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Topic: Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good? (Read 8151 times) previous topic - next topic
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Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Hi All,
I have Comcast Rhapsody, but after subscribing for two weeks, cancelled it. What I liked about it was the ability to download a song to your hard drive for playback at any time. This was great, but in the two weeks I've had it I've noticed that a small percentage of songs have a minor blip, or skip, piece missing, whatever it's called (I'm a computer technician, but an audio noob). The problem is not my computer, I found I could delete the song that I downloaded, then download a new copy, and I'd get the same blip at the same spot.
I checked into Itunes, thinking they might have better quality, but they make you buy each individual song, so I'm not gonna use them; Rhapsody allows you unlimited downloads for a subscription rate, which is good for me.
My question is, is Napster any good? It looks like they allow you to download whatever you want on the same basis as Rhapsody, but I don't wanna bother if the sound quality is less than Rhapsody, which is currently 160kb .wma files.

Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Reply #1 –
real is using wma?  i thought they were aac with helix drm

Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Reply #2 –
Yup, when you hit the save button, you get your song in .wma. It seems like there's more than one Rhapsody, is there a Real Rhapsody, as in the realplayer company? I had Comcast Rhapsody.
Anyway, any opinions on Napster?

Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Reply #3 –
I assume "save" means you are using subscription Rhapsody, which is WMA based.  I think if you "buy" a track on Rhapsody, it should still be AAC @ 192 Kbps.  But that is not subscription.  Anyway...

Napster launched with 128Kbps WMA; I assume it's the same now.  Virgin Digital is also 128Kbps WMA.  Yahoo! Music Unlimited & URGE is 192 Kbps 2-pass WMA.

But a lower bit-rate won't cause the issues you've mentioned.  If you hear blips, skips, etc. that are not on the original recording (and your system is not having issues), that means the source they used is corrupted.  (All on-line stores take reports from customers on bad encodes and generally try to replace the damaged ones whenever possible.)

Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Reply #4 –
Yeah, I know the source is corrupted, that's why I've ditched them  I should have expected it, really. They've got 2 million songs, and since each one needed to be corrupted, you know they're going to do it as cheaply as possible. They probably used "Fred's song converter" software

Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: pjb515 on
Yeah, I know the source is corrupted, that's why I've ditched them  I should have expected it, really. They've got 2 million songs, and since each one needed to be corrupted, you know they're going to do it as cheaply as possible. They probably used "Fred's song converter" software

  I meant "Since each one needed to be converted"!  Haha, Freudian slip

Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Reply #6 –
Well, iTuned doesn't MAKE you purchase each song individually, they have a option to download entire albums for a lower price than it would be if you purchased each song separately.  However, iTunes does not offer subscription based services.

I was very dissapointed with Napster's audio quality.  Napster uses WMA9 128kbps which has been judged to have lower quality than the 128kbps mpeg-4 AAC format that iTunes uses.  Then again, that was in a public test and I found the same conclusions.  You might not find the same conclusions though.

Just a small warning about subscription services (like Napster's $19.99 a month service).  Eventhough you pay $20 a month for the songs, you don't really own them.  The songs will only work as long as you keep paying money.  For example, you could have the service for 10 months and pay $200.  Then, you cancel your account and the gigs of music on your hard drive would not work anymore.  So you could pay $200 and end up with nothing at the end.

Just remember that only you can judge the quality.  Everyone can give you their personal experiences but that doesn't mean that you will have the same experience.

Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Reply #7 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
Well, iTuned doesn't MAKE you purchase each song individually, they have a option to download entire albums for a lower price than it would be if you purchased each song separately.  However, iTunes does not offer subscription based services.

I was very dissapointed with Napster's audio quality.  Napster uses WMA9 128kbps which has been judged to have lower quality than the 128kbps mpeg-4 AAC format that iTunes uses.  Then again, that was in a public test and I found the same conclusions.  You might not find the same conclusions though.

Just a small warning about subscription services (like Napster's $19.99 a month service).  Eventhough you pay $20 a month for the songs, you don't really own them.  The songs will only work as long as you keep paying money.  For example, you could have the service for 10 months and pay $200.  Then, you cancel your account and the gigs of music on your hard drive would not work anymore.  So you could pay $200 and end up with nothing at the end.

Just remember that only you can judge the quality.  Everyone can give you their personal experiences but that doesn't mean that you will have the same experience.

True. I guess I'm hoping that someone knows if Napster blows away Rhapsody. I noticed that itunes offers an "Apple lossless format", which sounds like you could get an uncompressed copy of the song. I didn't see that on Napster, but I could've missed it.

Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Reply #8 –
No, Apple does not sell "Lossless content" in the iTunes Music Store currently.  It's all 128 Kbps AAC. The only legal "big label" Lossless service out there is http://www.musicgiants.com -- and that's WMA Lossless.

Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Reply #9 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
Napster uses WMA9 128kbps


They've upgraded to 192kbps for a while now, buddy.

As for quality of downloaded songs, I'm surprised no one's mentioned yet that the DRM on these tracks makes them unplayable by at least most (or all, by my knowledge) ABX testing software, thus possibly making this discussion moot (workarounds exist for the DRM, but TOS prevents discussion of them here, and their effectiveness varies widely).
EAC>1)fb2k>LAME3.99 -V 0 --vbr-new>WMP12 2)MAC-Extra High
 

Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Reply #10 –
Quote from: LANjackal on
As for quality of downloaded songs, I'm surprised no one's mentioned yet that the DRM on these tracks makes them unplayable by at least most (or all, by my knowledge) ABX testing software, thus possibly making this discussion moot (workarounds exist for the DRM, but TOS prevents discussion of them here, and their effectiveness varies widely).

You could use a tool and then ABX it, just don't mention you used the tool.
err... i'm not using windows any more ;)

Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Reply #11 –
We're going a bit off-track here, getting into testing methods. I was just looking for opinions, whether your opinion is derived from software, or your ears, and if anyone had Napster specs. I do appreciate all contributions to the thread, though.

Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Reply #12 –
By the way, Lanjackal, thanks, it is indeed 192 wma on Napster. I was just clicking around their site and found this page.
http://www.napster.com/subscribe/redeem.html

I think I'm gonna pull the trigger and do it. They will let me cancel after 7 days anyways, so I guess I got nothin' to lose...

Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Reply #13 –
Yep, I did confirm... they upgraded to 192Kbps WMA, to stay competitive with Yahoo!, etc.

Is Napster's sound quality on downloaded songs any good?

Reply #14 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
Just a small warning about subscription services (like Napster's $19.99 a month service).  Eventhough you pay $20 a month for the songs, you don't really own them.  The songs will only work as long as you keep paying money.  For example, you could have the service for 10 months and pay $200.  Then, you cancel your account and the gigs of music on your hard drive would not work anymore.  So you could pay $200 and end up with nothing at the end.


Napster To Go (portable player support) is only $15/month and Napster without portable player support is only $10/month.
Sorry, I have nothing witty to say here.