...I buy music from sites such as Beatport, Discogs, and Bandcamp, all of which seem to give pleasing results. I guess I am trying to ask, what is the difference between how you obtain lossless music from the web and how you obtain it from a CD? I know, there is a bunch of technical stuff that goes into ripping music from a CD, but how do online music stores sell lossless music?
In the case of a few albums I downloaded from Bandcamp, it seems the creators are savvy enough to use a secure ripper. One such example is an Australian metal band called Be'lakor.
I purchased their latest "CD" "Of Breath and Bone" through their Bandcamp page and was surprised that, when opening the folder as a disc in XLD, AccurateRip returned this result...
X Lossless Decoder version 20121222 (142.2)
XLD AccurateRip checking logfile
TOC of the selected file
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
---------------------------------------------------------
1 | 00:00:00 | 08:04:58 | 0 | 36357
2 | 08:04:58 | 06:14:19 | 36358 | 64426
3 | 14:19:02 | 06:46:29 | 64427 | 94905
4 | 21:05:31 | 06:06:23 | 94906 | 122378
5 | 27:11:54 | 01:28:74 | 122379 | 129052
6 | 28:40:53 | 09:21:31 | 129053 | 171158
7 | 38:02:09 | 09:17:32 | 171159 | 212965
8 | 47:19:41 | 08:58:43 | 212966 | 253358
AccurateRip Summary (DiscID: 00108cbf-006e1353-6b0d3208)
Track 01 : OK (v1, confidence 3/3)
Track 02 : OK (v1, confidence 3/3)
Track 03 : OK (v1, confidence 3/3)
Track 04 : OK (v1, confidence 3/3)
Track 05 : OK (v1, confidence 3/3)
Track 06 : OK (v1, confidence 3/3)
Track 07 : OK (v1, confidence 3/3)
Track 08 : OK (v1, confidence 3/3)
->All tracks accurately ripped.
All Tracks
Album gain : -8.34 dB
Peak : 1.000000
CRC32 hash : F3D42B68
CRC32 hash (skip zero) : F6DFC633
Track 01
Track gain : -8.55 dB
Peak : 1.000000
CRC32 hash : 1E1BE589
CRC32 hash (skip zero) : 6C7227DF
AccurateRip v1 signature : 9F52C20E
AccurateRip v2 signature : 779BC338
->Accurately ripped (v1, confidence 3/3)
Track 02
Track gain : -8.01 dB
Peak : 1.000000
CRC32 hash : 9A3E0CC6
CRC32 hash (skip zero) : A01A2EC4
AccurateRip v1 signature : 68D4A4C3
AccurateRip v2 signature : 784556F3
->Accurately ripped (v1, confidence 3/3)
Track 03
Track gain : -8.55 dB
Peak : 1.000000
CRC32 hash : 94E00791
CRC32 hash (skip zero) : E31FFE11
AccurateRip v1 signature : 475247DC
AccurateRip v2 signature : C457C637
->Accurately ripped (v1, confidence 3/3)
Track 04
Track gain : -8.60 dB
Peak : 1.000000
CRC32 hash : 721AABF3
CRC32 hash (skip zero) : C960EE53
AccurateRip v1 signature : F89E4624
AccurateRip v2 signature : F9E83715
->Accurately ripped (v1, confidence 3/3)
Track 05
Track gain : -2.43 dB
Peak : 0.910950
CRC32 hash : F2779B1D
CRC32 hash (skip zero) : 58791892
AccurateRip v1 signature : 25A2F725
AccurateRip v2 signature : 6AA3ED21
->Accurately ripped (v1, confidence 3/3)
Track 06
Track gain : -8.11 dB
Peak : 1.000000
CRC32 hash : 8356DEA9
CRC32 hash (skip zero) : BDB857A7
AccurateRip v1 signature : 3563C6FF
AccurateRip v2 signature : 2985A9B4
->Accurately ripped (v1, confidence 3/3)
Track 07
Track gain : -8.20 dB
Peak : 1.000000
CRC32 hash : CE93BD87
CRC32 hash (skip zero) : 22C3ED50
AccurateRip v1 signature : CCCFAA2E
AccurateRip v2 signature : 14FB9D81
->Accurately ripped (v1, confidence 3/3)
Track 08
Track gain : -8.25 dB
Peak : 1.000000
CRC32 hash : A4F5C9AE
CRC32 hash (skip zero) : 5971218B
AccurateRip v1 signature : BC61A59C
AccurateRip v2 signature : 47B5BBC5
->Accurately ripped (v1, confidence 3/3)
End of status report
Even more pleasingly, they also included a PDF containing the entire layout for the CD Booklet, Jewel-case insert, and the art that is applied to the disc itself sans the whole in the middle! If online music was always distributed in such a way, with this level of attention to detail, I'd see no further reason to buy physical media...at least CDs anyway. ...but now I digress a bit.
This, unfortunately, is more or less a crapshoot. It's nearly impossible to tell which distributed version will be "better" until you've gotten your hands on more than one and started doing some comparisons. I love to hit Bandcamp for more obscure artists that I like and just trust that they're doing the right thing. Sometimes Bandcamp is the only way to get certain releases that were limited to a small run of 7" singles and stuff like that. I try not to worry too much about it but I think the bottom line is this: as long as there is still physical media available one may be better served by obtaining that copy.