It's tempting to see Amazon and some other places offering MP3 and other formats that are like a third of the price of the physical CDs, not including shipping and import taxes (possibly charged if you are unlucky)

They claim to use transparent level of bitrate, for example, Amazon uses 256kbps. But is there such a thing as transparent? There is much controversy over this, one side says there are "subconscious" differences that will affect your perception of the music even if you can't actually tell what it is. And the other camp calls these guys "snobby deluded audiophiles making stuff up".

It's at a third of the price (often) and without any shipping or import taxes (if you order from a site in a different country).

So is it a good idea to go for them? Can they really be transparent?

Another thing is that I don't know what program did they use to compress. That makes a difference too.

Transparency cannot be logically proven for an encoder, it can only be deduced by the lack of problem samples that show artifacts. When transparency fails for an encoder, the scope of the reproducing cases determines the importance of the failure. If it is a very synthetic test that is likely to never appear in released music, you could still argue that the encoder is transparent for real-world scenarios. If problem cases arise for specific instruments, like harpsichords or castanets, then the transparency might be more in question.

In regards to MP3s, my understanding is that some problem samples exist that are ABXable all the way to 320k CBR. However, the situations are ultra-rare and few people can actually ABX them. Beyond that, 256k-range VBR is very nearly as good as 320k, if not exactly as good; I'm not immediately calling to mind any problem samples that show up at 256k VBR but not at 320k. 256k CBR is touchier.

None of this is terribly practical knowledge until you ABX stuff yourself and identify your sensitivities.

Personally, I care less about the transparency and more about the other aspects of digital downloads. I only buy things online if I absolutely can't wait to get it in a store, or it's virtually impossible to find in physical form.

Oh right, I forgot about the copy protection and DRM. Nevermind then. Thanks for reminding me.

There isn't any copy protection or DRM on amazon's stuff, so that's irrelevant. I was referring to the more fundamental fact that a CD gives me a physical copy of the music, which is generally far more immutable than any single backup I can make of a digital download, and it gives me preprinted liner art. Such things are worth time and money to me.

Does amazon allow repeated downloads or something? I know that they used to do with their Ebooks.