Which is why most people go digital. Why bother with the 'big difference' that the layman cannot see/hear? Rocket River
LOL. I love the witty response to Itz Jflo at the end. "Yes" That's really all that needs to be said.
I hate this meme but it needs to be said... "You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to TheFreak again."
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HDtracks sells music in WAV and FLAC form. Supposedly iTunes is going to a higher rate mp3 (or did - I don't use them for that reason). But you are right, for the most part the music is much worse in quality. It does matter because highly compressed music, clipping, and "loudness" war production styles geared towards mp3 playback can cause hearing damage over the long run. Of course, anything can cause hearing damage but why not listen to better, full-range quality music that has less of a chance of doing so?
Some of the tracks I've bought on Amazon.com are 256kbit quality, which is pretty much indistinguishable from CD quality even to the most anal of audiophiles. I don't think they need to go to uncompressed formats -- just take the bitrate high enough and you can achieve basically CD-quality audio without having to use up to 2x your current storage capacity, especially if you use VBR. In fact, for most music 192kbps VBR is not distinguishable from CD quality with modern encoders.