do I get the songs on my iTunes to foobar for the better quality and then move it back to iTunes to sync to my phone?

Am I doing it wrong ? Which I probably am so how do I do it the correct way????

 

[willowbrook]

Use a spectrum analyzer like spectro to verify legitimacy of HQ files. Depending on where you download official music from, it will have different cutoffs, but most 320kbps have 20~20.5khz cutoff and 16 or 18 slight shelf. Flac tends to go up to 22khz, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it always will.

You mostly just have to becareful of songs that have a strict 16khz or 18khz cutoff even when the song is 320kbps. If a song is not strictly cutoff, but lingers at around 18khz for example, it is probably meant to be that way (usually remixes).

Musicbee is a really good player with nice UI and compatibility. I personally use mp3tag to tag files and just organize them in folders. I don't know if explaining methods of illegal downloading here is allowed, so I will skip on that.

If you've downloaded songs converted from Youtube or just generic music sharing sites without proper frequency scanning, chances are a lot of them are not proper bitrate standard.

Foobar is also very nice, but moved on from that some time ago.

 

[thatonenoob]

Use a spectrum analyzer like spectro to verify legitimacy of HQ files. Depending on where you download official music from, it will have different cutoffs, but most 320kbps have 20~20.5khz cutoff and 16 or 18 slight shelf. Flac tends to go up to 22khz, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it always will.

You mostly just have to becareful of songs that have a strict 16khz or 18khz cutoff even when the song is 320kbps. If a song is not strictly cutoff, but lingers at around 18khz for example, it is probably meant to be that way (usually remixes).

Musicbee is a really good player with nice UI and compatibility. I personally use mp3tag to tag files and just organize them in folders. I don't know if explaining methods of illegal downloading here is allowed, so I will skip on that.

If you've downloaded songs converted from Youtube or just generic music sharing sites without proper frequency scanning, chances are a lot of them are not proper bitrate standard.

Foobar is also very nice, but moved on from that some time ago.

Incredibly good point. Spek is a great program for this if you are on mac.

 

[Slashn77]

Use a spectrum analyzer like spectro to verify legitimacy of HQ files. Depending on where you download official music from, it will have different cutoffs, but most 320kbps have 20~20.5khz cutoff and 16 or 18 slight shelf. Flac tends to go up to 22khz, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it always will.

You mostly just have to becareful of songs that have a strict 16khz or 18khz cutoff even when the song is 320kbps. If a song is not strictly cutoff, but lingers at around 18khz for example, it is probably meant to be that way (usually remixes).

Musicbee is a really good player with nice UI and compatibility. I personally use mp3tag to tag files and just organize them in folders. I don't know if explaining methods of illegal downloading here is allowed, so I will skip on that.

If you've downloaded songs converted from Youtube or just generic music sharing sites without proper frequency scanning, chances are a lot of them are not proper bitrate standard.

Foobar is also very nice, but moved on from that some time ago.

I sent it up for 18/256
 
But i cannot find a song downloader or I cannot figure out how to transfer my itunes songs from foobar 2000 orto mediamonkey and i cant find any song downloadersor links do you use to download your music

 

[Music Alchemist]

Thanks I'm giving it a try today and see what I can find on iTunes.
Once again foobar2000 is just to convert the downloaded songs to a higher SQ

I downloaded foobar thanks to alchemist! And at 16/128kbs because I didn't wanna do the 24/256 because each song would take up a lot of room o heard.
But now..
Now how do I transfer the songs in my iTunes to my foobar?
Or how do I get the songs on my iTunes to foobar for the better quality and then move it back to iTunes to sync to my phone?

Am I doing it wrong ? Which I probably am so how do I do it the correct way????

  I sent it up for 18/256
 
But i cannot find a song downloader or I cannot figure out how to transfer my itunes songs from foobar 2000 orto mediamonkey and i cant find any song downloadersor links do you use to download your music

 
Much of what you said is confusing. I will try to simplify things for you.
 
You seem to be having trouble downloading the music you want. Do you intend to buy it? Did you buy some already? I gave you some links to get music from, including free downloads if you want any of them.
 
I only use the iTunes Store when buying exclusive content like bonus tracks or a different master of an album. Most of my music is CD rips or lossless downloads from sites like Bandcamp. Since you can get used CDs on Amazon for as low as a penny (plus shipping) and rip them to lossless, I generally would not recommend buying from digital stores that sell lossy downloads at higher prices. (Like the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3.) Whether it's due to the lossy format or an inferior master, they usually sound inferior to the CDs and certain other digital sources.
 
128 kbps is a very low bit rate that will probably sound worse to you than lossless. That's why I recommended converting your lossless files to 256 kbps AAC for portable use. You probably won't hear a difference between it and lossless that way, and it saves you lots of space if you need it for a portable player.
 
It's impossible to convert files to higher sound quality. You can only get equal or lower sound quality than the original file.
 
If you are just using your portable player for listening to music, don't worry about foobar2000 unless you are converting FLAC files to another format. Just use iTunes for organizing your digital music collection and transferring the files to your phone.

 

[willowbrook]

I sent it up for 18/256

But i cannot find a song downloader or I cannot figure out how to transfer my itunes songs from foobar 2000 orto mediamonkey and i cant find any song downloadersor links do you use to download your music

You go to settings and then add the folder that contains all of your music to your monitoring list.

You don't add things to foobar2k to make it better quality. It'a just another music player.

 

[Slashn77]

Much of what you said is confusing. I will try to simplify things for you.

You seem to be having trouble downloading the music you want. Do you intend to buy it? Did you buy some already? I gave you some links to get music from, including free downloads if you want any of them.

I only use the iTunes Store when buying exclusive content like bonus tracks or a different master of an album. Most of my music is CD rips or lossless downloads from sites like Bandcamp. Since you can get used CDs on Amazon for as low as a penny (plus shipping) and rip them to lossless, I generally would not recommend buying from digital stores that sell lossy downloads at higher prices. (Like the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3.) Whether it's due to the lossy format or an inferior master, they usually sound inferior to the CDs and certain other digital sources.

128 kbps is a very low bit rate that will probably sound worse to you than lossless. That's why I recommended converting your lossless files to 256 kbps AAC for portable use. You probably won't hear a difference between it and lossless that way, and it saves you lots of space if you need it for a portable player.

It's impossible to convert files to higher sound quality. You can only get equal or lower sound quality than the original file.

If you are just using your portable player for listening to music, don't worry about foobar2000 unless you are converting FLAC files to another format. Just use iTunes for organizing your digital music collection and transferring the files to your phone.

This maybe a stupid question for you guys but how do I download FLACC or other HQ music files? What website would allow me to do that for free?

Also since I don't want my songs taking up a crazy amount of space like 200MB per song what do u recommend? Right now I have my iTunes set to 16/256 and had to go to work so I didn't get to play around with media monkey or that other one u recommended. I downloaded them both but then I had to go to work

 

[Music Alchemist]

This maybe a stupid question for you guys but how do I download FLACC or other HQ music files? What website would allow me to do that for free?

Also since I don't want my songs taking up a crazy amount of space like 200MB per song what do u recommend? Right now I have my iTunes set to 16/256 and had to go to work so I didn't get to play around with media monkey or that other one u recommended. I downloaded them both but then I had to go to work

 
I gave you links for free lossless downloads earlier. Here they are again. (Most music is not free, though.)
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/644595/official-free-flac-file-music-sharing-thread
http://www.head-fi.org/t/731523/the-free-music-thread-100-legal-downloads-of-all-formats
 
I recommend what I already recommended: keeping lossless copies of your music collection backed up, then making a lossy copy for portable use by converting the files to 256 kbps AAC. If you need help with the specifics, you'll need to ask specific questions on exactly what to do.