TubeNet

cktuba wrote:Well let's take a look. 650MB = 5200mb divide 5200mb by 1.5mbps and you get aproximately 3467 seconds. Divide 3467 seconds by 60sec per minute and you get around 58 minutes for the download of an uncompressed CD.

When was the last time you bough a CD anywhere close to that full?
3minutes/song*12 songs = 36 minutes, only 320MB (approx.)

650MB is 74minutes of audio. Seriously, how long are the CDs you're buying?

Also, there are lossless audio compression formats (like FLAC) that will cut the file size down to around 400MB saving around 15 minutes on the low end and 30 minutes on the upper end.

ogg-vorbis is a good, lossy compression method. I think it does better on instrumentals than MP3 or AAC. compared to MP3, vorbis files are smaller for a given quality. (or, for a given size vorbis sounds better )

But judge for yourself. http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/listen.html

I'm not arguing one way or the other on the topic, but reasons I still buy CD's are:
1. I have the money and don't mind waiting.
2. Classical CD's usually come with some informative and useful booklet.
3. The jury is still out on how long your home-burned CD will last. I've had to throw away unusable blank CR-Rs that were less than a year old because the chemical dye had changed (Iomega brand, I won't get those again). Those commercial, aluminum CDs have no dye to go bad.

By the way, I have ancient VHS tapes that still play well. I wonder how the dye-based CDs and DVDs will fare years from now.