"In the audiophile world where $80,000 speakers are called bargains and people routinely tout $1k power cords I would think the cost of HDs wouldn't be too much of a factor."
Of course there is a lot of truth in that. Those with unlimited budgets can and will spend a lot more than $350 on an HDD. Mid-fiers like me who look for the best sound/quality at the best price always will look at it more critically. I'd rather spend $350 on the best quality drive out there that has enough space to hold my collection for x number of years than a bigger drive that might sound like a rusty wagon wheel within a year..
To me, pc audio is more about bringing true high fidelity sound to the masses than absolute reference quality to the wealthiest audiophiles.
"My legal training tells me that a copy is not the original. It's a copy and whether the copy is indistinguishable from the original is always in question."
Legally, a copy is a copy is a copy whether compressed or not. To me, keeping a virgin copy of the data is keeping the actual cd! And I know most of us are doing that..
I know what you mean about paranoia messing with your head though. When I converted all my files from AAC to AL, itunes asked me each time- "Are you sure you want to replace the old file" I checked yes, watched it convert and then ended up with files 5 times the size. But even though I can easily hear the difference now between these files and MP3 and AAC files on my system, there's that tiny bit of paranoia that they were converted as itunes said they were...
