July 3 - Does sound quality matter in music downloads? The Perfect Vision magazine talks with MusicGiants CEO Scott Bahneman about music downloading and the prospects for high-definition music.

Since its founding in 2005, MusicGiants has offered music downloads in the Lossless Windows Media Audio (WMA) format - also called “high-res,” “high-def,” and “HD Audio.” Lossless downloads reproduce music at a bit rate of up to 1100 kbps compared to the 128 kbps of most music downloads. The result, according to MusicGiants, is CD-quality sound.

But there are a few drawbacks to the lossless format. First, while Apple’s iTunes store sells single tracks at 99 cents, MusicGiants tracks are 30 cents more at $1.29. Also, most tracks create a file size of about 3MB, but lossless files can reach up to 15MB, meaning theoretically you’d fit fewer tracks on your player. Thirdly, MP3 players out there can’t support the Lossless WMA files - because most MP3 players out there are iPods, meaning not Windows friendly.

It seems MusicGiants has a tough sell to the portable-music audience.

Read on to hear what Scott Bahneman has to say about why sound quality matters in music downloads.

NEXT: “It no longer makes sense to save 30 cents on a file for a very low-res format.”

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