Paying for compressed music : I still can't accept it

[Jerome]

I've talked about it a while ago and still, the concept seems completely unacceptable to me.From the beginning of recording, we always had access to the music in it's "best unaltered sound" via vinyl records, cassettes and CD.But now with internet, iTunes and other online stores, music becomes available in a compressed form, meaning lowered quality standards. But we still pay for it.It never happened to me yet, but if an artist I really enjoy, like Mike Oldfield, would release his next album only online, no CD at all, I would be very upset.It would mean that now, you can't have full quality anymore. Even if the artist achieved his music with, I presume, a full quality .WAV, I can't access it, the only option being probably MP3 and M4P 256, not even 320.So now is the time of burning to disc at home from compressed form. I just can't imagine my CD collection with the new Mike Oldfield album being just a blank case with a burned CD inside knowing it came from a "compressed" form that I paid for.Even if the new generation of people don't want a physical support anymore (CD becoming obsolete), the problem of quality is still a debate. There will always be some people that actually care about quality of sound, and not accepting compressed form as the only solution.Something must be done.PS: As I hate paying for compression, I did not buy a lot of music online. Maybe there's a way to obtain music online in full quality that I don't know about. If so, please inform me immediately.[FONT=&quot]PS2: I just had another thought: I've always wondered, when they put a song in a movie, where they take the song? Did they paid for the rights to use it and then just took it from the original CD that someone from the movie team just bought at the store? Or probably the company from which they bought the rights just send some kind of master of the song to the movie studio? So now, if the only option is compression, they put the song in the movie in full 5.1 quality from a compressed source? That sounds very unprofessional to me. But now, maybe the movie studio have access to full quality because they contact the music company directly and pay the rights? Meaning everyone else just have to accept the compression age?[/FONT]

CD is not the best unaltered sound by the way. ALL CD's end up as 16 bit at the end of the day, whereas the wave flies they are generated from might be 96KHz, 24-bit or 32-bit floats. In order to overcome the 'edginess' of the samples a small amount of white noise (dithering) is introduced. Most people can't hear this anyway and also as you get older your ability to hear the 20KHz range deteriorates as well. Vinyl is the purest source - absolute analogue, but I could always hear the inevitable noise from what is essentially two surfaces scratching together. I welcomed CD's with open arms and dumped vinyl the minute it arrived on the scene foregoing the warmer sound in favour of the noiseless one. I do not like MP3's or so-called lossless FLAC and other forms. They are all a compromise on the source material. What I really miss are the gatefold covers.