Why pick Beatport over iTunes?

[minimal]

I've heard this too and honestly, I can't hear a difference between the two... If anything I think the 256 AAC has a crisper sound.

Well, you can't hear the difference on crappy speakers or on headphones in the subway, no. But pop it on a good loud-ish soundsystem with a decent soundcard & I guarantee you you'll be able to spot the difference.

Lossless 'breaths' more, it has a wider soundstage & the bass is more together. Also you won't get as much ear-fatigue from lossless.

A tune with lots of complex harmonics, brass or high hats, usually sounds pretty bad in mp3. 320k or even 192k on simpler tunes is OK but lossless is better all the time.

But coming back to beatport, I have started to buy my house on Bandcamp, same tunes as Beatport but only $1 for lossless, goes strait to the artist & if you buy the whole release its only a couple more $ for the vinyl + Flac.

Gotta love that.

[makar1]

Noone will ever be playing on a sound system remotely good enough to be used as an accurate benchmarking tool for comparing lossy and lossless audio.

The real benefit of lossless is the ability to re-encode to a format of your choice without an unnecessary drop in quality.

[Era 7]

But coming back to beatport, I have started to buy my house on Bandcamp, same tunes as Beatport but only $1 for lossless, goes strait to the artist & if you buy the whole release its only a couple more $ for the vinyl + Flac.

Gotta love that.

also a very good way to support the artist

[deevey]

Something to consider is that more commercial "big label" tracks get re-mastered specifically for itunes bitrates, so you are not just getting a wav rip re-encoded you are getting a re-mastered track that will sound great at 256AAC virtually eliminating the issues surrounding a lossy format.

I use itunes when the tracks are available and I know what I'm looking for, e.g. I picked up a defected Miami album on itunes (20 tracks + 2 continuous mixes) for $4.99 it had only been out a week.

Genres on Beatport suck donkey balls, its becoming harder and harder to find what the hell I'm after. Juno is better IMHO but their interface looks really dated at this stage.

Gah ...Going from blog to blog, playlist to playlist and seeing whats available where is so freaking much more time consuming than going to a record shop for a few hours and picking up absolute 10 gems to play out at the weekend.

[MYE]

I can hear the difference. I swear everytime I download from them it sounds distorted and im not about to blast that over a good sound system. I mean if your playing at parties or a whole in the wall bar who cares, but anywhere respectable dont be using such bad quality. And they need to start offering better quality downloads imo

Wow, What your saying is crap. The only way that there is distortion on iTunes is if a track is badly mastered. You can't hear the difference between a well mastered 256kbps file and a well mastered 320kbps file.

[DISaS73R]

Lossless 'breaths' more, it has a wider soundstage & the bass is more together. Also you won't get as much ear-fatigue from lossless.

We were talking about 320kbps and V0, not lossless.

And no, you do not actually hear the difference because lossy compression algorithms are based on the limitations of human perception and sound systems. In other words, unless your ears are trained really well and you're listening to a really good sound system, you'll hardly hear the difference. All those "but FLAC is clear" comments are based on placebo.

[SlvrDragon50]

We were talking about 320kbps and V0, not lossless.

And no, you do not actually hear the difference because lossy compression algorithms are based on the limitations of human perception and sound systems. In other words, unless your ears are trained really well and you're listening to a really good sound system, you'll hardly hear the difference. All those "but FLAC is clear" comments are based on placebo.

It's not placebo. Some people really can tell the difference.

You can ABX test yourself if you want to find out. There's a pretty big difference between V0 and 320 kbps though. I think most people should be able to tell the difference if you have a decent sound system.

[DISaS73R]

For the difference between V0 and 320kbps, you need not only a good and loud, but also very well balanced system because the whole point of VBR is that more information is lost when it can be afforded to. Unless you're an audiophile with a badass system at home, you'll probably never get the chance to hear that difference.

[Dj Difficult]

Beatport sells music with rights for public performance, iTunes is for personal use only. I think in U.S. that doesn't matter but in here (Finland), you have to pay for extra license if you want to play them at gig.

[makar1]

The difference between V0 and 320 is negligible; they are both considered transparent and identical in terms of quality.