I sure wish you could buy music in higher quality formats than MP3 online. Theres often a song I would love to buy without going out and buying the whole album, but fast becoming an audiophile, MP3 is not at all good enough. Is there anywhere that sells higher quality audio online? Piracy is not acceptable.
Yes, buy a CD Zune marketplace is 320Kbps MP3's and DRM free. If you are in the U.K or U.S you have access to the Zune pass... 15$US per month, for unlimited downloads in the marketplace (but with DRM).
I don't think I can tell the difference between CD and MP3... FLAC is the ultimate alternative, but where you can get 'em is another question.
I can just about tell the difference between 320k MP3 and FLAC, but even then I have to listen very hard and only get it right 70-80% of the time in ABX testing. That's using a £200 pair of headphones though, with a £50 pair of headphones they sound exactly the same. My amp and sound card are probably the limiting factors when it comes to sound quality, not the audio files themselves. CDs and a decent CD player are probably your best bet if you're really picky about audio quality, since top-end sound cards/DACs are highly expensive and pretty much no one sells music in lossless formats, so you're forced to buy the CDs anyway.
don't know if you like electronic music, but https://www.beatport.com/ offers hq mp3s and lossless wav drm free files for sale. you get 10 free downloads when you sign up so you can decide if the quality is up to your standards.
MP3 quality can depend on the codec used to encode the file. the Lame codec is the best one I've heard so I tend to use that in the highest quality VBR when encoding Flac files or CD's.
To name a few: https://www.hdtracks.com/ http://www.linnrecords.com/ http://bleep.com/ Beatport has been mentioned already.
Just buy the CD, it's so much cheaper plus you get a hard copy for backup. I've looked into audiophile music stores before and they're just not worth it; they're designed to make money out of people wanting high quality digital audio. It's a small market so the prices are higher, simple as that.
I suppose if your really into music then ripping your own is the best solution. I ripped my first cd a while ago and wasn't that impressed with the result probably more my computers audio. But I just checked the bit rate and there 1100kbps, so I don't think I would like 320kbps.
If you have an OnBoard sound card, then you completely don't have the equipment for listening to music. It's like getting a dollar shop passive speaker, and expect you'll get this remarkable sound like if you had a McIntosh amp, high quality wires, and crazy ass speakers that cost more than your car each. First, get your equipment right, than configure everything including Windows to make players on your computer to output at the highest quality that your sound card can output. And then look into sound format. what you need is 320kbps, 24-bit @ 48000 Hz performed with a good conversion tool, set to "good", which takes more time to perform. BTW, I don't know where you get your 1100kpbs, but that is higher than the MP3 format allows.
Cd is probably your best bet. I looked into this before and unless your into electronic music there are virtually no sites offering anything other than mp3, at least legitimately. (Well done music industry where if i want to download an album at cd quality my only option would be to pirate it)
CD seems to be the best quallity you can achieve easily, although the OGG format has very good sound quallity while being much smaller than MP3 files. The only problem with that format is that many MP3 players, phones, etc. are not compatible with it, but compatibillity is slowly increasing in the mass market.
Go into game stop and buy lots of second hand CD's I'm trying to put my entire collection together again with only 320kbs songs. All second hand CD's are 3.99 euro.
Uncompressed CD quality Wav is 1411 kbps, Flac that uses lossless compression to achieve the same CD quality is often around 1000 kbps like you mentioned. If you're not satisfied with that quality then either you have highly sensative ears or your sound chip/speaker combination isn't quite up to scratch.
Take a look at this site, it's aiming to amalgamate all HD content. http://www.dreamstreaming.info/ Oh, and I believe Columbia or Universal are selling at CD quality from their website now. If you're into classical Deutche Grammphon allow downloads at CD quality. If you're ripping CDs, use EAC or dbPoweramp and rip into FLAC.
You could try http://bandcamp.com/ They don't have mainstream artists, but I have discovered some awesome artists on there. You can listen to the album/single before you buy and have the option to buy the whole album or just a song. They also offer you a selection of quality from 128kbps upto FLAC. They also come with large images of the CD covers and a digital version of the little book that comes with some albums with lyrics etc...
As an aside, it's worth noting that just because a file is "FLAC" it doesn't guarantee quality. FLAC is a lossless compression codec, however it's only as good as the material within.
Just buy the cd's rip them off to flac. But if cd's are not good enough then buy super audio cd's, course most of the music on that format is crap but its really high quality
+1 to LAME encoding. Ive even encoded some stuff into Monkey's Audio, its like FLAC basically. I cant tell the difference on anything above 128kps, but as a rule of thumb I run everything at least 192kps or better now. Great setup is LAME encoder with a CD ripper that cleans up the audio WAV's. Takes care of any blips or anomaly's that may be transfered from the disc (from scratches, dust or whatever).
