Quality of music downloads
 

Okay so I'm brand new at all this and am already completely addicted. Mostly for songs I'd had on LP but couldn't find on CD or didn't want to pay for an entire album again when I just wanted one song. Also, so very cool live cuts, BUT... am I doing something wrong or does the sound quality in general just suck? The VAST MAJORITY of downloads, and I am not uploading anything less that 128, mostly higher, but still the quality is AWFUL! It seems like nearly every song has been recorded at too high a level , especially the bass notes. They break up and/or are terribly distorted. Is there a way for me to adjust the levels?

(I'm using an IBook with OS 10.2 on an Adelphia high speed cable line)

Love this whole concept, but if the sound quality is lousy, why bother?

Thanks for any feedback,

David

Don't confuse upld with dwnld. Upld is what people dwnld from you. Dwnld is what you get from them.

So you're a mac osx user right? May I higly recommend you don't use LW's media player. Instead, use iTunes. Go to your LW Preferences (under the LW name at top left) & go to Player & disable LW's media player. Press the Apply button. Now every time you launch a song it will be played by iTunes. It will sound a damned sight better! ;)

128 kbps is about the minimum you should dwnld. Try to find versions that are higher in quality (up to 320 kbps.) You can search songs using both the audio search & the general search types. The latter can sometimes find xtra results. When your search results start showing up, click or cdouble-click on the top of the Bitrate column. This will organise the search results into their bit-rates. Choose the highest to dwnld. If unsuccessful then choose the next level down. ;)

I assure you you can get some very decent mp3's thru LW. Just need to know what to look for & recognise those that are fake or recorded off radio/re-processed or corrupt. You'll catch on with experience. You could learn a bit faster if you search the forum such as about bit rate, T3, 320, riaa, ... these are good searches to aim for on this forum.

Huge difference. Thank you so much. I love this stuff.