HiFi Blog: digital audio goodness

You can feel it in the air. Not that many ground-breaking news in portable audio land these days. Which means we’ll be spending our time off for the holidays with much less guilts (it’s all about you, the dear and beloved reader, after all).

We’ll be back with you on Monday, January 9th (just in time for Apple’s possible relevations at Macworld Expo).

Meanwhile, we’ll have a little something posted here just a day or two before 2006 kicks in. Do drop by, it’ll only take a second or two to uhm.. read it. Or you could just subscribe to our full-content RSS feed and have it delivered straight to you.

That’s not all!

Short on music? Worry not, we’re here to help.

• AllofMP3 is offering a 20% bonus if you sign up/refill your account till the end of the year. They’ve got a ton of Christmas-themed albums, as well as all the latest mainstream releases. AllofMP3 gives you the ability to set the quality of the files you download: MP3 files encoded with the --alt-preset standard switch or even FLAC files, are only a click away. Refill your account with say, $10, and you get an extra 2 bucks of music for free. Before you laugh, $2 gives you a whooping ~30 songs—not bad. Read the extensive review to find out more about AllofMP3.


• Over at ILX, there’s a fantastic thread with Christmas-related tunes. Go. Also: Sufjan Stevens’ Christmas album.


• Pitchfork have posted their list of top 50 singles for 2005 (top 50 albums here). One has to wonder how worthy of reference it is, when Amerie’s “1 Thing” stands at #2 while the Stripes’ “My Doorbell” at 50 (shouldn’t these be opposite?) but anyway. Check which songs you’re missing from that list, then check Soulseek or AllofMP3.