Mega Music Talent

Posts Tagged ‘internet’

If you are amongst those who are inspired by good music and for whom music is an intrinsic part of life, you would definitely want to know if music sounds better on CDs or through internet downloads. Though it is up to the individual’s personal liking, listening experiences does vary from medium to medium.

If you are to understand the concept of downloading music from websites through the internet, then it is important to understand “compression”. Compression is basically making a thing smaller than its original size and this is particularly useful while downloading music as the original file would be in large sizes which would make it difficult for people to download. Internet connectivity speed also plays a vital part in the ease of download. Files can be compressed in two forms, one loses no quality, while the other suffers some quality loss.

In the compressed mode, you get the same contents as you put in during the compression. This is similar to using zip files on your computer. The compressed files are compact and do not lose much information. Whereas in the other mode of compression also known as “lossy” compression, the decompressed mode is not same as the original in quality as well as file size. The quality is not up to the mark. The compression is measured in what is called as “bit-rate” and a higher bit rate number better will be the quality.

The best example for lossy compression formats are the MP3 and MP4 / AAC formats where you have considerable loss in the quality compared to the original CDs. However, it does not mean that the quality of lossy compression are undesirable or not worth listening to. During the process of compression, certain parts of the recording are removed which are generally not audible in actual CDs. In other terms you will be missing only the finer aspects, which generally goes undetected.

In the music industry, MP3 recording is encoded at 320 kbps bit rate. This is believed to be quite sufficient as the difference in the MP3 music while compared to the original is negligible and goes unnoticed by most people. Generally MP3s are downloaded at 192 kbps as keen music lovers believe that this is minimum acceptable standard. Though, other services like iTunes have most of their content at 256 k AAC MP4.

Another way of listening to good music is to buy an original CD and convert it into a format of your choice, 320 kbps is most suitable. Sometimes, iTunes and other music software do have superior quality while compared to a CD as the audio are re-mastered. With the CD, you do have an option of listening on either your computer or a home CD player or even on the move in the car.

Like personal choices in music, your preference of listening too depends on your own likings. But to decide which would suit your taste better, listening to music through all types of media is a good idea.

Author Bio: If you are interested in learning more about using a MP3 search engine, visit www.musicinstant.com today. You can use their music search engine to find and download songs from hundreds of popular artists.

The very word “MP3 player” brings to mind iPod from Apple in much the same way as once the personal cassette player brought Sony’s Walkman to mind. But the fact remains that iPod was not really the first MP3 player to be introduced into the market.

The honor of discovering MP3 players goes to Saehan Information Systems MPMan F10. This Korean company first manufactured the players in bulk about 10 years ago. With a flash memory capacity of 32 Mb, it could be connected through the computer’s parallel port, as USB ports were in its infancy stage those days. It is quite a surprise that these players became popular as the amount of good quality music that could be stored in 32 Mb was quite questionable. Also the fact that it cost a whopping two hundred and fifty dollars did not seem to dampen the spirits of the music lovers.

But one thing that did affect the companies, either adversely or favorably, were the lawsuits. The music and recording industry in 1998 was petrified by the launch of MP3 players. Whether it was the real potential of these players that scared the industry or whether the industry saw it as just another copyright infringement (technically speaking copying CDs without proper authorization is still illegal) is quite debatable. But the music industry’s parlous state today forces us to assume that it was the latter reason.

Being Korean helped Saehan to escape from the litigious wrath of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which could not sue them in the American courts. On the downside though, they missed the free publicity their main competitor Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300 gained by being dragged into the courts. Though Rio had to be briefly removed from the sales counters, thanks to the RIAA’s lawsuit, the publicity that it gained made people remember Rio, rather than MPMan, as the foremost MP3 player.

But the omnipresent MP3 players and iPods are a witness to the fact that RIAA could not keep Rio off the sales counters for too long. However this did not discourage RIAA from continuing the lawsuit for some more years.

Sharing music through MP3 amongst peer groups became more popular in late 1999. But it was the introduction of Apple’s iPod with a capacity of 5 GB that sealed the fate of the music and recording industry. IPods were light, sleek, user friendly, style iconic, and could store a thousand songs in your pocket, (Apple’s adage at that time). The iPod’s capacity grew within the next eight months to double and it also became compatible to personal computers and Macs, making its march to success that much more easier.

The standpoint of the music industry had changed radically with the advent of MP3 players and even after six long years, the music industry is reeling under the onslaught of MP3. It is trying to revive itself by slapping lawsuits after lawsuits, having shifted focus on to music lovers from the manufactures of MP3 players. Hopefully they will come to terms with the reality and adjust to the new environment.

Author Bio: If you are interested in learning more about using a MP3 search engine, visit www.musicinstant.com today. You can use their music search engine to find and download songs from hundreds of popular artists.