iTunes bitrate disappointing?

[Amit]

Is anyone else here disappointed with iTunes's selection of 128-bit AAC?

Don't get me wrong. I love the store. I think it has the potential to remake fundamentally the way we buy music. But I'm only a two-month-old iPod owner, and as my headphones have improved dramatically, I've found my own 192-bit AAC CD-rips have far greater color, clarity, and imaging than anything I buy off iTunes.

I'm thinking of declaring a moratorium on iTunes purchases until they decide to have a parallel offering of 192-bit songs.

Do you know that for most of the music they have on there, you can get whole CDs off Amazon, used, for just a few bucks? Why would I spend $9.99 on an album in a subpar format that will certainly become obsolete as memory capacity and transmission speeds expand dramatically over the years to come?

Amit

[Powercntrl]

No slam against Apple (this applies to all online music stores, not just iTunes) but I have never purchased whole albums from iTunes and I don't ever plan to. Online purchasing is great for collecting singles if you're the type of person that likes to use your portable MP3 player as a personal radio station. Buying albums to get the few tracks you're interested in would just be far too expensive.

I do purchase albums, but only from artists I really enjoy. The purchase I make, however, it for the real silver disc. Online downloads are nice, but if I want the album, I'm buying the real thing.

[gnagel]

Originally posted by Amit
[B]Is anyone else here disappointed with iTunes's selection of 128-bit AAC?

I couldn't agree with you more. It's ridiculous that iTunes does not offer the option to purchase selections at a higher bit rate.