I would like to see Audio formats move on now.....we have been stuck for so long i feel.

24bit/96k PCM WAV or AIF with a decent ID tags built in.

I just chime in to say for me "highest quality" = "most like sitting at a live performance."

Live performances are not perfect. That's why we call it 'art.' ;)

Why don't music players support free open source lossless audio formats like FLAC?

I'm reminded of the old joke:

Music buffs use expensive hi-fi equipment to listen to their music;
Audiophiles use their music to listen to expensive hi-fi equipment.

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I don’t have any problem importing FLAC files into iTunes. Got ahold of a convenient little program called Set OggS -- but it would be nice if Apple made this workaround unnecessary.
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Story with one cello...
 

That reminds me of a story by one of my old teachers. Some visiting would-be connoisseurs were aghast that he was playing an old mono LP of Pablo Casals performing Bach fugues -- whereupon Lloyd blurted out: "You insist on stereo? For Chrissake, it’s one guy playing the cello!"
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Or even this new article, where a teacher asserts that every year, each class has a higher group of people who prefer to hear .mp3 compression than raw audio - because that's what they're used to!
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/the...-of-music.html

How you going to play FLAC or OGG on your iPod, Zune, or whatever? Playing it on a media player is not the problem, it is the fact that mobile devices do not support those formats.

Thus, limiting the consumer on what they have to pay for. I am sure you can jail break your iPod Touch and get full support for FLAC, but I haven't google searched it yet.

I bet most likely is because it is published under the GPL and adding DRM is probably very hard or tricky to do since all the source is out there. So, what is stopping hackers from making high quality music for free?

I am simply playing devil's advocate here.

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Well, my primary mobile device is a PowerBook. ;)
I’ll have to check whether an iPod (I’m still using my 1G) will play the file imported into iTunes.
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They don't, from the horse's mouth:

source: http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/specs.html

iPod touch:
Source: http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/specs.html

They want consumers to buy their products but they don't let consumers control the content. I would be all about just buying a license to an album really for one set price, and that license allows me to own the album for ever and allows me to put it in whatever format I want. Kind of like Burger King and the Whopper, you get it your way.

I generally buy albums over single tracks. While I would like the extra content the main reasons I am tempted to use iTunes over buying a CD are price and convenience. I just wish they had a search by album price option in advanced search. There is the Special Price link from the main window but it doesn't show all the albums on sale.

I'm not that pedantic when it comes to quality. I mainly listen on my iMac's internal speakers while I'm working or burn MP3 to CD to listen in the car. I doubt I could discern any difference in quality in either setting and for the car I like having 10 albums on a single disk so I don't have to change disks while I'm driving.

What a good idea. I like it. Like genius radio or something.