I'm not sure if any you heard but the Apples iTunes music store was finally made available to us Canucks north of the border earlier this week - after years of "view only" access of the U.S. site (meaning we could only browse the catalog but never actually download any of the tracks.)

I decided to try out the service and see if it's all that's it made out to be.

First - the shopping experience was great. I just signed up for an account, entered my credit card information, and off I went. I've never seen such a user friendly legit music download website before.

However, once that was done, I was off to start searching for music that I've previously downloaded illegally on mp3 and wanted a better copy of. Naturally, since Apple's quality control standards are pretty high, I thought the music files would reflect that.

It didn't.

Unfortunately, all of the songs on their service are encoded at 128kbps AAC - something I hate!

I'm a stickler for high audio quality and this just doesn't cut it.

Call my a fussy old bitch but I need to hear a full bass and and feel an artist's presence in the room - all those small nuances in a song that make the listening experience ten times better in my opinion.

Thus far, the only way I've found to maintain that high audio quality standard is by ripping my purchased CD's at 320 kbps AAC. I have no complaints when I do that.

Unfortunately, it looks like my first iTunes shopping experience will be my last for awhile. To add insult to injury, the selection on the Canadian site is also pretty pitiful. For example, I was searching for that 1988 Quincy Jones Back On The Block track "I'll Be Good To You" (featuring Ray Charles and Chaka Khan) and it wasn't available. Ditto for Shanice's "I Love Your Smile" - a pleasant keepsake from the early 90's that would have been nice to own since I'm not ever going to purchase one of her albums.

What did I end up with? These...

"Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)" - Michael McDonald and Toni Braxton
(A gorgeous interpretation from McDonald's recently released Motown 2 collection - worth the price of admission alone for Braxton whose never sounded this good on record since her Secrets opus.)

"Giving You The Benefit" and "I Can't Help It" - Pebbles
(Two tracks from the underated 80's R&B diva. The latter a remake of the Michael Jackson Off The Wall album track - not as good as the original obviously, however, nice to hear for Pebbles' imitation of Michael Jackson's vocal mannerisms nonetheless.)

"Wish I Didn't Miss You" - Angie Stone
(Probably the only track I've come to know and appreciate in Stone's repetoire - yes, I know! For shame! I was also going to download the Hex Hector remix of the song but decided against it since I didn't think busy house music would translate as nicely as the original version on my iPod earphones.)

"Out Of Touch" - Hall and Oates
(A classic 80's track from youth. Too bad they don't make pop music like this anymore.)

"Love Come Down" and "I'm In Love" - Evelyn "Champagne" King
(I always heard this lady's name throughout the years and knew she was a big disco artist in the 70's. However, it was only until Janet Jackson's Damita Jo album track "R&B Junkie" (which sampled generously from the glorious "I'm In Love") that I decided to do a little investigating. The two tracks I downloaded probably represent her best known work and serve as a pleasant introduction should I decide to purchase her GH CD later on.)

"I've Been Thinking About You" - Londonbeat
(A guilty pleasure from the early 90's. Of course, who can forget those four guys - what were their names anyway?!?! A huge USA and UK #1 hit and for good reason. It's probably one of the most infectious tracks that finely walks the line between pop and dance.)

"Show Me Love" - Robin S.
(Much like CeCe Peniston, Robin S. will probably only be remembered for her one big hit - but what a hit it was! Another nice trip down memory lane for this bitter old queen.)

Anyways, I transferred all of the above downloads onto my iPod last night and can't say I'm overly happy. Sure, the music sounds great on my computer speakers, however, compared to my CD quality rips, the sound quality just doesn't live up to my standard when I slip on my earphones.

Thoughts?
[Edited 12/4/04 8:39am]

Well, i'm always somewhat sceptical when someone claims to hear, let alone be bothered by, certain lower encodings of tracks (especially pop music) when they listen to them on computer speakers or earbuds or whatever.
When you play them on a decent stereo with decent speakers, i guess you can tell the difference, especially in certain compositions.
That beeing said, 128Kbps is too low for a commercial service, 192Kbps should be an absolute minimum.

A commercial service should definitely offer 320 kbps.

Anything lower than 192 is like having a dubbed tape copy, and I don't pay for that.
[Edited 12/4/04 13:05pm]

amit1234 said:

Interesting post. But by ripping your cds at 320 kbps do u not find them taking up a ridiculous amount of memory? With the amount of cds I have there's no way my 40G could support that.

kinaldo said:

Solution: buy a massive hard drive!

kinaldo said:

I bought a 40 Gig hard drive so it has a lot of space. I purposely got one with the most space so I hope I don't run into any problems later on.