2. pc-audio
  3. 1368497583

Downloading & Converting Music

Tell me if I understand this correctly. MP3's have information that cannot be retrieved if converted to WAV or FLAC format. So, it is better to rip the songs off CD than download the music since most downloads are in MP3 format (except the high quality sites like hdtrack)I use a PC. Do any sites allow download in lossless format?
128x128maxdpnxcom

Showing 2 responses by audioengr

audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Peter - because the masters of most of these older tracks are not available. Besides, these 7.5ips tracks are very close to the master tape anyway.

Some of these are quite excellent.

As for metadata, there is currently no way to maintain it and get the best possible audio quality. You either get the data at lower quality or minimum data at the best quality.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
MP3 eliminates some data, so it cannot be recovered to make a "clean" .wav file. I recommend ripping CDs with dbpoweramp on PC or XLD on Mac to .wav format and ALWAYS use Accurate Rip to verify it (option on dbpoweramp).

Some popular download sites are:

HDtracks
2L
highdeftapetransfers.com

Most of these have FLAC, so you can convert it back to .wav using dbpoweramp or XLD. .wav sounds better.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
More to discover