[boead]

Actually, no. The iTunes Store offers 128 kbps and, recently announced, is bumping it up to 256 kbps in lossy AAC. They do not offer ALAC or AIFF.

Yeah, iTunes has something like 11 million songs available - I believe. only a tiny % are available as iTunes Plus which are just DRM-free 256kbps AAC files as Crimson stated.
I WISH iTunes would offer Apple Lossless! Maybe they will now that they have abandoned DRM.

CandyRAT Records us to offer lossless downloads for $9.99/album but no longer do.
http://www.candyrat.com/


there is virtually noting available at 24/96 or better in the music distribution industry besides SACD and DVD-A and neither of those formates can be extracted to a file for listening on a PC. If you want Hires audio files you have to record them yourself.
I find many live recording online (both allowed and outright bootleg-ed) that were recorded onto a 24/96 recorder and posted for people to download. I have also come across people that have recorded their vinyl at 24/96 to attempt to retain some of that vinyl magic but besides that were all stuck in a 16/44 world and you know, its just fine.

[jqp]

I guess the exception proves the rule that you should not depend on USB for this kind of thing.

You are not claiming that no one would have problems with their USB configuration in their system, just that yours is doing fine. Obviously given the right components configured the right way in a system, you could overcome the flaws of USB. Not that Firewire is perfect, but can you dump your video from a camcorder directly to an external USB drive without a PC involved? USB requires resources from the CPU just to transfer data, and that can be a problem in certain conditions.

In the real world I use internal SATA II drives for my video editing, but if I needed to use an external drive I would pick Firewire or eSata since they eliminate the possible data transfer issues that you can have with USB. In the near future USB will have even faster maximum rates, but unless the rates are provided with reliablility, it will not be any better for applications that depend on specified transfer rates.

[Crimson]

Yeah, iTunes has something like 11 million songs available - I believe. only a tiny % are available as iTunes Plus which are just DRM-free 256kbps AAC files as Crimson stated.

80% are now available as iTunes Plus, with all songs being 256 kbps DRM-free by the end of March.

[boead]

Yeah, iTunes has something like 11 million songs available - I believe. only a tiny % are available as iTunes Plus which are just DRM-free 256kbps AAC files as Crimson stated.

80% are now available as iTunes Plus, with all songs being 256 kbps DRM-free by the end of March.

NICE, that's just as of - what a week ago? Just a few weeks ago I was hunting down music on iTunes for DRM-free Plus tracks and found the usual low availability, bought used CDs off Amazon instead. Now it looks like the entire store collection are DRM-free 256k tracks.
I HOPE this becomes the normal or standard and Apple Lossless becomes the more expensive option.

[EDS_]

There's barely any high resolution content out there.  Occasionally this comes up and people send links to a few music download sites, but when you actually go to those places they are largely empty.

Considering how hardly anyone even offers 320kbps lossy, I have a hard time believing we'll see high resolution offered in any useful or meaningful way in the next 3 years.  By then I'll be ready for a new laptop, a new DAC and whatever I need to do.  I choose to not obsess over unicorns, leprechauns and other things that don't exist like high resolution consumer audio content.

Hey wilsynet,
I want to apologize for being so blatantly wrong yesterday.  A general state of wrongness seems to be a chromosomal issue with me that I can't seem to shake - especially regarding digital audio!

Ed

[wilsynet]

Ed!  No worries, all good.

Wilson