Muti's Complete Beethoven Symphonies for $9.99 at iTunes

[gmstudio]

I don't download anything. I just buy the CD, so I know I am getting the best

But but but... all the old farts kept tellng me LPs are "the best?"    

[PerfectWagnerite]

But but but... all the old farts kept tellng me LPs are "the best?"    

LPs are before my time. I don't own any, fortunately that is.

[Iago]

But but but... all the old farts kept tellng me LPs are "the best?"    

Well, I'm one of those "old farts". But I would never say that. CDs were a great advance in recorded sound and in recorded quality. Easy to handle, long lasting (except if chewed on by dogs or babies) and almost indestructible. But I ALSO believe that they should be phased out in favor of DVDs. Sight and sound make for a far better musical and performance experience than sound alone. But for those diehards that think the "sound" is the be-all and end-all of any performance you can always listen ONLY to the audio tracks of a DVD without watching the picture. All of my LPs have found their way to the garbage bin. And I don't miss them at all.

[gmstudio]

Well, they must have discovered the "mistake" this week...it's now priced at $35.99.

[Wanderer]

iTunes Plus files are encoded in 256 Kbps AAC without DRM. Quite decent as far as lossy formats are concerned, but let's not compare apples and oranges; this is not CD quality and why should we play along in the industry's marketing games and pretend that they're comparable in quality (thus, paying virtually the same for compromised quality audio files)? Compressed formats do have their advantages (e.g. easier to download, smaller files), but quality is not one of them. I would only consider buying lossy files as samples in order to decide whether the actual album (CD or possibly a lossless download) interests me.

[Lethevich]

iTunes Plus files are encoded in 256 Kbps AAC without DRM. Quite decent as far as lossy formats are concerned, but let's not compare apples and oranges; this is not CD quality and why should we play along in the industry's marketing games and pretend that they're comparable in quality (thus, paying virtually the same for compromised quality audio files)? Compressed formats do have their advantages (e.g. easier to download, smaller files), but quality is not one of them. I would only consider buying lossy files as samples in order to decide whether the actual album (CD or possibly a lossless download) interests me.

I've seen people citing house space as a reason for now not wanting physical copies. But generally it ends up being a fair bit cheaper to buy a CD and rip it to a lossless format, then sell it on, than to download in lossless or even lossy in many cases.

Edit: confusing typo corrected.

[jochanaan]

I seem to recall hearing one of these Muti Beethoven recordings recently--the Seventh, possibly?  As I recall, it was pretty good, but then I generally like Muti.

[longears]

But but but... all the old farts kept tellng me LPs are "the best?"    

They speak truth.  But if your playback equipment is crappy, CDs will sound at least superficially superior, and these days really good upsampling DACs make well-recorded CDs sound pretty damned good, indeed!