Comment Re:That was a "column," not an "article." (Score 1) 421
Look, the average Joe with his iPod isn't an audiophile. He just wants a convenient place to store and listen to his music. A 128k AAC rip will sound just fine to him. Hell, a 128k MP3 rip will do just as well.
I'm an audiophile. I love listening to pristine recordings but storing over 500 CDs became an issue living in a one-bedroom apartment. So I ripped them at a bit-rate of 128k and 160k. I knew the quality was going to be good enough for me and I was able to compress my entire CD collection down to a handful of DVDs.
If I want to keep an audiophile copy of an album, I'll either buy the DVD-Audio or SACD version if it's available, or a 20-24 bit remastered CD, if it's available. If neither of those formats are available, then I'll stick with my MP3. Remember, many of the CDs released in the 80s were horribly mastered so ripping them to MP3 was no great loss.
Back in the days before CDs, audiophiles bought vinyl and the rest of us bought cassettes. Cassettes sounded crappy but were portable and we could make our own mix tapes.
One thing left unsaid about Apple's use of 128k AAC encoding instead of 192k is the possible insistence by the record companies to use a lower bit rate so their CDs would still have the best sound quality. If a customer wanted true CD quality sound, then he would have to buy the whole CD instead of a single lower-quality download and the record company would make more money. Remember, the record companies are still clinging to the outdated business model of selling shiny plastic discs. They still will not fully embrace digital downloads as they still think it will canibalize their CD sales.
I'm an audiophile. I love listening to pristine recordings but storing over 500 CDs became an issue living in a one-bedroom apartment. So I ripped them at a bit-rate of 128k and 160k. I knew the quality was going to be good enough for me and I was able to compress my entire CD collection down to a handful of DVDs.
If I want to keep an audiophile copy of an album, I'll either buy the DVD-Audio or SACD version if it's available, or a 20-24 bit remastered CD, if it's available. If neither of those formats are available, then I'll stick with my MP3. Remember, many of the CDs released in the 80s were horribly mastered so ripping them to MP3 was no great loss.
Back in the days before CDs, audiophiles bought vinyl and the rest of us bought cassettes. Cassettes sounded crappy but were portable and we could make our own mix tapes.
One thing left unsaid about Apple's use of 128k AAC encoding instead of 192k is the possible insistence by the record companies to use a lower bit rate so their CDs would still have the best sound quality. If a customer wanted true CD quality sound, then he would have to buy the whole CD instead of a single lower-quality download and the record company would make more money. Remember, the record companies are still clinging to the outdated business model of selling shiny plastic discs. They still will not fully embrace digital downloads as they still think it will canibalize their CD sales.
