What I am actually referring to is the use of MP3 files. I will only be using these things for my car stereo and portable MP3 player from now on. I'm not bothering with them on my home theater system ever again. Why? Well, I recently got a few songs as FLAC files just to see if I could tell the difference in quality. They are a bit more expensive, but the quality is perfect so I see it as a worthwhile expense. One thing though...FLACs are large files. Very large compared to MP3s, but smaller than WAVs. FLAC is compressed, but in a lossless manner. No audio quality is lost whatsoever, and the files can be used to create exact audio duplicates of the CD from which they are ripped. Of course, iTunes won't play FLACs, so a lot of people won't bother, but iTunes is crappy anyway. I prefer Winamp, which happens to play FLAC natively.
So back to the quality issue now. The problem is that so many of us have experienced music via MP3 now that we've lost sight of what music should actually sound like, so we're used to the compressed sound that MP3 provides us. That compressed sound is now normal to us. After listening to these FLAC files, however, I'm feeling what I've been missing all this time. MP3 cuts out too many frequencies. Granted, many of these are frequencies that we cannot hear, but many of them are frequencies that are required to drive subwoofers, and those are quite necessary in electronic dance music.
The bottom line is you like bass frequencies like I do and you like clean, crisp sounding tunes, ditch MP3 for everything except portable players. Actually, if you like music at all, you should go with FLAC.
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