15 ms·

I have also purchased music on Amazon and let's not pretend its "full on downloads", Amazon has V0 MP3 only iirc and Bandcamp offers ever format under the sun i

I have also purchased music on Amazon and let's not pretend its "full on downloads", Amazon has V0 MP3 only iirc and Bandcamp offers ever format under the sun including FLAC and ALAC. Don't know about Apple because iTunes doesn't have Linux support and the whole setup of downloading an app in order to download a file strikes me as a bit gross.

Wowfunhappy 3y ago
It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free. iTunes downloads are AAC, 250+ kb/s (remember this bitrate is with a more efficient codec). I'm probably opening a can of worms here, but I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference between iTunes and lossless in a blind test. Maybe drop that to one in a thousand for Amazon vs Lossless. (I really do wish Amazon offered AAC downloads.)
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free They are DRM-free, but I wouldn't characterize the MP3s as "very good quality". They're only OK. It was the quality of their encodings that got me to stop buying music downloads from Amazon.
- Kye 3y ago
  Lossless is mainly for mixing/remixing, not listening.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I disagree. As a listener, the lossy encodings I've heard are fairly annoying, especially in the higher frequencies. I haven't heard every lossy encoding, of course, and there may be an actually good one that escaped my attention.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      There's no evidence that more than a very small percentage of humans (if even that) can differentiate between reasonable bit-rate pyscho-acoustic (lossy) compression and the source material. Double-blind tests have made this abundantly clear. If you really can hear a difference, you've either got particularly poorly compressed files, or are in a tiny minority of us.
      - denkmoon 3y ago
        Poorly compressed files is usually the problem, and when lossless files are relatively low burden (what's a few gb between friends. I'm not storing them on my 64gb ipod anymore), i'd rather just have the lossless ones.
      - barkingcat 3y ago
        A huge portion of all compressed media files are poorly compressed files. Often these poorly compressed files come directly from music distributor with the wrong compression settings, or with really really bad noise. Remember, many music distributors are working with old systems (unable to upgrade either due to driver/software or licensing issues), outdated software, and plain old junky audio interfaces, etc. Lossless (when used properly and able to algorithmically guarantee what comes out == what goes into the compression toolchain) avoids the whole issue altogether, and that's what's valuable about it. Focusing on whether compression captures every nuance of uncompressed sound is the wrong battle. The real battle is against careless distributors and bad artifacts introduced by poor compression settings and often incorrectly coded compression utilities used throughout the music industry. (ie we on hn might all be using Lame or the Fraunhofer mp3 encoders, but a lot of music producers/distributors will be using custom / closed source encoders, or even audio workstations with the encoder implemented in hardware, and those might or might not be encoding mp3 correctly.)
        astrange 3y ago
  - musicale 3y ago
    And transcoding and archiving.
  - barkingcat 3y ago
    Totally not true. Lossless is for listening!
  - Kye 3y ago
    It's interesting how easy miscommunication happens. I said it's mainly for one thing, not the other. I didn't say it wasn't for or never used for other purposes. People are misreading that "not the other" as though I used a period instead of a comma. Read it as "not mainly for listening" and you'll read it the way it's intended. Carry on listening to a format most people use for purposes other than listening if that works for you. I can't stop you with a simple dependent clause. You're safe.
  - m-p-3 3y ago
    And archiving. Personally I prefer to have the lossless format stored in my digital vault and use a lossy version on my portable devices for storage efficiency.
- pdntspa 3y ago
  I'm a DJ on mid-range monitoring hardware and I can definitely hear the difference with apple's encodes vs FLAC, at least on their older encodes. I am not 100% sure its the compression protocol (could be differences in mastering since streaming has different requirements) but the attentuation on bass and watery-sounding cymbals stick out like a sore thumb in the right listening environment I only buy music on itunes as a last resort, so I don't have a huge sample size.
  - ubermonkey 3y ago
    I really wonder if you can do this in a double blind, ABX test.
    - xoac 3y ago
      Note that parent is a DJ and while DJing the files are bot just reproduced but usually there is some digital processing involved. This makes it easier to hear the difference.
      - pdntspa 3y ago
        Maybe but I don't do critical listening on club systems unless I'm checking my own mixdowns. Unless the DJ is redlining (which they shouldn't be if they're competent) the audio should come out of the mixer relatively unmolested. My critical listening rig is a broadcast amp with two passive studio monitors. Should also note I can't hear the different between well-encoded 320kbit and FLAC. But lower bitrates (256kbit and lower) on mp3 are audible.
        throwaway290 3y ago
        I showed a friend once how bitrate and sampling frequency start to really matter when doing stuff like slowing down a lot. But I guess it's not typical in DJing.
        Washuu 3y ago
- foresto 3y ago
  > I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference Consider that lossless is good not only for listening, but also for transcoding. For example, when you want to use a media player with limited formats, or when the inevitable future codecs become popular. (And for archival of digital source material, lossless is the only sensible option.)
  - acdha 3y ago
    AAC is one of the most widely used and implemented codecs in existence. It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll ever need to transcode it for compatibility since the only reason to do so (licensing) becomes moot over a preservation timeframe as patents expire. If you aren’t noticing technical defects in your recordings now, you’re really not going to care in 20 years - many of us will be lucky to still hear well enough! > And for archival of digital source material, lossless is the only sensible option. I work in digital preservation and one thing everyone is keenly aware of is the cost of storing large amounts of data. Archivists like lossless, of course, but if it’s below the level where humans can notice problems they’re often more forgiving than you might think because preserving twice as many works with the same storage budget has its own appeal. Your personal music collection is probably small enough that it fits in your personal storage slop but maybe that’s not true if you’re a huge fan or partial to high-res soundboard recordings, and if you’re archiving for a larger group you’ll start to exhaust what capacity you can get for free.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > that’s not true if you’re a huge fan or partial to high-res soundboard recordings, and if you’re archiving for a larger group you’ll start to exhaust what capacity you can get for free. But hard drives are cheap. I have a multi-TB hard drive that is used exclusively to store my music. When that fills, I'll just get another.
- Modified3019 3y ago
  For me it’s not about somehow hearing a difference (at least, not anymore, especially at my age. Thought I do remember the days when mp3s had a good chance of sounding tinny from bad encoding, even when done by myself from a CD). Honestly, I probably have a nonzero amount of bandcamp flac files that are actually just mp3’s that were converted, but I’m unlikely to ever know unless I analyze the waveform. For me it’s about having a reference/master copy to archive and then modify, cutting parts away I don’t like, applying equalization, etc and compressing for streaming/loading on a device. I am not going to compound losses on a file if I can help it. Storage space is trivial these days, so just grabbing a flac file and declaring that it’s perfectly as the artist intended removes any potential cognitive load of trying to evaluate audio quality or “which of these mp3 files is the best one to archive” anxiety. Basically: Start clean, stay clean, and move on.
  - deadbunny 3y ago
    This is what I do as well. I prefer to have the FLAC files for local playback and archiving then have a script which watches the FLAC folder, converts to v0 MP3 which then gets synced to my phone using Syncthing (because phones have such limited storage these days without Micro SD).
BLKNSLVR 3y ago
> downloading an app in order to download a file strikes me as a bit gross It's impossible to be a casual user of the Apple ecosystem. There are photos on my kids iPads that I'd like to save to the family archive, but I can't muster up the energy to work out how to do it again. I've done it before but long enough ago that I've forgotten the method but remember the frustration and effort - I know it's going to be less than what my exaggerating memory tells me, but... eughhhh, Apple.
- astrange 3y ago
  Select them, hit the share icon, and send them wherever you want?

Wowfunhappy 3y ago

It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free. iTunes downloads are AAC, 250+ kb/s (remember this bitrate is with a more efficient codec). I'm probably opening a can of worms here, but I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference between iTunes and lossless in a blind test. Maybe drop that to one in a thousand for Amazon vs Lossless. (I really do wish Amazon offered AAC downloads.)

JohnFen 3y ago
> It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free They are DRM-free, but I wouldn't characterize the MP3s as "very good quality". They're only OK. It was the quality of their encodings that got me to stop buying music downloads from Amazon.
Kye 3y ago
Lossless is mainly for mixing/remixing, not listening.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I disagree. As a listener, the lossy encodings I've heard are fairly annoying, especially in the higher frequencies. I haven't heard every lossy encoding, of course, and there may be an actually good one that escaped my attention.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    There's no evidence that more than a very small percentage of humans (if even that) can differentiate between reasonable bit-rate pyscho-acoustic (lossy) compression and the source material. Double-blind tests have made this abundantly clear. If you really can hear a difference, you've either got particularly poorly compressed files, or are in a tiny minority of us.
    - denkmoon 3y ago
      Poorly compressed files is usually the problem, and when lossless files are relatively low burden (what's a few gb between friends. I'm not storing them on my 64gb ipod anymore), i'd rather just have the lossless ones.
    - barkingcat 3y ago
      A huge portion of all compressed media files are poorly compressed files. Often these poorly compressed files come directly from music distributor with the wrong compression settings, or with really really bad noise. Remember, many music distributors are working with old systems (unable to upgrade either due to driver/software or licensing issues), outdated software, and plain old junky audio interfaces, etc. Lossless (when used properly and able to algorithmically guarantee what comes out == what goes into the compression toolchain) avoids the whole issue altogether, and that's what's valuable about it. Focusing on whether compression captures every nuance of uncompressed sound is the wrong battle. The real battle is against careless distributors and bad artifacts introduced by poor compression settings and often incorrectly coded compression utilities used throughout the music industry. (ie we on hn might all be using Lame or the Fraunhofer mp3 encoders, but a lot of music producers/distributors will be using custom / closed source encoders, or even audio workstations with the encoder implemented in hardware, and those might or might not be encoding mp3 correctly.)
      - astrange 3y ago
- musicale 3y ago
  And transcoding and archiving.
- barkingcat 3y ago
  Totally not true. Lossless is for listening!
- Kye 3y ago
  It's interesting how easy miscommunication happens. I said it's mainly for one thing, not the other. I didn't say it wasn't for or never used for other purposes. People are misreading that "not the other" as though I used a period instead of a comma. Read it as "not mainly for listening" and you'll read it the way it's intended. Carry on listening to a format most people use for purposes other than listening if that works for you. I can't stop you with a simple dependent clause. You're safe.
- m-p-3 3y ago
  And archiving. Personally I prefer to have the lossless format stored in my digital vault and use a lossy version on my portable devices for storage efficiency.
pdntspa 3y ago
I'm a DJ on mid-range monitoring hardware and I can definitely hear the difference with apple's encodes vs FLAC, at least on their older encodes. I am not 100% sure its the compression protocol (could be differences in mastering since streaming has different requirements) but the attentuation on bass and watery-sounding cymbals stick out like a sore thumb in the right listening environment I only buy music on itunes as a last resort, so I don't have a huge sample size.
- ubermonkey 3y ago
  I really wonder if you can do this in a double blind, ABX test.
  - xoac 3y ago
    Note that parent is a DJ and while DJing the files are bot just reproduced but usually there is some digital processing involved. This makes it easier to hear the difference.
    - pdntspa 3y ago
      Maybe but I don't do critical listening on club systems unless I'm checking my own mixdowns. Unless the DJ is redlining (which they shouldn't be if they're competent) the audio should come out of the mixer relatively unmolested. My critical listening rig is a broadcast amp with two passive studio monitors. Should also note I can't hear the different between well-encoded 320kbit and FLAC. But lower bitrates (256kbit and lower) on mp3 are audible.
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        I showed a friend once how bitrate and sampling frequency start to really matter when doing stuff like slowing down a lot. But I guess it's not typical in DJing.
        Washuu 3y ago
foresto 3y ago
> I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference Consider that lossless is good not only for listening, but also for transcoding. For example, when you want to use a media player with limited formats, or when the inevitable future codecs become popular. (And for archival of digital source material, lossless is the only sensible option.)
- acdha 3y ago
  AAC is one of the most widely used and implemented codecs in existence. It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll ever need to transcode it for compatibility since the only reason to do so (licensing) becomes moot over a preservation timeframe as patents expire. If you aren’t noticing technical defects in your recordings now, you’re really not going to care in 20 years - many of us will be lucky to still hear well enough! > And for archival of digital source material, lossless is the only sensible option. I work in digital preservation and one thing everyone is keenly aware of is the cost of storing large amounts of data. Archivists like lossless, of course, but if it’s below the level where humans can notice problems they’re often more forgiving than you might think because preserving twice as many works with the same storage budget has its own appeal. Your personal music collection is probably small enough that it fits in your personal storage slop but maybe that’s not true if you’re a huge fan or partial to high-res soundboard recordings, and if you’re archiving for a larger group you’ll start to exhaust what capacity you can get for free.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > that’s not true if you’re a huge fan or partial to high-res soundboard recordings, and if you’re archiving for a larger group you’ll start to exhaust what capacity you can get for free. But hard drives are cheap. I have a multi-TB hard drive that is used exclusively to store my music. When that fills, I'll just get another.
Modified3019 3y ago
For me it’s not about somehow hearing a difference (at least, not anymore, especially at my age. Thought I do remember the days when mp3s had a good chance of sounding tinny from bad encoding, even when done by myself from a CD). Honestly, I probably have a nonzero amount of bandcamp flac files that are actually just mp3’s that were converted, but I’m unlikely to ever know unless I analyze the waveform. For me it’s about having a reference/master copy to archive and then modify, cutting parts away I don’t like, applying equalization, etc and compressing for streaming/loading on a device. I am not going to compound losses on a file if I can help it. Storage space is trivial these days, so just grabbing a flac file and declaring that it’s perfectly as the artist intended removes any potential cognitive load of trying to evaluate audio quality or “which of these mp3 files is the best one to archive” anxiety. Basically: Start clean, stay clean, and move on.
- deadbunny 3y ago
  This is what I do as well. I prefer to have the FLAC files for local playback and archiving then have a script which watches the FLAC folder, converts to v0 MP3 which then gets synced to my phone using Syncthing (because phones have such limited storage these days without Micro SD).

BLKNSLVR 3y ago

> downloading an app in order to download a file strikes me as a bit gross It's impossible to be a casual user of the Apple ecosystem. There are photos on my kids iPads that I'd like to save to the family archive, but I can't muster up the energy to work out how to do it again. I've done it before but long enough ago that I've forgotten the method but remember the frustration and effort - I know it's going to be less than what my exaggerating memory tells me, but... eughhhh, Apple.

astrange 3y ago
Select them, hit the share icon, and send them wherever you want?