Because I need the highest quality sound for Apple's craptacular earbuds that come with all of their products...
Yes, because adaptive streaming is all about storing high quality music everywhere. Think high quality at home, low-fi on the move.
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Apple Reportedly Developing High-Definition Audio Format with 'Adaptive Streaming'
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Yes, because adaptive streaming is all about storing high quality music everywhere. Think high quality at home, low-fi on the move.
I'll take any lossless codec, but why cant apple just use FLAC (it's royalty free after all)?!
http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd
http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd
Everyone who hopes for lossless, 94 kHz or 24 bit audio, stop dreaming. This is about converting audio to lower bitrates (e.g. HE-AAC with 64-128 kBit/s) for 3G streaming.
Why would Apple use FLAC when it already supports ALAC? And I think Apple doesn't care that much whether it's royalty free, but does it come without license restrictions?
At the moment, if you have 256 KBit AAC and want 128 KBit AAC on your iPod, iTunes will convert the 256 KBit AAC to uncompressed, and then to 128 KBit AAC. This is slow, takes a lot of CPU time (not good for the batteries on the move), and is lower quality than going from CD to 128 KBit directly. What would be great would be a format that contains the "original" 128 KBit AAC and then additional data on top to improve quality, so that the 128 KBit AAC can be extracted directly at very little cost, and with maximum quality.
Why it matters to us: If it's developed so it's one file that any computer can convert to a lower bitrate "on the fly", it means our own copies of iTunes can store it for streaming in our own homes.
I'm not going to download something from Apples servers every time I want to listen to a song in my own home. But I'd sure love to set up an iTunes server with this capability. iTunes on my computers would access the library on the server and sync low quality versions of the song to my devices, whilst letting me stream high quality versions around the home.
Ready to demonstrate in 8 days
I love this idea, but I really doubt that they would be able to show this off already.
I doubt they asked for the demo today...
Because I'm not such a chump that I can't go buy a better set of headphones.Because I need the highest quality sound for Apple's craptacular earbuds that come with all of their products...
Thank you
But this seems like a project that would take a considerable amount of time and just hearing about it now makes me wonder how long they have kept this a secret and how long they have been working on this.
It's a cool technology and I like that apple is looking to change up the audio format world. But will this will be a game changer?
I purchased the match series but found I'm not a fan of the 256 audio because it takes up too much space on my MBA and phone.
I went back to my >160VBR and haven't looked back.
I purchased the match series but found I'm not a fan of the 256 audio because it takes up too much space on my MBA and phone.
I went back to my >160VBR and haven't looked back.
Great now, I have the "I touch myself" song stuck in my head...
Thank you so much!
Some other links about their encoders, if you didn't think to poke around on their site:
- http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/bf/amm/download/HD-AAC_A4_6S_low-1.pdf
- http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/bf/amm/download/MPEG_AAC_Family_V0609_270809_EN.pdf
They do define an easy to downgrade methodology by simply dropping SLS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_SLS
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Yes please. While the 256Kbps AAC's are great...when I am in my car and trying to listen to something off of iCloud I get too many pauses when 3G reception is not stellar.
I am willing to sacrifice some quality for a smooth listening experience. Also since everyone else already down-samples when on a slower connection.
I am willing to sacrifice some quality for a smooth listening experience. Also since everyone else already down-samples when on a slower connection.
Fraunhofer is one of the groups of people behind MP3, AAC and a bunch of really well known codecs.
Different things all together - mastered for iTunes is simply about getting Apple the original master files and following their guidelines on preparing your files for inclusion in iTunes. This new thing is about higher quality music - think the difference between standard TV and HDTV and you're on the right track, only more subtle to the majority of people.
What is there to judge? Philip Glass is a highly respected composer. He's not for everyone, but then most truly innovative and intriguing music isn't.
Personally I'd much prefer a lossless format that can convert to a lossy file efficiently. If this isn't it then oh well, maybe next time the magic will reappear. I've always though HD meant lossless, but based on the responses here it seems I'm mistaken.
Edit: Unless @gnasher729 you are meaning that the core is 128 AAC, and extra data can be added to convert it up to ALAC as is suggested below by @Diode? In which case, very cool and exactly what we need.
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Doing anything like this for iTunes match is pointless until they make HUGE improvements in the matching algorithm and fix the other bugs with Match. Nested playlists broken, smart playlist limits broken, last played and playcount broken on iOS, genius broken, ability to manually sync removed, very inconsistent performance with matching, tags, etc.
Right now tons of albums match all but one or two tracks. Offering a higher quality format is a great idea but until Match is fixed it's just going to make the bugs more obvious.
Right now tons of albums match all but one or two tracks. Offering a higher quality format is a great idea but until Match is fixed it's just going to make the bugs more obvious.
ALAC is also open source and free to licenses.
Apple opened up ALAC late last year.
That's kinda cool - so you have one file with a core AAC file with two chunks of information on how to turn the core AAC into either a higher def file or a completely lossless file? Then depending on the playback - you either include the additional chunks of information or just the core file?
Seems similiar to how DTS-HD files contain a core DTS file to support older receivers.
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why?
With all due respect, what the heck do we need another audio format for? It's insanity. 256kbps AAC is already good enough - good enough that the format's quality exceeds that of the playback capabilities of any of Apple's products (which are less than spectacular by the way). Any of the compressed formats stream just fine.
If you are using a Mac (or PC) with optical audio outputs, then there is uncompressed (AIFF) or Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio for environments where you might actually be able to tell the difference.
And we all know what happened with SACD and HDCD formats - they failed, miserably. Apparently 16bit digital audio (standard CD) is more than good enough for humans (those claiming otherwise are nuts - human hearing tapers off after 15kHz). Dogs may have a different opinion...
So, why on earth do we need yet another format?
With all due respect, what the heck do we need another audio format for? It's insanity. 256kbps AAC is already good enough - good enough that the format's quality exceeds that of the playback capabilities of any of Apple's products (which are less than spectacular by the way). Any of the compressed formats stream just fine.
If you are using a Mac (or PC) with optical audio outputs, then there is uncompressed (AIFF) or Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio for environments where you might actually be able to tell the difference.
And we all know what happened with SACD and HDCD formats - they failed, miserably. Apparently 16bit digital audio (standard CD) is more than good enough for humans (those claiming otherwise are nuts - human hearing tapers off after 15kHz). Dogs may have a different opinion...
So, why on earth do we need yet another format?