Sick of the mp3 thing

Ermz

Ermz

¯\(°_o)/¯
Apr 5, 2002
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Melbourne, Australia
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So, I don't get it.

Why is it seemingly acceptable to offer certain albums or soundtracks solely in mp3, and actually demand money for the download? At what point did this become common practice, and why isn't there more vocal opposition to it?

As customers, aren't we at least entitled for our money to purchase us the best possible quality version of a product?

I'm tired of not being able to find certain soundtracks in lossless formats at all. It seems that even the 'official' distribution channels find it acceptable to only offer those soundtracks in poor mp3 quality.

If there was ever damning prophesy about where the music industry is headed, it's to be found right here.
 
Honestly, if the mp3 has a VBR at the highest setting or a constant bitrate of at least 192 kbit/s (I use 256 lately) and higher I can't even hear the tiniest difference.
But I'd like being able to choose the lossy data compression format (if any) myself, amazon's / itune's limitation is annoying as hell.

Generally I don't like mp3 downloads because I want the actual CDs, but that's a different story.
 
I don't hear much difference to a mp3 192-320 vs a 16bit .wav file. It don't bother me anyway. But i can agree with you Ermin that they should atleast offer some sort of high quality files.
 
I agree Ermz....and when I uploaded my own music to amazon/itunes etc, the bitrate actually dropped upon download to 256k or something. But whatever, off Amazon it sounded HORRIFIC, it ended up pumping like mad and generally terrible sounding....so I told everybody possible not to waste their money on it and buy the FLAC etc from a store I setup myself.

There should be this option for every artist!
 
The thing is, the amount of people who demand lossless quality is miniscule compared to those who can't/don't have the sound system to hear the difference between 192kb/s mp3s and lossless audio files. Not to mention the fact that lossless files are much larger and would eat up 4-5 times the bandwidth of mp3s. It's a simple cost/demand calculation, I don't think offering wavs or flacs would be of any benefit to the companies selling the music.
 
I'm with you on this one Ermz. Despite the inability to discern the difference, I have a personal preference to have my library in lossless format and only use lossy formats for portable playing. It's a comfort knowing I'll always have that lossless version in my main library. Perhaps it's silly and a waste of space, but it's my space and I just like have lossless versions available and I'm willing to pay for that premium if and when it is offered, it's just unfortunate that so many things are now being released without that option.
 
Put it this way...

Even if you don't own a system at present that's able to convey the benefits of the lossless format over the lossy one, who is to say that one day you won't have one that will? Audio reproduction technology only improves with time, so I don't understand why anybody would want to 'date' their collection with horrible high-end artifacts, and a lack of detail that the mp3 algorithm counts on our brains to recreate.

Putting a 320kpbs mp3 and wav file of identical source material provides audible differences on my system. I've recently done shoot-outs for myself using an array of different albums, and the gain in clarity is appreciable. It may not be drastic to the point where if one were shown a 320kpbs mp3 they could tell it was one blindly... but in a direct comparison, the differences are most certainly present, and definitely appreciable for those with the desire to reproduce their music in higher fidelity.

I just find it odd that in an industry that's entirely centered around audio fidelity, that so few... even those of us - engineers - pay heed to these important things.

I'm guilty of this too, as I, for years, tried to convince myself that I wasn't losing out on anything by listening to 192kbps+ quality records. Once I got the new monitoring set-up in place though, and actually gave CDs a shot again, I started to realize how I was short changing myself. I regularly keep both mp3 and lossless versions of my own work around, and can even appreciate the difference there, even though I strictly always encode to 320kbps.

We have the storage space and bandwidth for FLACs to become the distributed file of choice. There really is no excuse anymore.

In many ways I blame Apple for what's going on right now directly... but that might be best left for another time.

PS. @guru: ... having trouble with your shift key, mate?
 
Most people don't care. Until that changes, nothing will change really.
There should always be a lossless option.
With today's hard drive sizes (and indeed, the capacity of portable music players), there is simply no reason to sell MP3s below the 320kbps quality.
 
Recently I've been thinking about the upsides of a digital only music library (Really don't know where I will be putting all my CDs in the future! Digital is more or less availably everywhere and always etc.). Still I refuse to pay for anything other than uncompressed Wavs. Atm I doesn't matter to me since I don't have a system to really enjoy music as part of my free time. But as soon as I get a little more settled I plan to setup a decent system with monitors in the living room and I'm not going to listen to fucking MP3s there goddammit.
 
mp3's aside, double clicking on a file is the shittiest way to play music i can think of. what happened the RITUALS involved with putting on music?

ill tel you what happened
they are bein RESTORED in my living room \m/
 
it's somewhat bothersome if you are an audio professional and can't hear a difference most of the time between 192k mp3 and cd wav...

there is a noticeable difference on most systems with the exception of once in a while and also ipod buds or laptop speakers sometimes...
 
GarethSE said:
mp3's aside, double clicking on a file is the shittiest way to play music i can think of. what happened the RITUALS involved with putting on music?

ill tel you what happened
they are bein RESTORED in my living room m/
Click to expand...

Rituals are so 1900's, the reason we don't have flying cars in 2011 is because people keep wasting 90% of their valuable time in pointless "rituals" :Smug:
 
Rituals aside, I do think the ease of accessibility to music makes the entire experience feel a little more disposable.

Whenever I get the time I really like to flip the lights off, fire up an entire record, and just chill on the couch, staring at the ceiling. It's a way of listening to music that I don't think gets indulged in much anymore. I would think most consume it on the move, or as filler during other tasks in their daily lives... which is an attitude that fairly reflects how most of them acquire the music too.
 
Ermz said:
Rituals aside, I do think the ease of accessibility to music makes the entire experience feel a little more disposable.

Whenever I get the time I really like to flip the lights off, fire up an entire record, and just chill on the couch, staring at the ceiling. It's a way of listening to music that I don't think gets indulged in much anymore. I would think most consume it on the move, or as filler during other tasks in their daily lives... which is an attitude that fairly reflects how most of them acquire the music too.
Click to expand...

this is a good point, has nothing to do with the "ritual" of opening the cd player and putting it in (lol). I used to do that very often in my youth, now I indulge in music whenever I have the chance which is mostly at the gym, while walking to work/gym/anywhere or while cooking/cleaning at home
 
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