[LobsterSan]

At this stage in my life, I'm finding that music stored in electronic format (mp3, flac, etc) is much easier to manage than mediums that take up much more physical space and weight. This is probably because I am highly mobile, and don't expect to spend more than 2 or 3 years in any one place (or country) for the next 10 years or so. While I do like packaging and I have somewhat of a "collector" personality, crating hundreds of CDs around the world makes very little sense both financially and spatially.

Since this is the case, I've been getting increasingly interested in finding some good resources for buying music in an electronic format from places with a great catalog of both mainstream and eclectic stuff. Of course, lossless would be the best way to go, but I haven't found any astounding resources for lossless downloads yet. Some places I've come across:

http://www.bleep.com
Serving your electronic music needs. Most downloads only available in mp3 format, though though encode in LAME alt-standard. Some select albums are also available in lossless FLAC.

http://www.emusic.com
Haven't signed up yet, but know a few that have. Selection seems to be pretty good, a lot of more indie-oriented bands are there, though I'm not sure what quality they rip at. I think they mostly offer only mp3 stuff.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/
While it's possible to sidestep the DRM encoding they put on their music, it's a bit of a pain in the butt if downloading a lot. Of course, they have an excellent catalog of popular music.

Does anyone else buy digitally encoded music? I'd love to see what other sources are out there, especially in lossless formats.

 

[kktp]

I'm currently only signed up with http://www.emusic.com, Only mp3 which currently look like they encoded with LAME (vbr, standard setting.)

 

[kwitel]

Im not sure I understand this post.
You say you want to travel with your music but dont want to lug around all the music you have.
The answer to that would be to buy an MP3 player and "rip" your existing CD collection onto your computer and then onto your player.
All "new" music purchased should just be bought through iTunes.

Lastly, if you are going to be managing your music now digitally and will be primarily using an MP3 player due to excessive traveling, THE LAST THING you want to do is have all your music at LOSSLESS encoded levels. Your average album would now be about 700-800mb's which takes up an incredible amount of space.

Of course, you could store all your "ripped/imported" music at LOSSLESS levels in one file on your computer, and more efficient sized levels (128, 160, 192) in another-specifically for exporting to your player. However, this will take up even more space and depending on how much music you have, could easily fill up a 100+ GB hard drive.

Personally, I think many people make too big a deal regarding the level of kbps at which they rip/store their music. I have an incredibly sharp ear (as do most who are on these forums and love headphones) and I only go above 192/224 for Classical. 75% of my music is stored at or near 224 and I simply cannot tell the difference in recording above that. Yes, if im sitting down in a quiet room with some DT880's or 701's on and specifically looking to tell the difference between the qualities, ill be able to. To be honest I just dont think the minute amounts of added quality to sound above the 200's (in non-analytical situations) warrants both the hassle of seperating files and using up incredible amounts of space.

Think about it like this:youll use up over FOUR times the amount of space at LOSSLESS levels than at 192/224. That means an IPOD advertised to hold 250 albums will no hold about 50!

 

[trains are bad]

Oh, ONLY a mere 50 albums?

Sorry I find that statement funny. One day we will all be like 'I remember way back in the day we had things called iPods, they only held 50 albums'.

lossless 4 life. I just bought a 250GB HDD for under 100 bucks. That will hold several hundred CDs in flac.

 

[KrazyIvan]

Just got an emusic subscription and I have to say that the VBR mp3's are welcome. Most of the music I have downloaded plays at 192 kbps or higher.

 

[Febs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LobsterSan http://www.emusic.com Haven't signed up yet, but know a few that have. Selection seems to be pretty good, a lot of more indie-oriented bands are there, though I'm not sure what quality they rip at. I think they mostly offer only mp3 stuff.

Emusic uses LAME --alt-preset standard MP3 encoding, so the files should average somewhere around 192kbps or slightly higher and have frames of up to 320kbps. IIRC, last time I checked, they used the 3.90.3 encoder.

 

[LobsterSan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kwitel Im not sure I understand this post. You say you want to travel with your music but dont want to lug around all the music you have. The answer to that would be to buy an MP3 player and "rip" your existing CD collection onto your computer and then onto your player. All "new" music purchased should just be bought through iTunes.

What I am saying is that I have a lot of CDs that would be freakishly expensive to transport from country to country. I will probably be moving between Japan and the US several times in the next decade or so, and so using a digital medium is much easier than paying hundreds of US dollars each time I move to have my CDs shipped. Your suggestion to rip my CD collection is exactly what I've been doing for the past 6 years, which started before I left for college. However, whenever I live in a place for a year or two I always end up accumlating a lot more CDs and jewel cases, which then must be shipped back to a storage space in the US. As a result, I'm interested in finding more stores that sell in a digital medium. iTunes is OK, but the DRM stuff is less than appealing to me. The point of this thread is to find other online stores to buy digitally encoded music.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kwitel Lastly, if you are going to be managing your music now digitally and will be primarily using an MP3 player due to excessive traveling, THE LAST THING you want to do is have all your music at LOSSLESS encoded levels. Your average album would now be about 700-800mb's which takes up an incredible amount of space.

Actually, encoding in uncompressed .wav would probably be an average of about 650mb per album, of course depending on the length of the album. FLAC and other lossless formats are sometimes able to bring that number down to about 70% of that, which means that a 600mb album could be compressed down to about 455mb. It's still about four times larger than mp3 albums I encode in LAME preset extreme, but it is an exact preservation of the album, after all. I don't really care about encoding CDs that I already own in lossless formats, since I already have the CD. But for albums that I will be purchasing over the internet in a digital medium, I'd like to pay for something that is of the upmost quality so that my money goes towards having as true a copy of the original music as is possible. One day, when I have the money for some Stax, I don't want to have to rebuy albums I've already paid money for.

I have over a terrabyte of storage space, and since hard drive prices are continually falling, I'm not really that concerned over having too little space, especially since it's just new music that I'm buying that I'd like to have as lossless. What *does* bother me about buying and downloading music is that I don't get to have the jewel cases, liner notes, and cover art. It is also the whole point -- to avoid shipping and packaging all that stuff away. That rubs my collector's nerve the wrong way. I guess it's a side of me I'll have to put aside until I'm ready to settle into a place for more than a few years.

 

[LobsterSan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Febs Emusic uses LAME --alt-preset standard MP3 encoding, so the files should average somewhere around 192kbps or slightly higher and have frames of up to 320kbps. IIRC, last time I checked, they used the 3.90.3 encoder.

Thank you for that information! Very useful. I'd still prefer lossless, but somehow I get the feeling that any place that has lossless downloads now wouldn't quite have the catalog of eMusic.

Oh well, I guess I can look at it like VHS -> DVD. Or DVD -> Blu-Ray or whatever Hi-Def format is going to win out. I can't sit around waiting forever, because there will always be a newer, better format out there. LAME --alt-preset standard is good enough for most of my listening these days anyways.

 

[kktp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Febs Emusic uses LAME --alt-preset standard MP3 encoding, so the files should average somewhere around 192kbps or slightly higher and have frames of up to 320kbps. IIRC, last time I checked, they used the 3.90.3 encoder.

From their FAQ, they using 3.92 now.

Q: What type of encoder does eMusic use to encode it's VBR MP3s?
A: To encode the files on eMusic, we used LAME version 3.92. The import option that was used is -alt-preset standard.