Jan, Always good to hear from another country! > > > Just had to put my 2 cents in here. So, I go and buy the > CD - it won't > rip or play on my computer - I slap it in my decent CD player (with > analog outs to my DSP2000) - I record it at 16/44.1 - I encode it in ogg > - I post that on the web somewhere. Now, question for the student, how > much worse is my ogg copy than a ripped and encoded ogg copy? Yep, you are mostly right. The quality can be quite good, presuming you're using studio quality hardware. Hell, you can send it out of your D/A and then bring it right back in live through your A/D and you're still completely digital. The digital quality will be studio quality if you use studio quality hardware. > If you're > willing to settle for mp3 then this is just as acceptable and it can't > be stopped. Mostly true, although Macrovision makes some form of copy protection that can get embedded in the digital data stream which is supposed to survive becoming analog. There was also discussion of making D/A converters that would refuse to convert if this DRM data was in the data stream. > From what I gather from most of my reading up on sound > cards, most of them go from digital to analog and then back when you rip > anyway. Is the connection from your cd player to your sound card > digital? It is on my system but I don't think it is on most of the > cheaper ones. It's digital on all my systems these days, and it's digital on most new portables, I believe... > > All this type of copy protection does is to give you a crappy CD to > start with. Your best bet is to write a long lovely fan letter to the > band telling them that you won't buy anymore garbage - especially not at > US $17.99. I don't think it's the band that's doing this. It's the labels that have invested money in the band, and it's the big distribution companies. > > BTW, the above was just an example. I agree with Mark K. I don't > download any music that isn't free and legal. > I think that most people that make music don't do too much of this. I download music legally, from mp3.com, or one of these days from iTunes for $0.99/tune. Most of this p2p is a simple market driven reaction to the fact that most CD's these days have only 1-2 tunes that make the money. Most of the rest of the CD is filler. (Well, in Madonna's recent CD I think it's all filler!) ;-) No one I know wants to pay $8.00/'good song', and then get the other 10 songs for free? $0.99 for the songs a person like sounds like a good deal. I generally would still buy CDs as 'Snow' by Spocks Beard would be pointless purchasing a single song, but I might by a Michelle Branch tune that I liked and she'd make a few cents from me she'd never get any other way...
