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Originally Posted by big screen satellite
there is a difference between 'slightly disappointing' and what has been said by some people about this, though...
seriously though the bitrate thing - its not that big a deal is it really?
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Yes, it is a big deal, at least to those of us who really care about sound quality. Not everyone listens carefully to notice the different between a CD and a 160 kbps MP3, and some people who do listen carefully won't notice the discrepancy because the equipment they're listening with muddles things enough to obscure the difference, but it doesn't take
that sophisticated of stereo equipment for the degradation introduced by lower-bit-rate MP3 to become apparent.
What's really frustrating about this for some of us is that we were already disappointed with the first two RR releases to have them offered only in 192 kbps MP3 form, so to now have the new one released as a 160 kbps MP3 is kind of a slap-in-the-face. Obviously Karl and Rick care a great deal about sound quality, or they wouldn't make the music that they do; if it's really a matter of bandwidth then charge us an extra pound to cover the cost!
My biggest worry at this point is that I will have paid five pounds for each of these tracks and then have to pay another fifteen pounds to get them in decent (to me) sound quality when they're released on CD or FLAC a year from now, and then I'll be pissed off about feeling slightly scammed by an artist I really want to support wholeheartedly. At this point it's looking like either that will happen or possibly RR will never be available in a high-quality format (which would obviously suck). If it was coming from 99.9% of the artists out there, it would be par for the course, but I just expect better from Underworld, I think. Their music is great, but they've also historically shown an integrity and foresight that is all-too-rare in the music world.