MP3 Player's Shortcomings

QUESTION
The iTunes music files I've downloaded sound great on my iPod but not nearly so good -- with hisses and snaps and pops -- on my stereo at home.

ANSWER
You may not have realized that the song playing through the earbuds of your MP3 player is a lower-quality, digitally compressed version of the original recording.

MP3 music files, much like the WINDOWS MEDIA AUDIO (WMA) and ADVANCED AUDIO CODING (AAC) formats, are created by removing some of the undetectable data in the music track through a process known as "LOSSY COMPRESSION."

What that means is the track has been reduced to about one-tenth of its original size, which makes for faster downloads and allows thousands of songs, instead of hundreds, to fit on a portable player.

So, what's a music aficionado to do when he or she wants the best of both worlds -- high-quality music AND portability?

Actually, there are a few options.

The lastest comes from a Nevada company that launched MusicGiants.com, a music download service designed for those folks who want high-quality digital music tracks.

For a $50 annual membership fee, users can download high-quality tracks for $1.29 each -- a bit more than the
99 cents that iTunes and others are charging for a single track but much higher in quality.

The average music file available via NAPSTER, ITUNES, RHAPSODY and others is compressed to anywhere from
128 kilobits per second to 192 kbps.

The files available on MusicGiants.com are compressed in a range from 470 kbps to 1,100 kbps. Even if you don't know what a kilobit is, you can understand that the higher the number of kilobits, the better the sound quality.

Because higher-fidelity formats produce files approximately half the space of the CD track but are still substantially larger than an average MP3, the tracks downloaded through MusicGiants.com are ideal for someone who has made the investiment in a home stereo.

It's not a bad way to go.

But there are other ways of maintaining the superior quality or original recordings and still reduce the file size on a computer -- using file formats known as "lossless," an industry buzzword for files that preserve songs without compacting them so much.

Those formats include FREE LOSSLESS AUDIO CODEC (FLAC) SHORTEN, APPLE LOSSLESS and WINDOWS MEDIA AUDIO LOSSLESS.