actually, the vbr aac stream that apple has is nicer than the flacs of the cd rip, because the cd master is brickwalled. web and vinyl masters have better dynamic range (more detail in the sound, but doesn’t sound “as loud”)
How is this a problem? Once an album is streaming, the audio needs to be decrypted in order to have it played back on the local system. The album streams are seamless AAC tracks encrypted with Fairplay DRM. How else would you expect them to work? Okay, maybe Apple shouldn’t make the files available publicly on their servers, but the audio will end up on the stream user’s computer decrypted somehow. Once an album is streaming at VBRAAC, it’s as good as leaked. Those who want to get around paying for it (or, you know, want to listen to something they’ve been eagerly waiting for) will find a way. The only way Apple (or anyone, for that matter) would be able to keep people from ripping their streams is to not stream anything at all.
