I had my back surgery to fix a badly herniated disk last week. The long wait times in Canada's medical system has assured permanent nerve damage as the left part of my left foot is still numb. The surgeon thinks it could still heal slowly but would probably take a year or so before I get all the feeling back. So here I am recovering from surgery and bored out of my ears. At least I can sit up and type on the computer. My friend Kathy wanted a recording of "Grease" from LP. She has a copy on LP and I have one too. So no copyright infringement is being made here. I do not advocate pirating music, but the record companies have resorted to stealing from me nonetheless. In Canada, they charge a copyright tax on blank media whether you're copying music or storing data. I've been buying most of my pre-recorded music direct from the artists, particularly local artists that I like, of late. Michael Kaeshammer and John Gilliat are a couple of local to Vancouver artists that I enjoy very much. I would much rather the money go to the artists than to the recording companies. So I decided I would make the copy of Grease and see if all those "audiophile" tests on iTunes are true. Is iTunes is the way of the future of music management. The album contains 2 LPs, but a quick ballpark sum of the recording times suggested that both LPs would fit on one CD. Using my setup, I copied and editted the tracks onto the MAC using a program called Audacity and generated WAV files of all the songs. It occured to me the iTunes has its own codecs so I decided to see if the codecs on iTunes was any good. I uploaded the music to iTunes and for comparison sake, copied them to my PC also. I burned a CD from iTunes and also burned a copy from the PC using CD Creator. I used the PC because it has a newer burner and burns CDs much faster than my MAC. Then did a comparison listen of both. I have a fairly decent audio system. Not absolute "high end" stuff, but pretty good and a good step up from your run of the mill Sony, Panasonic or JVC systems. The iTunes CD was warmed over and lost some of its dynamics. When the trumpets first blast out at the very beginning of the CD, the PC copy almost makes me jump out of my seat. The CD from the MAC didn't. Olivia Newton-John's voice was also raspier (or is that squeakier) on the PC version than the iTunes version. Her voice was definitely smoother on the iTunes version. Too warmed over, actually. The soundstage was also noticeably smaller from the iTunes version. I would suspect all the programming in iTunes to make sure we're not "stealing" music has made iTunes a decent music management program. But it messes with the music. I'm disappointed in the sound quality. However, Kathy's opinion was, she could hear the difference in a side by side comparison. But in her car or played alone without a benchmark, she probably doesn't care. For the non-audiophile, which is the vast majority of the music buyers out there, that's exactly what Apple and the music companies want to hear. Why else would they be wanting to sell you multiple copies of the same songs over and over again with quality of sound definitely nowhere near the quality of the original master? On the other hand, to make my own CDs for playing in the car or other audio device, it was a simple case of clicking on the songs I want and dragging them into an "Album" and clicking on the burn button. I guess when I really want good sound quality and will sit down and listen to some of the music I have, I would pull out an LP or a CD and actually play it on a good system. But if I want to take the music with me and play it where there is a lot of noise outside, like in a car, it isn't that difficult to copy it to my computer and then transferring it to CD or music player. There should be no need to "buy" multiple copies of the same recording. But my general conclusion is pretty well the same as most of the audiophile reviewers. The iPOD and Apple's iTUnes is not quite ready for prime time as a music source yet.