Are you a quality freak?

[Red the Ghost]

Are you a quality freak when it comes to music?

I honestly can't stand mp3s. Lossy compression is bad enough when you're looking at a picture. When it comes to music - hell no.
Usually I rip/download in 41 khz flac, but I've found better things:

linked for size



MP3s (and other lossy formats) tear up the sound stream, making the music sound flat and scratchy (depending on how much you compress it). Good speakers/headphones make a difference, too. The headphones that come with music players usually aren't good.


Overcompression isn't only on the consumers side, though. There have been some bands that have compressed their music to hell on the retail CD! The album 'Californication' from the Red Hot Chili Peppers is the best example of this. Recently, Metallica has been guilty of this, as well, with their recent release 'Death Magnetic' (though I wasn't surprised).

I also hate how music is actually sold in mp3 sometimes (hello, iTunes).

IT IRRITATES ME TO NO END.
(but I digress)

What about you all? Feel the same way? Don't care? Talk about it here.

 

[Symphony X]

I really have never noticed it. I love Californication.

 

[Peek~]

Nothing less than 256 kbps , unless thats all they have

 

[tmw_redcell]

I only care up to a point. A 128 kpbs mp3 is fine with me most of the time, though some specific songs change entirely when you get them in a higher bitrate. Also having good headphones helps a lot. When I notice a big difference between listening on my computer and headphones is when I start caring, but otherwise not really.

But yeah the fact that mp3s are the default even when you pay and some bands compress the **** out of their music can be kinda annoying.

 

[Waluigi911]

What's lossy?

 

[Red the Ghost]

"Lossy" compression just means that bits of the music (or whatever is being compressed) are taken out to maximize file size reduction. If you don't notice it with music, you can at least notice it with pictures. Take a picture of your desktop (press 'prnt scrn' on your keyboard), paste it into paint, and save it once as a PNG file, and then as a JPG. Compare the two. You'll likely notice the lower quality of the JPG picture, which uses lossy compression (handy for users with dial-up, but useless otherwise... yet it is still the most popular format).