best place for mp3 downloads?

shootist16

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My son got a sandisc sansa for his birthday. We all love music and I may have to get one for myself. What is the best place to download mp3s? Do you know of any that allow unlimited downloads for subscribers?
 
There are services that do allow high or unlimited downloads. Usually these are locked to a specific player or line of players that supports their particular DRM scheme. If that service goes under, and a number of them have, all the music you've got from that service becomes unplayable. The market is moving away from such systems. And they probably don't suport your Sansa.

A notable variation on this is the Slacker player (www.slacker.com) This is more of a "radio" in that you don't buy the music, but can build a "station" or multiple stations of the kind of music you like. They have a portable player for this service now too. Doesn't help you with your Sansa.

The best source for mp3 is your own music collection. Rip them with EAC and LAME for the PC. These are free programs and high quality. If you're on a Mac, I have no recommendation. If your players support movies there are good free tools for that too. Read this pdf, http://dl.maximumpc.com/Archives/MPC0507.pdf page 19. The page count is a bit screwy as they omit the ads from the print version. Good info though.

I don't know of any service that allows the sorts of downloads you're looking for legally.
 
Amazon.com offer legal MP3 downloads now

I've not used their service so I cant comment on how good it is
 
If you're not worried about legality, Mininova and isohunt are pretty good.
 
I use Vuze or Limewire for my Mac. It's like a search program that searches torrent sites for that particular artist, movie or program you need.

What OS are you running on?
 
btJunkie has consistently more of the stuff I like (singer-songwriter, roots, blues,etc.) They tend to put up a lot of live concert material as well.
 
Amazon is a good source of legal, DRM free MP3 downloads. Tracks are usually 99 cents each, and I've downloaded an album or two from them with my Pepsi Points. Once Pesi 12 packs go back on sale 4 for $10 or less again I'll have enough points for another free album. (I already got "Lucky 13" by Fiona Boyes this way and now my sights are set on "Live From Bluesville" featuring her and 2 other blues peeps). Their bitrate is 256/kps and I've had no problems with any of the albums I've downloaded from them. Sound quality is very, very nice. Some people might not realize that you can queue up a lot of MP3 albums on a DVD and play them through your DVD player. If your DVD player is connected to a decent quality receiver & speakers, you can have a queue of practically a whole days worth of very nice music. I'm running mine through a Harman Kardon with 2 pairs of Infinity Entra One speakers with a matching center channel and a Yamaha subwoofer, and I didn't have to buy a CD jukebox or multidisk changer. Quality music can make even a crappy lifestyle tolerable. lol :)
 
I generally cut my own MP3s from CDs. It allows me to control (increase) fidelity for my home hi-fi.
 
I generally cut my own MP3s from CDs. It allows me to control (increase) fidelity for my home hi-fi.

I did that as well. However, after passing the 400 CD mark I found it incredibly more space saving to buy & keep digital albums only. And you are not going to cut any higher MP3's from your own CDs then 320/kps. And the difference between 320/kps and 256/kps (I'm talking CBR here like what you get from Amazon, not VBR which can be anywhere from awful sounding to sounding just as good as CBR) is not discernible to over 99% of the population. I rip my own CDs using fraunhoffer @ 320/kps high quality, but I just don't have room to store any more physical CDs. Is there a difference between 320/kps MPS abd CD-Audio? Not to me, but I do have to admit that I have fired handguns outside without ear protection. And I did notice a huge difference between .38 spl and .357 magnum, though not regarding recoil.
 
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