There have been many new developments in hardware mp3 players designed to stream from your computer to you home stero system be this via ethernet or via wireless lan. Now my mp3s encoded at say alt-preset 128 or even 160 abr will they have a noticble degragation in quality when compared to my mp3s encoded at altpreset standard. I am just going to delete my inter net mp3s. You can't buy mp3s at Alt-Standard eitgther so all the online music i can buy is worthless to me now. What do you think. And is it possible to decode from your computer and then only send the resultin wav output to you stero system. Because if that is possible i could use foobar for optimum quality and never have to worry about things being in different extensions. Thanks

There's an online site that sells Alt-preset standard MP3. It was annouced here. Was it Emusic.com ?

thanks for the heads up i wonder how much it cost those i am not willing to pay a dollar for an mp3. 15 mp3s cost 15 dollars i could buy a cd for 10. and i much rather have the hard copy

Yep emusic.com sells unlimited alt-preset standard mp3's for $10 a month.

Don't expect much major label stuff here, but there are a ton of gems.

Do expect that you should buy more CD's instead of relying on Internet mp3's for your collection.

About eMusic: I subscribed. It is $10 a month for a year or $15 a month for three months. I have found tons of gems: Albert King, Art Tatum, Django Reinhardt, Professor Longhair, Josef Suk Trio, and so on. It is not all I want, but it is a real deal. They are currently changing everything to LAME "alt-preset standard" which is what I encode at. I do not know what they rip with but hopefully it is EAC.

IMO they cannot be beat for the price of what they offer. It also saves having to defend myself in court against the RIAA.

Looks like $9.99/month if you sign up for a minimum of 12 months, $14.95/month for a minimum of 3 months. Just for the sake of accuracy...

Also, after checking out some of the "hi-fi" streaming/downloadable 30-second samples, it seems some of them are in 128k MP3 format and others in VBR... wonder why? Can you point out where on the site it specifies Lame --a-p s is used?

Edit -- n/m, boojum beat me to it...

Wow...this seems too good to be true. Unlimited downloads, --alt-preset standard, no ridiculous forms of "protection" that force you to use some ridiculous software to play the files...
One thing I notice is they are using LAME version 3.92. What's the difference between that and 3.90.3 (the one I currently use)?

It's newer, and theoritically better, but it isn't "tried tested and true" like 3.90.3.