Same here.

Its seems odd, but CDs are actually a great deal....if you buy them used. If you have a college nearby, I'm sure there is a shop that sells used CDs. The fact is, as long its not scratched, a 20 year old Miles Davis CD sounds just as good as a new one, and its 1/4 the price.

I also still buy new CDs.

Changing computers, devices, sharing music with friends......the ability of download is great, and I do it once in awhile. But having the source files always seems to work out to be a better option. Just my humble opinion.

Source files are great, but I simply refuse to buy music I already own or owned. For example, I lsot 500+ cd's in a divorce-I'm not buying all of that again, thank you very much.

Also, much of the remastered stuff is a step above-listen to the remaster Aja vs one release in 1990 or so to get the idea.

But yeah, I would take any used cd over an Amazon download; what's frustrating to me is the artists that release on itunes in mp3 without a lossless format available, which I would pay for. I really don't want the silver disc, I just want forever access to the data-there;s a biz model for someone-unlimited flac streaming from a cloud server, pay by the album or on a netflix like subscription. Damn, just gave my retirement stream away again :)

"Amazon MP3 was the first music download company to sign deals with all four major music labels. They were also the first to encode tracks at 256 kbps, a trend that was quickly followed by its competitors, including the top two music download services, iTunes and Napster."
http://music-download-review.toptenreviews.com/amazon-mp3-review.html

Most of my digital music was ripped from my CD collection but I have downloaded quite a bit of music from Amazon at MP3 256K and I am very satisfied with the result. Will it meet the needs of a no compromise audiophile? No. Only 24/96 raw files will serve them and even a CD at 16/44.1 is considered weak sauce. I am a simple musician and was not blessed with such golden ears. Download a few tracks and see if you agree. Jeff Beck live at Ronnie Scott's was recorded pretty well and the 256k MP3 does it justice I think.

Thanks for the great input all! - I don't think I have 'master audiophile ears' but I can recognize p*ss poor quality when i hear it. Just trying to narrow down choices and direction when rebuilding my poor quality library.

Problem is there is some really good performances on Youtube but doesn't seem like available anywhere else

golden ears means you need a lot of gold - it is a curse

Find your way into a quality room with vinyl and a tube amp and listen to great music at reasonable volume levels. This will put things in an entirely different perspective- if you have the ears for it you will never sit around listening to 'delivery of data' hardware again...

BTDT....disagree for many reasons :D

BTW -- just saw the banner ad here for HD Tracks!! Cowinkie Dink? Don't think so.......