Amazon MP3 Vs CD? How does Amazon MP3 Measure up to CD?

[barfle]

Even if the source material for Amazon's MP3s was higher than the resolution a CD supports, it wouldn't improve the 'quality' of the MP3 because the source material ends up down converted/compressed to the standard 44.1khz/16bit format at 192kbps or greater, anyway. If the source material was fundamentally different, ie -- remix or remastered/literally different files, then the output would still be MP3 but of that different mix. There's no secret sauce to retaining 96khz/24bit of information in a package the size of an MP3 without significant loss, at least no algorithms that exist now. FLAC is probably the closest we have to data and quality retention while reducing the file size significantly.

AFAIK, the only uncompressed audio format that’s widely used is WAV, and that has meager (to put it politely) metadata available. One of the great things about FLAC is that there’s plenty of room for metadata.

 

[barfle]

Someone uploaded a TON of Edison Diamond Discs to MP3.com and I downloaded them all...years before I retired when spare time was rare and just before I understood that I could actually edit the metadata, etc. So now I have a huge pile of interesting old recordings that I simply can't identify. [self-kicking emoji]

I i herited about 80 EDDs, along with a similar number of other 78 records. Some of the EDDs have those pressed-in labels, but some have paper labels that have fallen off. So I have a fair amount of unidentified hard-copies.

 

[atrocity]

I i herited about 80 EDDs, along with a similar number of other 78 records. Some of the EDDs have those pressed-in labels, but some have paper labels that have fallen off. So I have a fair amount of unidentified hard-copies.

You may be able to identify those by researching what's etched in the deadwax. I don't know how complete this list is, but it might be a useful place to start: Browse Matrix Numbers.