This was inspired by the CD's vs. vinyl debate...

How do you feel about mp3's vs. CD's?

I've been very happy with the ability to buy music online, etc, but I can't help but notice a difference between mp3s and CD's, especially on a high-quality system like my aperions!  I'm considering an ipod, but I don't have much experience with itunes.  Any ipod users with some feedback would be much appreciated!

In my experience, there's varying quality of MP3's...some sound like utter crap and others sound really good. In fact I've heard some that I hear no difference when compared to CD...

I've been using itunes for a few months now and really dig it. I don't have an ipod though. I just search and download tunes and burn them to a CD-R and play them in my car and home CD players. I'm not certain, but I think apple has maybe done some proprietary enhancing of their music files, because I've never heard an MP3 sound this good. In fact, when I played an itunes disc for a few friends, they were all really amazed at the sound quality.

 

Mp3 sound is really getting much better.  I have heard very few that match the quality of CD playback, but the numbers are growing.  2 years ago, most of it just sounded like crap, now there are files I can play on my reference system and enjoy!  There is also a greatly varied difference in playback quality from one redbook CD to another as well though...

So True.

 

For sound quality I prefer CD to any other format (even the lossless types), but MP3 and the other formats have made massive music collections 'portable'.  That being said, I've been having a lot of fun with the Creative Wireless Music system and pumping it through my HT receiver and my Aperions (it even uses an optical digital connection).  This system allows you to record to MP3 format at the upper end, for MP3 (320 k).  Most of the other music download sites give you somewhere around 192 k (Buymusic.com now has 256 k).  Even though this is not 100% CD quality, it still sounds pretty darn good flowing through my Aperions.  So now I do the majority of my music listening using this setup.  When I want to raise goosebumps on my arm listening to music, that's when I go directly to the CDs.

Where'd you get the Creative system and how much are they going for now?

 

Hey Ben,

I bought mine from buy.com for about $150.  Here's a link to cnet's review of it: cnet.com

The only hitch is that it works in conjuction with a wireless network, sooooo since I wanted to play with that as well I went out and bought a wireless router too!

Now I have a wireless network that I can tap into with my laptop  from anywhere in the house as well as having access to my music collection on my PC upstairs.  The one thing that the Creative has that no other streaming device has is a display on the remote control, so I can easily pick and choose what I want to hear.  All the others need to be hooked up to a TV monitor.  Also the wireless receiver can hook up to any powered speakers so I can take the receiver away from my HT and hook it up to some powered speakers in my bedroom when I want.  For the price, it's really a cool toy!

So in terms of memory, it's not actually storing the MP3's, it's just logging all the song/artist info and it streams it from your computer's hard drive?

I love the remote control. I'll have to check this out some more. Might need one for myself.

 

Yes, that's correct Ben.  The receiver talks to your PC and the remote talks to the receiver.  As you may have seen, the remote has the basic 'player' buttons (play, pause, skip forward, back, stop, as well as 'mode' settings - random, repeat, etc.).  It also has navigation buttons to move around the menu.  Hmm, it's kind of like a big iPod come to think of it.

You can play a single track, a whole CD, by genre, by tempo, by artist, by playlist.  It also has a lot of what they call 'smart playlists' that automatically categorize the tracks by things like - those that you've played most often, those that you've added in the last 30 days, those that you play the least, it goes on and on...

Note - it doesn't play songs downloaded from iTunes in the (what is it, AAC or ACC - must be thinking of our Atlantic Coast Conference ).  But you can always translate them into the MP3 format - I think, or are they proprietary??  I use a great program called dbPowerAmp to convert tracks if I don't have the CD (you can download every codec known to mankind!).

I've got myself pigeon-holed, I guess you could say, into the Itunes format. Now that I realize it might not be compatible with other players, well that just sucks. Although come to think of it I hear Real Player is trying to put a fork in itunes proprietary format.

 

Hey Ben, you might want to check out http://www.rokulabs.com/. It plays Itunes.

Thanks, I just checked that out. Looks cool. Do you own it?

 

no, I just found a link to their website from somewhere (I forget where).

I love the looks of the SoundBridge. There's a review of the unit at cnet... here. There's even a video of how it works. Apparently it won't play music purchased directly from itunes, which is weird because that's what Roku seems to make a big deal about. Hm.

 

The wireless streaming devices you guys are talking about look cool!  I didn't even know they were making those types of things. 

So what's the consensus on itunes?  It seems like a great program but not very compatible, which is very Mac!  For now I use windows media player which seems to work fine, but it doesn't recognize when I delete files (it still thinks they're there).  I find this ironic since it is constantly 'updating the library'