Ok but that's because you listened to it thousand times. How about something you listened only once? Do you think you can differ between AAC and 24/196 in a A/B blind test?
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A Look at Apple's 'Mastered for iTunes' Program and its Effect on Sound Quality
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Ok but that's because you listened to it thousand times. How about something you listened only once? Do you think you can differ between AAC and 24/196 in a A/B blind test?
You know, in iTunes, there's an option to convert higher bitrate songs to 128/256kbps AAC automatically for your iPhone/iPod/iWhatever when syncing. That allows you to have your entire music library in ALAC and to not have to care about your iPhone's capacity. Also there's iTunes Match...
I agree that most people don't give damn about this stuff, though...
Better Music
I´d rather Apple worked with the Artists and Record Companies to produce better music since much of today´s music is crap regardless of compressing/encoding/bit rate solutions.
But since Apple can´t do this, I guess having songs "mastered for iTunes" helps.
I´d rather Apple worked with the Artists and Record Companies to produce better music since much of today´s music is crap regardless of compressing/encoding/bit rate solutions.
But since Apple can´t do this, I guess having songs "mastered for iTunes" helps.
I'm just saying it's kind of silly to use assumptions about others as the basis for one's complaint about assumptions being made.
Well, I took this test once and I guessed 13 of 15 samples right. It depends on quality of mastering, your audio equipment, how experienced listener you are, etc. I believe my results would not be as good as they were if I used some low-end cheapo earphones...
I must have golden ears then. Been telling people for yearsDid you listen to the 15K stereo through headphones? Not psychological at all. Transients are relaxed and smoothed out. Warmth and room ambiance are brought back in. It is hard for me to make out the difference between ALAC and AIFF. But any 320khz or under AAC/MP3 and I can hear it.
-ALAC and AIFF are both lossless formats, there is no quality difference between them.
-320kbps, not khz
-If you want to prove you can tell the difference between music files, you provide the results of a double-blind ABX test that show you can tell the difference at a 95% confidence level. Subjective descriptions of sounds being more 'warm', 'full', or 'rich' are meaningless.
Exactly, what that 256 AAC and mastered for iTunes, anyway you master a track a lossy format is going to suffer...at least as an option alac should have been available years ago, and some work put to it because it still has a 5% or more give to approach flac sizes.
Seconded, the stuff that passess of as music these days is pure and utter crap, the multimillion sellers of today wouldn't even have been backing singers 15 years ago, and they would be groupies 40 years ago not artists, the music biz has a quality problem, and that's not just old guy reminiscing stuff, anyone objective enough -and music has an objective criteria to it- will say as much.
Play such files for these people and i guarantee most of the time they will have no idea which file is of higher quality.
Well, you're right. Assumptions, biases, preconceptions ... they're all part and parcel of what we are, and how we perceive the world. Unfortunately, we're usually stuck having to deal with them ... except of course where we can challenge our perceptions with a well controlled blind test!
Enjoy the music!
Do you want us to publish it in a peer reviewed journal too? Subjective opinions are not meaningless at all, they are indicative as opposed to conclusive.
people actually use iTunes for media?
Save it, iTunes is fine for organizing music.
It's interesting that you can show someone standards definition and high definition VIDEO, and virtually everyone will easily be able to see the improvement and appreciate the extra clarity, color depth, vibrancy...
But when you ask the population to compare low quality audio - crap from itunes - to something better, many people honestly can't seem to tell the difference with their ears.
maybe their youth was wasted mowing grass, or falling asleep with earbud in too loud... I don't know why.
But I'm guess I'm one of the lucky ones that can absolutely tell the difference.
As a result, I never buy from the itunes store. I have to rip my own stuff to get the desired quality.
As a side note - i listen to a broad range of music, not just pop which can often be mixed poorly where file quality may not matter. And I have be luxury of having good equipment - http://www.THIELaudio.com where good stuff has the opportunity to sound so much better.
But when you ask the population to compare low quality audio - crap from itunes - to something better, many people honestly can't seem to tell the difference with their ears.
maybe their youth was wasted mowing grass, or falling asleep with earbud in too loud... I don't know why.
As a result, I never buy from the itunes store. I have to rip my own stuff to get the desired quality.
As a side note - i listen to a broad range of music, not just pop which can often be mixed poorly where file quality may not matter. And I have be luxury of having good equipment - http://www.THIELaudio.com where good stuff has the opportunity to sound so much better.
i mean its so easy to get content online. rather than paying for it.
i do support artists i like. but damn sure i cannot afford all the content i want to hear. its just ridiculous. but then again i buy physical albums as a collector rather than buying a digital album.
movies yea, cuz downloading movies and than converting them is a bitch, and more of a danger.
i just don't think i can ever go to iTunes and actually pay for everyone of my tracks.
In general we are in agreement-- however you do not compress 24/96 to get something lesser, you dither and SRC (sample rate conversion) the material. 16/44,1 and 16/48 use exactly the same size of "bucket" for your sounds. 48kHz will have a little better resolution.
To a listener, a 24-bit recording seems to have more "dynamic space"-- similar to the difference between a small room and a large room. Consider that identical strength signals (measured in volts) will register 0dBFS (zero dB full-scale) with 16bit and -40dBFS with 24bit. IOW the same signal will have 40dB less noise in 24bit.
If you are in this deep you probably know that current noise-shaping technology (such as "Powr" dither) enables 16bit to sound almost as good as 24bit, and that the reason 96k sounds "better" is not that you can suddenly hear 40kHz but that the "in-band" stuff (up to 17kHz dependent on age) sounds smoother is not negatively influenced by the mechanisms that rolloff music around and above the Nyquist frequency.
Sorry for the long response, but you have to wade into deeper water to see the bigger picture.
Rich
Ah!
Possibly. How could we do the test - I'd almost need someone controlling the test with a set of decent studio monitors and play short 20-30 second segments or something.
Possibly. How could we do the test - I'd almost need someone controlling the test with a set of decent studio monitors and play short 20-30 second segments or something.
If a mastered version of a song is released, the file stored on your computer would automatically and instantly become a higher quality version. No need to redownload the song. It would magically change to a better version without you doing anything. Apple is known for their magical products and abilities, afterall.
Sorry....couldn't resist.
I assume any updating of songs would be handled like iTunes+. If you wanted higher quality versions, you had to redownload them. Though, since the price would be the same, it shouldn't cost you anything extra for this (I assume).
The trend towards better quality tracks in the iTunes store seems to suggest that sound quality does matter to Apple and Apple's customers. There is no other point to the ongoing effort to make iTunes store tracks sound better.
I like the trend, but I'm not sold yet.
Even though I can't afford to be a anything like a modern-day audiophile, I trust my ears and the future of uncompressed formats. Much love for iwhatevers for listening to more music more of the time, but not for everything all the time.
I like the trend, but I'm not sold yet.
Even though I can't afford to be a anything like a modern-day audiophile, I trust my ears and the future of uncompressed formats. Much love for iwhatevers for listening to more music more of the time, but not for everything all the time.
I'm afraid it's not a no-brainer because contrary to what you seem to think, people actually PREFER compressed dynamic range in most tests (i.e. the whole mentality of 'louder is better' right down to LP Vs. CD even). Higher samples rates are utterly useless (we can't hear over 20kHz so it's just wasted bits) and your average recording doesn't even have 12-bits of dynamic range, let alone 24-bits so again, it's meaningless in most cases (20-bit as about as far as you can POSSIBLY hear and that's going from barely audible to Space Shuttle launch in an instant, which thankfully most recordings do NOT do or we'd all be deaf if we had it turned up where we could hear the quiet bits).
24-bits is great for recording because of the excess head-room it affords. It's NOT NEEDED on the consumer end of things. 18-bit would be more than sufficient for nearly any recording ever made and good old 16-bit audio is more than sufficient for 98% of all recordings out there. There is some possible benefit to multi-channel sound, however, but I've never seen any on iTunes either way.
And before someone rants on about how they can prove how much better various SACD or DVD-Audio recordings sound, just keep in mind that many of those recordings are remastered first. In other words, the reason they sound different and even much better in some cases is that they used a good quality mix for once instead of that compressed CRAP they put out for radio (studios are notorious for mixing for the least common denominator and many use crappy speakers in their studios for just that reason). Dump a 2-channel mix of SACD to CD and you'll find it still sounds virtually identical.
All of this is easily proven with DBX switch boxes. For those that doubt, look into the actual scientific tests on the matter.
Meanwhile, my own recordings in Logic Pro sound exactly the same when dumped as WAV as 256kbps AAC here. It's audibly transparent to my ears and I have quite a high-end ribbon speaker setup with a custom active crossover and bi-amping.