Sideloading: Own content or "from somewhere else"

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by The Tree Squirre

I've done both. I'd rather pay for the CD because none of the compressed online formats are as pure as the old fashioned CD.. Those MP3 versions are hollow compared to the lossless CD rendering.

I rip my CDs at 320kbps, at which point I can no longer hear any difference between the original CD and the MP3, even on my pretty good HiFi system.

[Sweetpea]

I rip at 192kbps, and I don't hear a difference either... But then, I never had a pretty good HiFi system, nor felt the need to ever get one.

With wich I want to say, everybody is different. Some will hear a big difference between 192 or 320 kbs, and some either don't hear it or don't care enough to bother.

The same goes for books. I've had paper books which contained errors and I've had digital books which contained errors. I prefer the digital version in that case, because I can correct it for when I re-read the book...

But I'd never buy a reader which won't allow me to sideload, nor will I ever take a licence on a book which I cannot download and clean.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I rip my CDs at 320kbps, at which point I can no longer hear any difference between the original CD and the MP3, even on my pretty good HiFi system.

I rip in FLAC only. Not because I pride myself on being able to hear a difference to a 192 kbps MP3, but because I want to use those files indefinitely. If FLAC is ever succeeded by something else as the dominant lossless audio codec, I can convert without loss of quality. Using an MP3 doesn't have this possibility.

Space is not an issue (as long as I don't start saving blu-ray's in ISO format).

[AnotherCat]

I can certainly hear the difference between MP3 320kbit/sec and CD's LPCM even on my phone which will drive good headphones (although I do use MP3/320 on that for space reasons and the audio limitations of portable headphones) let alone on a dedicated system. So I buy CD's which are cheap enough given their long lividness and the number of times they are played. Out of habit I rip for other use to WAV, so still LPCM as the original CD was, but I agree with the comments regarding FLAC.

Neil Young has some interesting, perhaps fanatical, views on this (expressed, for example, in his auto biography Waging Heavy Peace and other places) regarding MP3s as being "terrible", but also regards CD's as a medium less than what should be aimed at (so, his yet to get up and running properly Pono download service).

I very rarely buy paper books these days and with eBooks I am guarded as to what I buy and at what price (usually specials or freebees now) as they seem expensive to me per use given they are usually just read once and are not supposed to be loaned/sold (on both those points unlike CDs and movies, for example). But I don't buy many these days as I have been reading and collecting eBooks for many years now so have a reading list of books on hand of unsurmountable size . I make sure I have an archive copy of every book, not limited to any one device or reader application, and that is the copy I use.