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iBean · Oct 18, 2003, 10:20 AM

I haven't had the chance to buy music from the iTMS (I'm in Europe...) but I'm curious to know if the quality of the preview is the same quality you get when you buy the whole song.

I listened to some previews and they sounded awful. The sound was even worse than the AAC files I've encoded from my CDs (I listened to Tori Amos on the store and from my library and the difference is huge).
However, most of the previews do sound fine.

It's kind of a bummer if you spend $9.99 to get an album and all the songs sound worse than FM radio...

davidflas · Oct 18, 2003, 10:46 AM

I've purchased about 80 songs from the iTms and I find the purchased songs to be of higher quality than the previews. YMMV.....

King Bob On The Cob · Oct 18, 2003, 11:59 AM

Previews are < 64 kbps. That's half quality or less.

icruise · Oct 18, 2003, 12:01 PM

All I can tell you is that the quality of the songs I have downloaded has been excellent (andthat includes one Tori Amos album).

iBean · Oct 18, 2003, 12:10 PM

Originally posted by King Bob On The Cob:
Previews are < 64 kbps. That's half quality or less.

"You can double-click a song to listen to a portion of it and make sure it's the song you want before you buy it. If your network connection is slower than 128 kbit/s: (...)"

I found this on Apple's Support site, that's why I thought previews would also be 128kbit AAC...

Icruise,
Which album did you get? The one I found really bad quality is Strange Little Girls.

BTW, at which bit rate do you guys import songs from your own CDs? I've imported everything at 128 AAC but now I think quality isn't good enough, the treble is veryy weak in some songs, especially electronic stuff...

icruise · Oct 18, 2003, 12:16 PM

I got Scarlet's Walk. I generally encode at 160 AAC, just to get a little extra quality, although I can't really say that I can tell much of a difference.

wataru · Oct 18, 2003, 12:35 PM

I heard that they scale the quality depending on your connection speed and on the amount of traffic they're experiencing.

Gene Jockey · Oct 18, 2003, 12:46 PM

Originally posted by iBean:
Icruise,
Which album did you get? The one I found really bad quality is Strange Little Girls

Well, I own Strange Little Girls, and I think it sounds bad at any bit rate. There were some lo-fi songs on that album. Which song did you preview?

--Josh

iBean · Oct 18, 2003, 12:53 PM

Originally posted by Gene Jockey:
Well, I own Strange Little Girls, and I think it sounds bad at any bit rate. There were some lo-fi songs on that album. Which song did you preview?

Time. Her voice is way more clear in the AAC file encoded from my cd.

iBean · Oct 18, 2003, 12:57 PM

Oh, forget Time. I just previewed Strange Little Girl and it's terrible...

icruise · Oct 18, 2003, 01:13 PM

It's also possible that there's something wrong with that particular file, but overall I have no complaints about the quality of the songs on the iTMS.

davidflas · Oct 18, 2003, 01:59 PM

Originally posted by iBean:
BTW, at which bit rate do you guys import songs from your own CDs? I've imported everything at 128 AAC but now I think quality isn't good enough, the treble is veryy weak in some songs, especially electronic stuff...

I'm picky about sound quality so I always encode @ 320kbs... I even has some aiff tracks on my iPod, they are 1411kbs. I can't wait for 250GB ipods, then I'll be able to use aiff for all my songs.