Downloading prog

Suki wrote: Btw, you keep mentioning the quality difference between CDs and MP3, you have to remember however that to 'normal ears' it takes years of listening to music in order to feel the difference between CD quality and 192mp3..

I don't know if it's me that's talking about quality difference (I don't remember doing so), but any use of CBR wastes space, unless it's 320kbps. If you have a VBR file of average 192kbps, it will sound better than a CBR 192kbps. The generally accepted benchmark for MP3 transparency falls around 210kpbs, depending obviously on sample and person.

The main argument against MP3, and lossy coding in general, though, isn't simply the immediate quality difference. If you download MP3 at, say, 192kbps, and then want to compress to 64kps because you don't have much space, then it'll sound much worse that compressing a CD-quality file straight to 64kps, because you're throwing away data twice. Basically, unless whoever or whatever you download from has exactly the same encoding preferences as you, then you're stuck with something you don't want, or some future loss of quality.


Also, if MP3 becomes obsolete (and, judging from the success of iTunes, this isn't an entirely absurd situation), then all MP3s will have to be transcoded, causing further quality loss. And if AAC becomes outdated, then they'd have to be transcoded again, and so on, and so on.

MikeEnRegalia wrote: Under wrote: The Napster thing with $10/month might be legal, but the artists doesn't gain much from it. The artists don't gain much from CD sales either.

That depends where you buy the CD. At the local store you are probably right.
But at this artist himself....Even an artist can make a good copy of its own music. That with a solid printer for the cover and he is able to sell a nice looking CD with his own music with a limited cost price.