New JMJ album

So I had it on pre-order on iTunes and his morning at 05:30 I logged onto iTunes to have it grab the new Jean Michel Jarre album Tea & Tao. It had some making of video's included with the rest of the audio tracks. But this is my second purchase from iTunes that is actual DRM'd music.

Now my question is how does the 128kbps AAC format purchased music compare in quality. I am normally ripping CD's at a minimum of 192kbps in an MP3 format.

All this stuff bothers me, because should I just buy the CD and rip that as the CD is the best quality format thus I in theory can make a better rip.

This of course is ignoring the fact that it is apparently illegal for us to rip our own purchased CD's and put them onto our iPod's. The only legal way is to buy the tracks from places such as iTunes as they have negotiated with the music companies a license that allows the transport of those tracks onto 5 machines and ipods.

You may ask why bother, but I seem to be one of those people that can hear the high frequencies (the mosquito devices bolted onto Spar convenience stores) even at the age of 34. Does this mean that ripping at a higher rate means that I can hear the higher frequencies potentially not included at lower bit rates due to the compression.



Errr anyway. back to the album. It sounds good, very Euro, very Jarre but with a new modern slant. Great to see him still pushing out the work. For fans its probably worth a peek.