Anyone else miss CD-quality audio?

Or even better yet, rip to 320 kps and set your EQ to Jazz. Jazz doesn't distor the sound because it minimally raises the bass. Acoustic also sounds pretty good (I have only tested this on 80's metal; Alice Cooper, Motley Crue...)

CD's?

What are those things again?

OHHHH I remember... It's that ancient means of transmitting music to the ears...

Do I miss them?

NO! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

192 KBPS MP3
+iPod
=HEAVEN!!!

At 192kbps, you can't go wrong. I see little to no difference between my iPod audio and my old CD player, rotting in a drawer to the left of my desk. Not satisfied? Make em' 320kbps. Unnecessary for me, but hey, you might want that quality.

The quality you were probably hearing was the larger driver on your friends headphones. Next time plug his headphones into your ipod and see if you can still tell that much difference. Also remember to turn off your EQ on your ipod and any bass enhancer on the cd player.

i have a couple Doors mp3s that are ripped at 1411 kbps. They're massive so i only have like 3 of them but i don't notice that much of a difference from 128 that i'm usually at.

Even with .wav files the iPod cant match a CD discman for audio quality.

I sure miss high-quality audio (hell, I miss Zen NX quality audio!) but its easy to go without when you gain the luxury of having your whole CD collection with you at all times.:)

i think the sound quality with lame at 192 is pretty good, and i'm using the apple earphones, although i bought a coldplay album from itunes(i love itunes!!) and the sound was very very good, but i rather have everything in my pocket than a cd player and crap load of cds that scratches easily

That's why I won't buy stuff from the iTunes store. You pay about the same amount of money for a lesser product.

Originally posted by ashawley
Er, I don't think you ripped that high. Considering mp3 only goes to 320k ;)

Adam

"raw" .wav files play back on winamp, e.g., at 1411kbs. The other person who responded about free form mp3 rates is talking about something else. The op did not apply compression.

Originally posted by wickerbill
You pay about the same amount of money for a lesser product.

I agree, but I still use the store. I would rather pay 99? for a single song that I don't want to buy a cd for. The quality is good enough for me with these single songs.

For example, I just used a pepsi cap to get Cream- Crossroads. I don't really like Cream enough to buy a CD. So, for 99? I get the song I do like. Its not CD quality by any means but in this case, I really don't care. Its a fun song that I like hearing on my iPod occasionally.

My hope is that as technology improves [storage space, drive read times, battery life, internet speeds, popularity of online music stores] we'll start to see higher quality songs for sale. It took certain technolgical advancements in order for music to go digital in the first place, so I think its safe to say that full quality files will happen soon enough.

I'm not talking about 320. I'm talking about buying CD's digitally online. No compression of the source. And a player that can handle of those large files with at least 10 hours battery.

And a nice PDF with the cover art you can print. :)

Originally posted by monkedsel
It sounds the same to me.

Also, "CD Quality" is overrated. It certainly gets better than that, although with the money I am currently making, I can't say that I am interested in pursuing anything better.

And... let us *please* consider that higher quality files equal larger file sizes, which requires more space on the servers, and in turn more servers or hard drives or whatever to host them, and lastly more bandwith to transmit the files... which in turn would require more money, I would think. If Apple is already losing money on iTunes, they are not about to lose a whole lot more because a niche market (yes, there are not very many of you even though you think there are) is so picky that they want higher bitrates or no compression at all. If they were to go through with something like that on iTunes, you'd be looking at paying more than .99 a song, probably a lot more, but in that case it would not be economical for buyers, and quite frankly I personally am not interested in quartering or halving my iPod's capacity by having higher bitrates, ecspecially when it requires even more expensive headphones, a quiet room and steady concentration to even discern the tiny differances between bitrates. Everyone, please take a look around... the market is just not there for the kind of money that I am sure would be involved.

This is exactly my point- that in the future those issues you mentioned won't exist. Space and bandwidth issues will disappear.

In 1995, the idea of having 40gb of music that you downloaded from the internet was pretty much impossible. There was no market for it. But technology moved ahread and a market was created. Now let's see what things are like in another 5-10 years...

i'll bet you three pepsi itune songs!

"I cant tell the difference between a 192kbs MP3 and a CD"

Now try that CD in a CD player and compare it to the MP3 playing in your iPod.

In order to tell the difference between, say 192k and a CD quality audio, you at least need the two factors below :

1. Good recording quality of the CD
2. Good quality of your headphone/earplug

To tell the truth, I can't tell the difference between 192k & CD wav file by using the earplug that comes with iPod, or by using, say, Sony EX70LP etc. You also won't notice much difference if you are listening bad recording quality CD. But I do notice there is obvious difference when using ety er4p or Shure e5c earplug, while listening, say, Diana Krall's Live in Paris.

But if you are already satisfied with your current settings, just ignore them, and happy iPoding.

you should use a good cd ripper like EAC + the LAME codec.

Originally posted by Christophe167
i have a couple Doors mp3s that are ripped at 1411 kbps. They're massive so i only have like 3 of them but i don't notice that much of a difference from 128 that i'm usually at.

1411 is the bit rate for WAV & AIFF. In other words, uncompressed audio stream. Should sound identical to original CD when using the same playback equipment (i.e., CD in PC & iTunes through same headphones)