since Alan Davey has been brought up

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On 27 Aug 2013, at 07:55 , Jonathan Smith <smithjm77x7 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> That means 320 bps usually-- well well below CD quality. Surely FLAC does
> not take that much bandwidth. He must have recordings in at least CD
> quality.

Yeah, but I'm not sure that he is as familiar with the digital music market as he might be.  Sure, lots of people just want a random compressed file that they can download and play directly in their phone or whatever.  I mean, a well-made AAC or MP3 at 256-320kbps sounds pretty decent in many circumstances. (And better than a 5th-generation cassette copy of something that came of a low-quality record player or commercial radio -- which is the kind of sound quality with which I grew up! ;)  But fans especially (and who is gonna be buying Alan's stuff other than fans?) will want HQ stuff -- otherwise places like Bandcamp and CDBaby wouldn't go to the trouble of providing lossless downloads.

I mean: I don't think of digital downloads as a convenient accompaniment to something that I own principally on physical media; I think of physical media as ways of distributing audio recordings before there were better/faster ways of doing it. :)

Sure, it's not the same "experience" as going to a record shop and buying gatefold vinyl. But having a pizza delivered isn't the same experience as hunting a mammoth either. Times change. :)

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
http://www.carlaz.com/