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Why cant I buy Flac's?

oXYnary
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oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
Why am I reduced to buying mp3's, or worse wma? Not even the choice of ogg. And don't give me drm, many have stopped requiring it in the mp3s bought.

How am I supposed to support the artists I like, when I am reduced to lossy compression?

/end rant.

(Its sad when you type in flac and your artists name, and only torrents pop up. )
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  • DarthNater
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    DarthNater polycounter lvl 10
    WTF are you listening to your music on that you even notice the "lossy compression"? 320kpbs MP3 files sound fine to me. Hell, everything on my phone is only 96 because with those little ass headphones, you'll never notice the difference.

    EDIT: I wasn't being a smart ass either, I'd really like to know :)
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  • Vrav
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    Vrav polycounter lvl 11
    Albums are available in FLAC at http://magnatune.com if you buy there. Small names, but a lot of really good artists...
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  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    I like my real CD's...
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  • Farfarer
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    Farfarer
    I'm pretty sure NIN let you buy FLACs of their music.

    Although, I've never much seen the point of FLAC - the files are still so big you might as well just keep the 320kbps WAV files. With a well compressed v0 MP3 or OGG... there's really no audible difference unless you're a hardcore audiophile.
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  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    DarthNater wrote: »
    WTF are you listening to your music on that you even notice the "lossy compression"? 320kpbs MP3 files sound fine to me. Hell, everything on my phone is only 96 because with those little ass headphones, you'll never notice the difference.

    EDIT: I wasn't being a smart ass either, I'd really like to know :)

    Why pay for a jpeg even high quality, when you can get a high rez tga?

    But sometimes, I can tell. Very rarely I admit. But if your paying at or near the same price for an album of that of a cd. Why the hell would you want lossy? More over from a ancient format that the original company who made the compression still wants contracts with all hardware providers whom use it. Thus raising the cost.

    There is oggs,a s well, better sound quality and sometimes smaller files sizes with the same bitrate than mp3. So why defend mp3 at all? Because its what everyone uses?

    With the gigabytes of data we have these days, I cant see why not use lossless.

    Mangatune is a cool company, I once contacted about using part of a song in a portfolio, they were ok with it as long as sent via cd with listing of artist and not online and such.. Problem is they are just a small selection of what I want.
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  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    people wouldn't buy the equalent of of a uncompressed lossless highres .tga when they have the speakerequalent of a vaseline smeared 12" crt from the 80's.
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  • Michael Knubben
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    Michael Knubben mod
    Bandcamp.com (which I can really recommend!) allows bands to offer flac as well, so check if any bands you like are on there.
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  • DarthNater
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    DarthNater polycounter lvl 10
    oXYnary wrote: »
    Why pay for a jpeg even high quality, when you can get a high rez tga?

    But sometimes, I can tell. Very rarely I admit. But if your paying at or near the same price for an album of that of a cd. Why the hell would you want lossy? More over from a ancient format that the original company who made the compression still wants contracts with all hardware providers whom use it. Thus raising the cost.

    There is oggs,a s well, better sound quality and sometimes smaller files sizes with the same bitrate than mp3. So why defend mp3 at all? Because its what everyone uses?

    With the gigabytes of data we have these days, I cant see why not use lossless.


    Dude, if all of my music, videos and pictures weren't compressed in some fashion, I know it would nearly fill my 1 TB of space (right now they are sitting at 300Gb give or take a few :) ).

    I wasn't defending MP3's either, I was just wondering where you were hearing a difference in MP3 vs. Flac (which you stated you may not be able to).

    Anyway, I'm steering this thread off course.
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  • bearkub
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    bearkub polycounter lvl 18
    I think the reason that most stores don't offer flac is because that most people buy mp3's for portability and not quality. If they see that they can only fit 10 albums in flac as opposed to 50 albums of MP3s, they are going to buy the MP3s to fit more albums on whatever portable device they are using.

    So, I think it's just a matter of the mass market demand. This is all just hypothesis and guessing. :D
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  • mLink
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    mLink polycounter lvl 10
    I second bandcamp.com, really nice site with tons of artists on there. You should be able to find at least a few things you like in .flac.
    Have you checked on any of the audiophile sites to see where they get them?
    I can guarantee they don't settle for mp3s. =P
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