Deutsche Grammophon to offer its entire collection in lossless.

Deutsche Grammophon has expanded its lossless (CD quality 44.1 kHz, 16-bit) collection for download and during this summer, the entire DG collection will be available for download in lossless format, even out-of-print albums.

This is a great leap for online music stores. The only reason I am still buying red book is for it's superior sound quality. The highest quality MP3 files can achieve is 320 kbps (kilo bits per second). A red book CD, 2 channels of audio at a sample rate of 44.1 kHz with each sample containing 16 bits of information, is playing at 1411.2 kbps.

There are other online music stores that offer CD quality music download but the selection and quality just can't compare to DG (although some are very good.) Also some top performers record exclusively with DG.

I think other online music stores will follow soon. The next thing for them to do is to make their collection, if possible, available in even higher quality. I think the 44.1/16 format is a thing of the past and we should move on to something better, much better. 88/24, 96/24 or even 192/24 is easy to achieve with today's technology.

Spending a fortune on a CD player will only bring small marginal gain in sound quality. Why not spend half that money to buy a good DAC that supports a higher bit rate format. This will greatly improve the sound quality because there are more music for the DAC to read in a higher bit rate file.