Will this effect my music?
Nov 14, 2010 at 3:17 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 5

Audiophile1811

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Hi everybody. I am the type of person who enjoys buying my music and then downloading it to my computer but I have one concern about this. I fear that the location or source where the music was downloaded from can cause disappointing sound quality if not from the right site. For example, if I decide to purchase my music from Amazon.com do I take the chance of getting unsatisfying, non-audiophile music? If so, where would be the best place to download high bit-rate, lossless Audiophile music?
Thank You, A1811.
 
Nov 14, 2010 at 3:50 AM Post #2 of 5
Hd tracks is a good site. There are also some other illegal pirating sites that offer FLAC files. You could also start buying CDs and ripping them to FLAC yourself. I recently started doing this and couldn't be happier with the SQ of the files
 
Nov 14, 2010 at 8:14 AM Post #3 of 5
I've been doin' some experimenting with playback of the same material from CD, vinyl, and iTunes downloads. For example, I recently bought the Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed, the DSD remastered version on Vinyl, CD, and iTunes ACC download. I've got to tell ya, when played back from Sony VDP-S9000es CD player, Sony PS-4750/Shure V15vMR turntable, or from mini headphone out of Dell Inspiron 14, all connected to Sony TA-E9000es preamp, I cannot discern anything to distinguish one medium from another, except the occasional pop from the vinyl. This makes me think iTunes is pretty good, and that CD's and vinyl may not be worth the effort.
 
Nov 17, 2010 at 12:16 AM Post #4 of 5
There's quite a few places where you can buy your music in lossless formats. So far I've bought music from and can recommend: beatport.com , boomkat.com , bleep.com , juno.co.uk , 7digital.com. Ripping the CDs you own to flac is also a good idea. Every store should provide information about the formats and bitrates available; in case they don't, my guess would be that they assume their customers won't care and so the quality will probably be low.
 
You have to take into account, though, that lossless formats don't guarantee quality; poorly recorded/produced/mastered music will sound like crap whether you're listening from a CD or a 128kbps mp3 file.
 

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