So I started playing with iTunes and Real Rhapsody yesterday.
Downloaded four iTune versions of songs I know very well, burned them to a CD, and compared them with CD or LP versions back to back.
Two sounded more or less identical -- Brian Eno's "Spide and I" from "Before and After Science," (CD) and Pearls Before Swine's "Another Time" from "One Nation Underground" (LP). The version of Fleetwood Mac's "Green Manalishi" was vastly inferior to the LP version I have, but it may have been a different version.
Very surprising, Daniel Lanois' "Amazing Grace" from "Acadie" was extremely inferior to both the CD and LP version I have. I had never compared CD to LP -- on the CD the instruments sound better than the vocals, on the LP the vocals sounds better than the instruments, but on the MP3, both sound worse. I listen to that album so often I know it like the back of my hand, as they say.
My first experiences with downloading MP3s. All tests were made on the same equipment, which are a Sony CD player, a Fischer receiver/amplifier/graphics equalizer, and Advent speakers. |
