I've ripped all my music collection onto my Mac. I've been pretty happy with the whole setup - until about a week ago. Now I'm so angry at myself I'm re-ripping all my music. Here's my sad story...
I've been listening to lots of Loreena McKennitt's music - check out her website at Quinlan Road Music. Quinlan Road provides very high quality digital downloads from their website. I'd downloaded one of her collections as high quality (256 kbps) MP3 files - it sounded very good indeed.
Now I'd been ripping my CD collection as 224 kbps AAC files, and I was pretty pleased with the sound. The MP3 I downloaded sounded pretty much the same as what I'd been listening to for the past two years. Quinlan Road also provides lossless downloads. My downfall was downloading and converting one of these collections...
If you're not into such stuff, most of the time when you rip a CD to a digital audio file the computer compresses the file using one of the available compression mechanisms (often called a codec: coder - decoder). MP3 is very widely used; Apple provides a different codec, called AAC, which is supposed to provide somewhat better sound for the equivalent amount of compression. I'd always configured my systems to use a much higher than normal quality compression. If you buy tunes from the iTunes Music Store, you'll get an AAC file compressed at 128 kbps - that's 128,000 bits per second of data. I typically compressed my files at twice that rate.
But there are also ways of transferring music that don't lose any of the original information off the CD; these are called lossless codecs. The downside is that the music files are three to five times larger than the compressed version. The advantage, though, is you get the original quality. I did an experiment where I bought one of McKennitt's collections in lossless format (actually as FLAC - free lossless audio codec). Apple's iTunes won't play FLAC files directly, so I installed some free software to do the conversion. I used Max from sbooth.org: they provide the software as open source.
Max let me convert the same FLAC file into my normal AAC file as well as into Apple Lossless (that's Apple's lossless codec). I installed both of the files into iTunes and listened. Unfortunately...
I set up a test for John when he came home from the shop about an hour later. He listened to the two tracks without knowing what he was hearing. He identified the lossless file within ten seconds - it's that much better than the compressed AAC file.
Now, how is it better? Compressed MP3 and AAC files sound like the music - the frequency response is mostly there. But when we listened to the lossless files through good speakers, it was like a veil lifted from the music. The instrumentalists sounded like they were in the room with us. Will it make a difference to you? That depends on what you're using to hear your music.
So I'm re-ripping all my CDs. iTunes lets you rip a CD using Apple Lossless. I bought a new 250GB hard disk for the music files. And, I must confess, I'm enjoying my music a lot more.
Another link to try: if high quality classical recordings appeal to you, check out Linn Records. It's the same outfit that makes audiophile playback equipment. Their recordings are stunningly good. And they provide lossless downloads, too...
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