Dark Souls II MP3 CD…

I happily opened my Dark Souls II Black Armor Edition, and took a look at my pre-order soundtrack CD. I noticed that instead of a Compact disc logo there was a "Mp3" logo on the CD. Odd. Whatever, time to play.
Now today I found it time to rip the CD. Seems that this "Mp3 CD" is just a kind of CD-rom with Mp3 files stored onto it, that you can copy off it. So you can’t rip it, lossless.

The fuck. Why? What is wrong with a normal CD like they did with Dark Souls 1?!

It depends. If the music runs more than 80 mins [standard audio disc length], MP3 may have been a more cost efficient [and less disc-juggler] way to package it. If it’s less than that, then it seems a tad retarded no matter how you look at it.

Also, as far as lossless/lossy formats go, MP3 is still somewhat the industry standard, regardless of preference…

Also, as far as lossless/lossy formats go, MP3 is still somewhat the industry standard, regardless of preference…

Not really. I mean we are talking about CDs here. The whole notion of lossy and lossless was invented years after the emergence of the CD, but for the sake of this topic, a normal CD is lossless, and an MP3 CD is lossy. Since I’ve never ever seen or heard of MP3 CD before, I’d say lossless CD is the industry standard.

Anyway, there is speculation/it has been confirmed that some tracks are cut short in like 1/3 of their normal duration. There are 35 tracks, so yes I guess the issue was space.
Still, they could have gone with two CDs. Why not leave out that soundtrack and release it stand-alone.

My "Industry Standard" comment was referring to downloadable formats. Sorry I wasn’t clear on that… 🙁

Other than BandCamp, I don’t know of many online music stores that use anything besides mp3 [well there’s the iTunes Store, but they have their own ALAC/M4A format. Elitist bastards! Lol!]. Google Play, Amazon, eMusic, and even Walmart.com all use mp3 for digital downloads.

As for mp3 cds, I’ve had them before, self-burned as well as "officially pressed". Specifically, I got this mp3.com sampler disc, from back when they were fairly big. I personally liked how I could load up a disc chock full of music, and not have to change discs during an entire 9-hour trip! But yeah, in most cases, mp3 discs were self-burned.

My "Industry Standard" comment was referring to downloadable formats. Sorry I wasn’t clear on that… 🙁
I understood that, but when talking about physical CD media it’s not really relevant.

CdBaby allows for FLAC downloads, as well as HDTracks (obviously). My problems is that, when I opt for a download, MP3 is fine, but since I like my placebo higher sound quality, if I buy a CD I want it to be better than that. So this is kind of a disappointment. Oh well, I wonder if the Japanese release has a real CD…