Talking with a friend about iTunes. Bought a CD and this began a conversation about audio fidelity and DRM. An excerpt:
Him: I could never buy music I can’t use.
Me: If I couldn’t use it, I wouldn’t have bought it.
Him: But you can only play it on a few computers.
Me: I only have two.
Him: What if you want to play it in the car, or on the stereo, or a friend’s computer?
Me: I. Make. A. CD.
Him: Why should you have to make a CD of it just to play it elsewhere?
Me: How is that a downside when your argument is to buy the CD?
Him: Because these digital files are supposed to be more “versitle.” Anyway, you get a better audio fidelity with the real CD.
Me: Dude, this ain’t Bach. It’s friggin’ Def Leppard. The lack of fidelity is probably a good thing.
Him: What if you do want to buy Bach?
Me: I suppose you buy it … ?
Him: I mean, smart ass, there will be a loss of audio quality for the music.
Me: Then you get the vinyl.
Him: The what?
Me: Did you totally miss the 80s? A record. For classical music there is nothing better.
Him: So when would you buy a CD?
Me: If it came with a Golden Ticket and a whole lot of chocolate, or iTunes didn’t have it.
Him: Do you ever listen to CDs anymore?
Me: When I forget my iPod, sure.
And on and on. Never quite won per se, but he never had a good reason to keep holding his side. Much like France. [rimshot] {laugh}
Geeze. Is he just the kind of person who never wants to “lose” an argument?
And in terms of audio quality, the AAC’s are really very good quality. Even if you use something like Ovolab AAChoo to rip m4p’s to m4a (AAChoo can re-rip at a higher quality than iTunes lets you, just using QT), it’s still extremely good quality. My older brother bought an m4p for a track he had on a CD and ripped the m4p to m4a. He then compared the m4a to the CD with very good headphones and could barely tell the difference (and that was him really straining to hear a difference). He then tried the same thing with a really good speaker setup and couldn’t tell a difference. In fact, sometimes he thought the CD was the worse quality :)
If you want a pretty good reason to buy digital music over traditional CDs, take a look at how much physical storage space you need for 2000 CDs versus having them on your computer. When I was looking for an apartment a few years ago, this was actually a factor.