I agree, in fact, legal downloads of mainstream music are not the norm as far as I can tell, in any lossless format. There are sites that do sell lossless music in flac, wma lossless, wav. I have recently downloaded some Norah, Jones, Mark Knopfler in Flac 96/24 and 44.1/24 from a US site.
Unfortunately we are a tiny minority, I cant see Apple doing it any time soon. Being pragmatic, if it was my server running the show I wouldn't want to quadruple the bandwith nessesary for what I imagine is below 10% of the customer base.
Even if you were to rip your own CDs at 256K AAC, the tracks would sound better than iTunes 256K AAC downloads.
Until quite recently virtually of my iTunes content consisted of 256K VBR AAC rips from CD* and they were pretty good. I tested the few duplicate tracks (iTunes downloads and my rips) and there was a noticeable difference. iTunes downloads have the 'life' drained from them.
*Now I am about halfway through ripping all my CDs to a different machine in Apple Lossless (and a few in AIFF). These are indistinguishable (via AirPlay) from CDs played on the M-CR603 itself. (Note: I am not saying they would be indistinguishable from CDs on all machines - or in all circumstances - just in case some digital 'purist' or anti-Apple person is poised to jump all over me!)
Thats interesting. I have a number of albums from my first iPod in 2003 that were ripped in 128k, but could never be bothered to re-rip. I was planning on using iTunes match when it becomes available to re-rip for me, but will have to download a few samples now.
Most of the music I have downloaded has been electronic stuff, which is typically eq'ed really hard anyway.
Chebby,I have spent quite a while ripping 30 odd CDs in apple lossless on the iMac,for iPhone 4 and iPad 2 use.I am very pleased with the result.I know they take up a lot of space but hey who cares,not me ha
Apple Lossless is brilliant for the Ipod/Iphone etc.
Personally I would not download them anyway, getting on in years I would always rather have a physical disc and rip it myself. That way you can play the CD (should you get or want to) and you can still get your ALAC files.
Also it is slightly future proof should you ditch Ipod etc years ahead.