Classical music on Itunes

[Henry Gertcher]

I just read this in the NY Times today. It seems that orchestras will start to sell recordings of select concerts on Itunes. The article is at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/arts/ ... 6jeps.html.

Sounds like it could be a nice way to hear an orchestra live that you might not get to hear with out traveling. Just wanted to share as I recently have gotten into Itunes.

Henry Gertcher

[kontrabass]

Cool!
I'll probably be jumping on the Itunes bandwagon soon - what is their selection of classical recordings like? How much do they charge?

[jtuba]

I'm not pretending to be an audiophile, but the fidelity of the iTunes tracks can't be good enough for classical music, can it? They aren't selling lossless tracks. If I want a NY Phil performance, I just go line out to line in on my soundcard after I start the listen now link. Probably close in terms of sound quality and it's free, as long as my internet connection is stable. It's great that American orchestras are thinking outside the box to get the music out there, since they aren't recording anymore.

[dtemp]

I'm not pretending to be an audiophile, but the fidelity of the iTunes tracks can't be good enough for classical music, can it? They aren't selling lossless tracks. If I want a NY Phil performance, I just go line out to line in on my soundcard after I start the listen now link. Probably close in terms of sound quality and it's free, as long as my internet connection is stable.

I think iTunes has a pretty good quality. The compression they use is a "lossless" compression, intended to compress the tracks without losing quality. For most of the stuff they sell, it's fine. For the classical stuff, it can be tricky.

I might get flamed for saying this, but I even used the Apple "lossless" compression on my classical music that I load onto my computer. Can I tell the difference? Yes. Is the difference worth having a Mahler symphony take up 1 GB on my hard drive / iPod? No. The compression is good enough to be able to still enjoy the music and get a pretty good idea of how the ensemble sounds. If I had my druthers, I'd go lossless, but I have a LOT of music and I don't need my hard drive busting at the seams.

Also, streaming audio from anywhere is in no way the same quality as something downloaded from iTunes. The music is coming from the same source (the Internet), but streamed music has to be compressed quite a bit in order to ensure (somewhat) seamless playback for the end user no matter his/her connection speed. With iTunes (or any other download site), you are downloading a whole file and your rate of downloading will only affect the time, not quality, of your download.

I don't work for Apple, and I'm not saying that iTunes is the best thing since Velcro, but I use it quite a bit and am happy with my results.

d(who is excited to listen to the Yo-Yo Ma recordings of the Bach cello suites he just downloaded)temp

[bort]

Cost: $0.99 per song, or if you buy an album, they're usually $9.99 regardless of the size of disc (with the exception of multi disc sets.)

True, but the annoying thing is that if a piece is more than about 10 minutes long, you have to buy the entire CD. Typically, I'm not looking for an entire CD, so it's not quite as convenient as I had originally thought. If I'm going to have to buy the entire CD, I'll do just that - walk to the store and buy the CD.

The other thing I don't really like that much is that you don't get the chance to read the liner notes. Not a huge deal, but sometimes there's some interesting info. in there.

[THE TUBA]

iTunes needs to get some more solo tuba CDs. Now.