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Comment by everybodyknows | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat to this question, would any audiophiles here care to weigh in on the quality of MP3s bought for download from Amazon? Also, is there any other source with a comparably large catalog?

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Bandcamp is the standard go to — if they’re on there you can get lossless quality. Alternately I believe Apple Music is now selling the highest quality digital downloads of all the major providers at the moment.

I've found most Amazon downloads to be 320k and, while the audiophile will argue, hard to distinguish from FLAC. Most importantly, it's higher quality than the EP I have on magnetic tape that was a recording of a recording I bought at the Fireside Bowl in 1999. Boy, I enjoyed listening to that, and the 320k MP3s do just fine so long as I don't need to re-encode them anytime soon.

Qobuz sells lossless FLAC files. I use their streaming service and will then buy albums if they are something I want to preserve. They also have excellent human curation.

Nonaudiophile here.

For classical music and jazz, I have found Presto Music to be a good place to buy mp3s. The search function works well, and many classical albums come with liner notes in PDF booklets.

Presto also offers FLAC downloads, but I can't hear the difference on the equipment I use so I buy the cheaper mp3s.

I have also bought mp3s from Amazon. I didn't have any problems with the sound quality.

7digital has a decent FLAC catalog.

They work for me, but I don't consider myself an audiophile per se.

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