Cd singles?

[Porco]

Originally Posted by Sandrine

Here there's a site -Qobuz- that offers online singles with the same audio quality than CDs and it sells albums with what they call 'Qobuz Studio Masters' quality.
For now they only offer streaming in the UK, since January, and the website will be redesigned in April 2014 so downloads will be allowed too ( sorry, press release in French ). Also it means that if other online retailers wanted to do so, they could!

Thanks for that.

There are other sites offering hi-quality audio too, the issue has been the tiny catalogues available so far… I suspect the problem probably lies with the record companies more (or as much with) than the stores.

If iTunes / Amazon / Google did it they'd have huge amount of music already there. I know iTunes specifically has asked for high quality versions of the files (from record companies) for some time, which then get compressed further for sale, but presumably with the idea that one day they can flip the switch and make everything available in higher quality, a bit like when they went from 128kbps to 256kbps.

[Donkey]

Originally Posted by Porco

I'd be fine with no CD singles if they offered the same audio quality online. It's like we're in this horrible in-betweeny time where quality is worse and the CDs are going away.

Hopefully the rumours of iTunes etc offering higher quality audio downloads soon will turn out be true.

yes, that's true! I'm still wondering if a new age is coming or not - regaridng audio quality, because without physical CDs we have more options than 44kHz, 16bit.

[Porco]

Originally Posted by Donkey

yes, that's true! I'm still wondering if a new age is coming or not - regaridng audio quality, because without physical CDs we have more options than 44kHz, 16bit.

Yeah, there are so many options, but just true lossless CD quality would be a start.

I think that the 192Khz 24-bit files Neil Young wants to sell are probably unnecessary overkill for almost everyone, but still… at least he's trying.

[Suicide Aldi]

I miss my minidisc...

[grimlock]

I've never actually bought music off iTunes for years, so the sound quality of things bought from there aren't CD quality? That's bunk then.

[Porco]

Originally Posted by grimlock

I've never actually bought music off iTunes for years, so the sound quality of things bought from there aren't CD quality? That's bunk then.

Probably most people can't tell the difference between a download from iTunes or Amazon and a CD. They're not terrible exactly, but when the price is often similar or even more than the equivalent album on CD it's just silly that they can't sell lossless, truly CD quality files, especially in these days where many of the same companies are offering comparatively huge movie downloads that on average probably get replayed far less often than music albums do...