By Michael Tedeschi
Special to the Washington Post
Sunday, October 2, 2005
You may not have realized that the song playing through the earbuds of your MP3 player is actually a lower-quality, digitally compressed version of the original recording.
But try playing that same MP3 file on a high-end home stereo system and you'll likely hear some hisses and snaps and pops in the music -- even if you bought it from a download service such as iTunes or ripped it from your own copy of the original CD.
MP3 music files, much like the Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) formats, are created by removing some of the undetectable data in the music track through a process known as "lossy compression."
What that means is the track has been reduced to about one-tenth of its original size, which makes for faster downloads and allows thousands of songs, instead of hundreds, to fit on a portable player.
So, what's a music aficionado to do when he or she wants the best of both worlds: high-quality music and portability? Actually, there are a few options.
The latest comes from a Nevada company that last week launched Musicgiants.com, a music download service designed for those folks who want high-quality digital music tracks.
For a $50 annual membership fee, users can download high-quality tracks for $1.29 each -- a bit more than the 99 cents that iTunes and others are charging for a single track but much higher in quality.
The average music file available via Napster, iTunes, Rhapsody and others is compressed to anywhere from 128 kilobits per second to 192 kbps. The files available on Musicgiants.com are compressed in a range from 470 kbps to 1,100 kbps.
Even if you don't know what a kilobit is, there's a standard rule of thumb for understanding digital music downloads: the higher the number of kilobits, the better the sound quality.
But be forewarned: A higher number also makes for a larger file, and that means hard drives are filled faster and portable music players will hold fewer songs.
Because higher-fidelity formats produce files approximately half the space of the CD track but are still substantially larger than an average MP3, the tracks downloaded through Musicgiants.com are ideal for someone who has made the investment in a home stereo, said company chief executive Scott Bahneman.
It's not a bad way to go. But there are other ways of maintaining the superior quality of original recordings and still reduce the file size on a computer: using file formats known as "lossless," an industry buzzword for files that preserve songs without compacting them so much.
Those formats include Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), Shorten, Apple Lossless, and Windows Media Audio Lossless.
In a test, all of these provided perfect reproductions of such recordings as Pachelbel's Canon, Nora Jones's runaway hits and some seminal Bruce Springsteen.
The Shorten format has been around for a while and requires users to perform several steps to create files from a CD that most of the other high-fidelity file creation tools automate. Be careful, though, as some of the software may intimidate all but the geekiest music lovers. For more about Shorten, visit http://www.softsound.com/Shorten.html .
FLAC is an "open-source" format, which means that anyone can use it for free, and that has led to a number of free software titles becoming available. Visit http://flac.sourceforge.net/ to experiment with some of these titles. Anyone who is familiar with CD ripping and burning tools made by companies such as Nero and Roxio should be comfortable with FLAC software.
Most of the software for creating FLAC files also provides straightforward tools for converting songs into more compact formats. This is useful for those interested in storing their music with superior sound quality on a computer but want the flexibility to create smaller copies of some tracks for loading onto portable players.
The Windows Media Lossless and Apple Lossless formats work a bit better because the format options are built into Windows Media Player and iTunes, but not every version. An update may be necessary.
Users will also need to venture into the program to adjust settings. In most cases, you'll want to head into the Options or Preferences windows (under the Tools menu in most Windows programs) and adjust the rate or format for importing music.
When you're done, you will have paved the way for new music to be imported as a less-compressed format, without extra manipulation after the download.
Audio purists who have high-capacity portable music players could take this route instead, skipping the low-fidelity formats such as MP3 completely and storing the high-quality versions on their players, a space-chewing but sonically rewarding option.