Your getting ripped off (quality wise) when you download music.

Jason Tucker

Jason Tucker

— 1 min read

The Guardian wrote a great article about how people arnt getting what they pay for when they buy audio files off the internet. When you buy an album from say itunes or napster or some other source you arnt getting the same thing as buying from a retailer. Websites like itunes and napster compress the files into either MP3 WMA or OGG formats making the files smaller, but with the cost of quality loss. For big time audiophiles DVD-A (DVD Audio) is where its at (next to vinyl).

Itunes uses AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) format encoded at 128kbps
Napster uses WMA (Windows Media Audio) files encoded at 192kbps

Both of which use DRM file management so your limited to what you can do with the audio files.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1699518,00.html

I found a comparison of formats it doesnt include low compressions though but it gives you an idea of quality loss due to compression:

encoding time

decoding time

size / MB

size / per cent

quality / per cent

MP3

96 kbps 39 sec. 5 sec. 1.56 6.81

40 %
112 kbps 37 sec. 7 sec. 1.82 7.95

70 %
128 kbps 37 sec. 7 sec. 2.08 9.08

80 %

WMA

48 kbps 23 sec. 7 sec. 814 KB 3.55

20 %
64 kbps 23 sec. 7 sec. 1.05 4.59

40 %
96 kbps 23 sec. 7 sec. 1.57 6.86

65 %
128 kbps 24 sec. 8 sec. 2.09 9.13

95 %

OGG

96 kbps 2 min. 3 sec. 10 sec. 1.71 7.47

75 %
128 kbps 2 min. 16 sec. 10 sec. 1.98 8.65

95 %

VQF

80 kbps 3 min. 57 sec. 12 sec. 1.30 5.68

60 %
96 kbps 4 min. 23 sec. 12 sec. 1.56 6.81

65 %

mp3PRO

64 kbps 43 sec. 52 sec. 1.04 4.54

50 %

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