Audio Formats Part 2:

I have given a lot of though to audio formats for my computer stored music. Although I just have an average audio system, I love music and my ITunes library has most of my CDs in it, about 25 days of music. But I worry that when I upgrade my audio system, I may reach a point where I will be bothered by audio file compression (see last blog post for a big discussion of audio formats etc.) Soooo I have reached a few conclusions and have a little bit of a rant.
First off, if I am going to archive a piece of music either from CD source or from ripping my Vinyl, it is going to be stored in the flac format which is a lossless format that allows tags. The big disadvantage of flac format is that, of course, I-Tunes won’t play it (grumble, grumble about the smarmy kid in the Apple PC commercials.) So that is just good for Archiving but since it allows tags you can at least have some information stored along with the music file.
For non archived music (ripped from CDs I own etc.) on my computer, I am going to use WMP with the mp3 format at a 256 Kbps variable rate. This does have some compression, but I think that for my ears and my stereo speakers it will be fine. I have adjusted my WMP (Windows Media Player) and my ITunes both to use mp3 as the default and set WMP to rip at 2565 kbps.
When I download files from the internet, (of course using only approved sites that respect copyrights, not free pirate sites) I am going to go to sites that either flac format downloads whenever I can find what I want on them
(for example: HDTracks: http://www.hdtracks.com/index.php
And Digital Global Marine Live: http://www.dgmlive.com/ )
For standard Pop music, Amazon offers downloads at 256 kbps mp3s and that will be fine for that kind of music. My experience suggests that the m4a downloaded from the ITunes store are about the same size as the 254 Kbps files I have created, so I think that they will certainly not be worse (not verified though).

Second, I am going to use ITunes as my main player. It is just too convenient. Besides the cover flow is awesome if you take the time to find every single last stinking album cover which is a LOT of work. If the music isn’t in ITunes you won’t get it easily. One reason for using WMP to rip music is that it seems to have better luck finding album art than ITunes does. And Amazon often has album art that neither program can find.

Finally, my rant. Besides the fact that I want to find all the music I want in highest resolution, I want complete tags and art for each piece of music. I want album art back and front, plus any inside art to be viewable. I want not just song titles but also composers and performers for each piece, and correct listing of original recording, release date, re-mastering date, and any info about tape provenance and engineering. I want song lyrics and I want liner notes. I WANT ALL THE INFO THAT WAS ON THE ORIGINAL RELEASE AT LEAST! People we have computers now we can do this.. Record companies; give us what we got when we bought the original back in 1972 or whatever! Why is no one buying CDs? Its because you don’t really get more value for the purchase compared to downloads. Give us all this info in a little file on each CD that installs on your computer when you play the CD. Make it one of those computer enhancements that some CDs have.

Whew ok I’m taking a chill pill and I’m going to listen to some nice Oregon to mellow out.