Compare emusic and iTunes Music Store audio quality by listening

I have been curious about how good the quality is emusic offers. There have been some articles online saying that emusic offers better quality than iTunes Music Store. So I decided to compare the quality of these two by simply listening.

I purchased Pixies’ Where is My Mind before on iTMS. And right now I am downloading music from Pixies from emusic. It is interesting that iTMS call this band Pixies, which I think is the official name, while emusic call them “the Pixies”. iTMS offers 128kps CBR AAC protected with DMR. emusic offers 192kps VBR MP3 encoded by LAME 3.92. LAME is considered the best MP3 encoder.

Software: QuickTime 7.0.4
Hardware: PowerBook G4 1.5G 12″, Sennheiser PX 200 headphone.

I play them with QuickTime and play them at the same time. Then I just close my eyes, and command+~ to switch between these windows. I do not know which one is which when I am listening.

Results:

I can sense a little difference between these two files. But because I am not audiophile I could not really tell which one is better. But the emusic one seems a little bit more lively and iTMS one seems a little bit flat. However you really need to pay very much attention to every detail. So basically they sounds very close in terms of quality, while emusic might be a little bit better.

Discussion:

My hardware is barely close to audiophile class. But keep in mind that many people don’t have a better soundcard than PowerBook has. PowerBook is designed as a professional laptop for Graphics/Audio/Video etc. professionals, it should have a relatively good soundcard compared to most cheap home PCs. And not many people would spend about $50 for a headphone. I was using a cheap Sony headphone MDR-Q33, and also iPod ear buds. I have to admit that Sennheiser PX 200 is much better than those two. So from my point of view, for most people, emusic is not really better if we are talking about audio quality.

And you must also see that AAC is 3.56 MB and MP3 is 5.69, which means AAC takes about 63% the space MP3 would take. For most people, you cannot tell the difference between music from iTMS and emusic. However, consider about the price and DMR-free emusic, it is still a very good choice.

BTW, I have also compared music from Allofmp3.com and iTMS. Both AAC, with 192 VBR from Allofmp3.com and 128 CBR from iTMS. It is clear to me that Allofmp3.com offers better quality using the same way I compare iTMS and emusic.