since i got sirus radio a year or so ago i hardly ever use cd's. have sirus in my trucks---house--Dish tv and computer and listen to what ever type music i want whenever i want

 

I buy from I-tunes, burn them to cd format and from there rip them back to mp3 without the license information inbedded.

 

i get all my music from my isp's news server. 60 gigs and counting of full albums. jiMMy

 

To elaborate a little more on my system… here is what I do. I usually buy a CD that I like on ebay or a local record exchange. I get the album at a low price and when I get it home I rip all the songs off of it at CD quality and then rip it at a high bit rate to keep on my computer. I then turn around and sell the album back to the record exchange or sell it on ebay. This way the music basically cost me nothing. Yes it is a little more intensive then just downloading a song or album for that matter but the quality is much better and you don’t run the risk of getting a virus from a downloaded file.

I buy the CD and it is mine to do whatever I want with. I record it and sell it. Simple as that. And the [EDIT] Lary won’t let me say at the RIAA won’t get a single penny of my money. Screw’em. If they had handled the situation a little different I might feel a little different.

Britt

 

I use a program called iOpener on my iTunes tracks. Works nice, no burning to CD and then ripping, etc.

 

I checked it out, pretty cool! But you are still left with DRM-less .AAC files, and not many players support .AAC besides Apple. For universal support you would still have to transcode them to .MP3 or .WMA, and that would entail a quality loss.

 

Yep. But of course ripping CDs entails quality loss, too. I have a pretty decent stereo setup in my truck, and I can definitely tell a difference between the CD and MP3 versions of songs, but for the most part I'm pretty happy with MP3s for general listening. And a CTD isn't a real good choice for a listening room, anyway.

I put everything on my 30 gb Neuros Audio player so I can carry it in my truck. I'm still using its built-in FM modulator at the moment, but next time I have to tear the dash apart I'm connecting a nice long RCA cord to the AUX input on my head unit so I can get reliably better sound out of the portable.

 

Hmm. This got a little bit more of a response than I thought it would. To me, downloading music should be allowed. Burning CD's is legal yet it's the same thing as downloading, right? You didn't pay for the music, you just got it from someone else. So what. The stars only make $29 million instead of $30. Wow. But then again when you have to pay for 2 or 3 houses, 4 boats, 8 cars, and a plane, that extra $1,000,000 might come in handy.

 

Actually, burning someone elses CD isn't legal as you didn't purchase it.

Fair use laws state you can make personal copies of songs that you purchased. Borrowing it and recording isn't covered under that.

 

And I swear to God that vinyl STILL sounds better than CD's.

I need to figure out a way to rip WAV's from my turntable to my computer... Hmm...

(Need more vinyl's...)

 

http://www.mp3-cdburner.com/Convert-LP-to-CD.shtml

 

I knew someone who use to download and share like crazy; thousands of tracks. He thumbed his nose at the RIAA, and thought Metallica's Lars Ulric was a whiner. But his conscience began to bother him with each download, and he came to believe that it was basically just stealing; something he would never dream of doing in the "real world". So one day he logged all of his titles, wiped the directory clean, and went about purchasing all of the CD's that contained the several thousand tracks he ripped over the years. He still looks for some of the old stuff that's very hard to find, but he feels much better with himself now. Besides, MP3 compression at any sample rate is terrible. He'll take "wax" any day over digital media.

 

It does, there's no question about it. After all, sound in general is analog in nature. You can't convert a continuous analog stream to digital bits, and expect to be able to restore it to its original state. It just won't happen. It comes out colder, more harsh sounding. I've taken a CD and a scratchless, nearly virgin "direct-to-disc" vinyl record with the same exact recording (Thelma Houston and Pressure Cooker), and played them on my really, really good system at home. Using my wife as the switcher, and had her toggle between inputs. I was able to identify the analog recording with ease and preferred the sound by far to the digital medium. I then took the 2 recordings into work and played them on my company's reference system for a number of co-workers. But this was like preaching to the choir as they all agreed that the analog recording sounded way better. Then they all went back to working on their CODECS, A to D converters and their latest DSP algorithms. See, it's pretty hard to push a 12" LP into that little slot in the dash..

 

You just need to go "Back to the future".........

 

I hate to admit it Ed, but I remember them. Only played 45's though if I remember correctly.