If you care about quality that much – buy the cd and rip it lossless. Given the general lack of price difference, I always go this route, and then convert it to mp3 for portable listening. I’ll be really happy the day amazon or someone starts selling lossless encodings online instead of lossy.
As for MP3 vs AAC – well, that one’s still under much discussion. It does depend dramatically on the settings. But what still amazes me is that Itunes, amazon, etc. are using fixed bit-rate. It’s pretty much the worst of both worlds on the quality/size scale – by going variable you can (generally) get superior quality in a smaller download.
Finally – please can articles like this one stop implying that CDs are analog.
If you care about quality that much – buy the cd and rip it lossless. Given the general lack of price difference, I always go this route, and then convert it to mp3 for portable listening. I’ll be really happy the day amazon or someone starts selling lossless encodings online instead of lossy.
As for MP3 vs AAC – well, that one’s still under much discussion. It does depend dramatically on the settings. But what still amazes me is that Itunes, amazon, etc. are using fixed bit-rate. It’s pretty much the worst of both worlds on the quality/size scale – by going variable you can (generally) get superior quality in a smaller download.
Finally – please can articles like this one stop implying that CDs are analog.