Can anyone recommend a web site for legally downloading music that sells high quality MP3's, (at least 320kbps)?

 

I wish I could help, but can't.

High quality MP3 is an oxymoron.

 

Itunes claims that the format they use is equal to CD quality. I don't use Itunes so I can't verify this.

 

At 320 kbps they start to get pretty close to CD quality. In Apple's iTunes, you can rip CDs in a "lossless" format, that is supposed to be equal in sound quality to a CD, but still allows for somewhat smaller file sizes than the original CD files. When you buy from Apple's iTunes you get 128kbps. The 128kbps sounds fine when you are listening through the iPods tiny ear pieces though. But when you hook the iPod to a good stereo like the one in my G or my home (or even the one on my computer system) the loss of sound quality is noticible at 128kbps. When I use the 320kbps, at least to my ear, the sound is indistinguishable to a CD. Maybe it would be different if I had a $25,000 home stereo, but I doubt anything in any car would be good enough. Either the 320kbps format or the "lossless" format would be fine for me. So unless I find some sources....and I've heard they are out there; I need to stay with home-ripped music. Anyone????

 

Try Musicmatch.com

 

Just did, but no luck. You get 160kbps WMA files only. An iPod can NOT play WMA files, (unless someone out there has a hack or patch I'm not aware of).

 

Best place I know of is allofmp3.com. You can get a whole album at CD quality for $1. Each song averages around 3-5 cents. Yes it's legal too. Downside is they don't have a good hiphop or rap selection if you are into that type of music. It has all type of format and on some songs (newer ones) it can encode straight from the CD.

Check it out, you will love me for sharing this site.

http://allofmp3.com/index.shtml?r=222116595

 

Everyone keeps thinking iTunes means mp3 by default. Their preferred method is not to use mp3 at all. They recommend the AAC codec which allows for near CD quality at 128kbps. The problem with the AAC codec is that it needs to stay in that format for best quality. Anytime you change the format/codec on something, you will lose some data. So a lot of people have been going from AAC to mp3 so their files are more universal, but they end up losing some quality. Same goes for if you make an Audio CD from AAC files. But then again, that is no different than going from MP3 to CD. 90% of the people can't tell the difference.

 

No way. No codec in existence is near CD quality at 128kbps. At 192kbps most people can barely tell the difference on an okay system, but on a good system, you can tell the difference.

Actually, that was true for a long time, but with the implementation of lossless codecs, this is no longer true. If you convert from AAC to WMA Lossless, FLAC, or APE there will be no quality loss because they are all "lossless" codecs. What a lossless codec does is retain all the information in the original file but compresses it sort of like a zip file where it doesn't delete any information. In converting from AAC to any of those lossless formats, you probably won't see much difference in size.

My solution is to use lossless codecs for everything. Rip CD's to lossless. Convert any downloaded songs to lossless. I actually have yet to really settle down on a codec, but I am tending toward FLAC. These codecs are actually being integrated into some devices, making them more "universal" as you put it. FLAC has showed up in a couple of MP3 players, and WMA Lossless has Microsoft's backing, so it is showing up in lots of places and will be widespread shortly. But the good thing about the lossless codecs is that if you have them as your original source files, you can convert from the lossless files to any format. This means that on my home system I have my lossless files for my nice audio system and as back-ups to my CD's (I hate discs, so they don't generally see the light of day, heck, I even have all of my DVD's ripped to a 3 terabyte server), but when I want those files on an MP3 player, I can convert them to whatever format I want. For an MP3 player, I like to use 192kbps of whatever format is best for the player itself. With in ear headphones this is good enough quality.

Whats nice about allofmp3.com is that for a lot of newer CD's, you can chose a lossless format. The legality of the site is actually in question however. They are based out of Russia, and according to the Russian equivalent of the RIAA over there, they are not breaking any laws, but most times artists are not going to see any money out of your purchases on there. What you are doing is following Russia's laws. So you are sort of importing stuff. The question is really whether or not the company needs to be required to abide by the laws of the USA in selling music. So far, no one has really questioned them, but if their service grows a lot, you can be sure the RIAA will be after them really quickly.

P.S. This post is only intended to educate. I am in no way trying to pick a fight with anyone (in case it could have sounded like it). There has been far too much fighting on these boards recently.