Mab Wants MP3s!

[Supercheese]

I can't upgrade to WMP11 for... certain reasons.

Does the reason start with "teh" and end with "illegulz"?

It does for me... 

[thegayhare]

It's odd my copy is legetimate but half the time Microsoft says it isn't and half the time they say Oh sure your fine

*shrugs*

[DigitalMan]

Cripes, even I have a legitimate copy of Windows. It's about the only thing used after a reformat that's not labelled "CD-R" >.>

[Aridas]

It's odd my copy is legetimate but half the time Microsoft says it isn't and half the time they say Oh sure your fine

*shrugs*

There could be a bug in it somewhere. Never heard of that in my life though. It could just be random false alarms on the test they run... You'd have to ask Microsoft about that. Not that I'd know who would know either >.>

[Cvstos]

Never ever give money to Microsoft or Macintosh, is what I say. That's why I use the Creative Media Player. It works like a fine-tuned instrument.

I've never had a good experience with Creative Labs' software, and I've used Soundblasters since the AWE64.  Their hardware is great, but the software is... ugh.  Best to just get their cards and install the drivers only.  Great sound, no bloat.

That being said, iTunes and WMP11 are both free, in fact it costs them money to have you download it at no cost to you. 

[bill]

WMP works perfectly fine for my purposes, since I rarely rip/burn music. Store-bought albums FTW.

[xHaZxMaTx]

I buy all my music (CD's, not online), aswell, but I like to be able to just go in my library and pick out a song instead of having to go get the CD and whatnot.  Plus you have the added benefits of playlists with multiple albums.

[bill]

But changing the CDs is fun... 

[Cvstos]

But changing the CDs is fun... 

That's a lie and you know it!

Stupid 6-CD games still coming on CDs.  They made DVDs for a reason people!  And there's no excuse for not having a DVD drive in your computer when it's $25-$30 for a DUAL LAYER BURNER on NewEgg!

Seriously, I like having my enire library in one place.  Open iTunes, find song, play it, no CDs required.

Also, ripping your CDs to your computer is free, even with iTunes, WMP11, etc.  Anyone who charges for that has no real business model (I'm looking in your direction, WinAMP).  It's the songs you buy from their stores that cost money, and those are always optional.  If you want the super-high quality and don't mind taking up some space, you can up the bitrate of the MP3s, or use Apple Lossless or Windows Media Lossless.  Both are mathematically, well, lossless from their CD counter parts.  100% the quality of CDs, usually about 60% the space requirements.

[bill]

But changing the CDs is fun... 

That's a lie and you know it!

Stupid 6-CD games still coming on CDs.  They made DVDs for a reason people!  And there's no excuse for not having a DVD drive in your computer when it's $25-$30 for a DUAL LAYER BURNER on NewEgg!

Seriously, I like having my enire library in one place.  Open iTunes, find song, play it, no CDs required.

Also, ripping your CDs to your computer is free, even with iTunes, WMP11, etc.  Anyone who charges for that has no real business model (I'm looking in your direction, WinAMP).  It's the songs you buy from their stores that cost money, and those are always optional.  If you want the super-high quality and don't mind taking up some space, you can up the bitrate of the MP3s, or use Apple Lossless or Windows Media Lossless.  Both are mathematically, well, lossless from their CD counter parts.  100% the quality of CDs, usually about about 60% the space requirements.

But ripping individual songs from an album ruins the spirit of an album, to be a single cohesive piece of musical work. If you're ripping favorites, you might as well only buy "Best-Ofs". 

[Cvstos]

Bill: You DO realize you can rip the whole album, right?  iTunes even has gapless playback (with still-seperate files) for such albums.

[bill]

Yeah, I do, but that's also what I don't like about the download stores. They encourage the purchase of individual songs, rather than an album.


By the way, let me refine my statement. Changing audio CDs is fun.

[xHaZxMaTx]

That's why you rip the entire album.   And WMP10 has gapless playback aswell.  You're not losing anything from ripping you're music, Bill, you're just stubborn.

[Cvstos]

Personally, I like to buy the physical CDs, and I'll usually listen to them whole the first few times, and then pick and choose my favorite songs for my playlists.  I'll almost always rip the whole album at about ~192kbps MP3 (VBR).

As for the download stores... for CDs that are worth buying, people actually do buy the whole albums.  In fact, I remember a statistic from a while back that a very substantial (upwards of 60%) quantity of music purchased from the iTMS was in album format.  

Now, for CDs that have one or two good songs and the rest is fluff... why spend the money on the fluff?  

[xHaZxMaTx]

Because I have OCD.  If I don't have the entire album, I feel like I'm missing something.  Like when you go a day without your watch.  It just feels weird, like you're naked or something.

[Aridas]

Well, if it's any comfort, your current avatar is naked, Haz.

[xHaZxMaTx]

*Beats Aridas over the head with more large heavy objects.*

[bill]

*desperately attempts to divert back on-topic*

Haz is right. Not having the whole album is wrong on so many levels. Music sounds better "in context".

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

4:33 sounds better in context?

[Jim Halisstrad]

I'm in the Ripping camp, sort of.
Here I have Mindless Self Indulgence's Frankenstein Girls.  And while there is a lot of win on this they have a couple of songs that just don't appeal to me in the least.  Golden I  comes screaming to my mind.
Personally I love to buy the CD (I HAVE TO HAVE THE CD COVER.  IT'S MY ONLY DRUG!!!) and make mix Cd's featuring a conglomeration of bands.

But there are bands like the Killers and Orgy who have a perfect collection of songs that make me just want to veg out listening to them

[bill]

4:33 sounds better in context?

No, that sounds better on repeat.

[LionHeart]

*desperately attempts to divert back on-topic*

Haz is right. Not having the whole album is wrong on so many levels. Music sounds better "in context".

What context???

The only "context" is that they want you to pay for the whole damn album, whether you like it or not, and whether you want any of the other songs or not.

[Tapewolf]

What context???
The only "context" is that they want you to pay for the whole damn album, whether you like it or not, and whether you want any of the other songs or not.

Leaving aside concept albums such as The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, Snow, Tommy, S.F. Sorrow and so forth, there are a number of albums which self-reference.

'Octavarium' by Dream Theater is perhaps a bad example given than most of the songs on it are crap, but you need to have at least the first and last track.  Likewise, 'A Trick of the Tail' by Genesis makes a lot more sense if you have it all, since the last track references at least two of the others.

Then we have stuff like 'Wind and Wuthering', 'Dark Side of the Moon' or Hawkwind's 'Live Chronicles' where each track flows into the next and it sounds god-awful if you don't have gapless playback, let alone try to play just one song.  ("The tale that men call.. THE CHRONICLE OF THE BLACK SW" - - - - - "ORD!")

Finally, the most important reason to buy the whole album is to find stuff you don't know you like.  I've done this over and over.  I bought 'The Six Wives of Henry VIII' to get 'Jane Seymour' and decided I liked some of the other tracks better.  Same with Iron Butterfly, Threshold's "Psychedelicatessen" (came for 'He Is I Am', fell in love with 'Devoted', 'Into the Light', 'Tension of Souls' etc), Bal Sagoth and so on...

[Aridas]

Then we have stuff like 'Wind and Wuthering', 'Dark Side of the Moon' or Hawkwind's 'Live Chronicles' where each track flows into the next and it sounds god-awful if you don't have gapless playback, let alone try to play just one song.  ("The tale that men call.. THE CHRONICLE OF THE BLACK SW" - - - - - "ORD!")

Whatever happened to records, anyway? Those worked pretty good, except maybe for the part about them being big and fragile >.>

[Tapewolf]

Whatever happened to records, anyway? Those worked pretty good, except maybe for the part about them being big and fragile >.>

It's very difficult to play them at work, while jogging, or in the car.  They also deteriorate with each use.  I'd still like to have vinyl copies of 'A Black Moon Broods Over Lemuria' and 'K', but they've extremely rare and expensive.  I do have Tarkus on vinyl too, but that's mostly for the cover art.

[Aridas]

Well, I already made those points >.>

But at least you didn't have to worry about things like "gapless playback", right? right?

[Tapewolf]

But at least you didn't have to worry about things like "gapless playback", right? right? D:

You did on 'Brain Salad Surgery' - 'Karn Evil 9 - First Impression' was too long and wouldn't all fit on one side - it had to be split in two.  Then there's The Planets by Gustav Holst - one of the first composers to live long enough to see his work recorded on 78RPM shellac.  Unfortunately it wouldn't fit so he compromised the recording by conducting it at a higher tempo, which caused confusion about what it was supposed to sound like for the next 80 odd years 

Even cheap and tacky early 1990s CD players are gapless - the problem as we have it is mainly a result of the streamed nature of the compression formats we use from what I've heard.  It can be corrected in the playback software, but most players don't do this.

It might be nice to go back to the whole-album-vs-buying-individual-tracks debate though

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

What I'd like to know is what Amber ends up using, purely so we know if we solved the issue or not.


.. but then, I'm nosey like that. :-)