Back when I was a whippersnapper, we had to piece together an album on cassette tape -- using dupes. Talk about crappy sound quality! But it was all we had. iTunes has light-years better quality than that.
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Neil Young's Catalog Returns to Apple Music After He Said Streaming Has 'Worst Quality in History'
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You gotta give the man credit for a sincere effort to improve the sound quality we consumers are able to enjoy from our super convenient devices, and thereby also hopefully nudging the industry in that direction. (We've come a long, long way from carefully lowering a tone arm onto a vinyl record with limited dynamic range, giving us a handful of songs, mostly by the same artist(s), before repeating the delicate process, none of this very portable of course.
Apple reportedly snapping up a struggling Omnifone, could be construed as an effort to stymie Neil's endeavors, or it could simply be a way to augment their own cloud services, or even an indication of Apple's possible future intentions in the higher quality streaming sphere.
At any rate, I not only like Neil's distinctive style, but also applaud his sincere efforts.
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Nah. He got divorced and has a new girlfriend. Both of those things are expensive.
This commonly held belief is now being challenged. A recent meta-analysis found a statistically significant, better-than-average rate of correct identification that could not have been produced by chance among listeners who were trained to recognise high resolution audio. For listeners who weren't trained or chosen at random the effect was absent.
I've done some brief listening tests comparing a high resolution album I bought with the iTunes version (which is admittedly less than CD quality) and the difference is like night and day. I can correctly identify it almost 100% of the time even without my high quality DAC. And if you don't believe me I can send you example tracks and you can convert/upscale the iTunes ones and strip both files of all metadata so they look exactly the same (use tools like "Touch" in Terminal even so they look exactly the same) and you can send them back and I will tell you which is which. I can even tell if you send only only one file back whether it's the high res version or Apple iTunes.
Try me!
For this reason (and others) I stopped buying from iTunes a long time ago. Mostly because there are now plenty of other online retailers (or from the artist directly so they get more) that sell lossless or high resolution albums for the same price or less than iTunes. If someone offered you more for the same or less you'd take it right?
iTunes is only marginally cheaper even than buying new release physical CDs in a shop and CD stores often discount older albums significantly while iTunes rarely does. With iTunes you're paying for (minor) convenience and sacrificing almost everything else.
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If the user finds the quality good enough the Artist should not insert his view, and just let people purchase their material.
It's because his high quality music player startup Pono, hasn't taken off. Gee, I wonder why? iPod clones aren't exactly doing well these days. Even iPods aren't, lol. https://www.ponomusic.com/
Neil Young's "voice" in HiDef . . . . That would cause permanent "defness!"
No Thank You!
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But . . . He's still selling Non-HiDef Apparel on that site. Guess clothing sells buit HiDefPlayers don't?
YMMV
No Thank You!
[doublepost=1478279061][/doublepost]
But . . . He's still selling Non-HiDef Apparel on that site. Guess clothing sells buit HiDefPlayers don't?
YMMV
Right? The statement that streaming is "the worst quality in the history of broadcasting" is so blatantly untrue it makes me wonder if Neil Young has ever actually listened to any form of broadcast music.
It's kind of sad because we have so much bandwidth these days that lossless should be available.
There is no comparison between a high res recording and an mp3, the same thing goes to compare a Blu-ray against an ITunes version of the movie (sound and audio)
Hey hey, my my. Rock and Roll can never die!
It's good to have NY's catalog back on iTunes..
It's good to have NY's catalog back on iTunes..
I would think AM broadcast radio is of lesser quality. So not the worst...
Apologies to Neil Young fans, but it strikes me as odd that the artist who seems to be most concerned about sound quality can barely stay on pitch. I like some of his songs but "keep on rockin' in the free worrrrrld," oh my ears.
The final ripping/encoding is only part of the overall perceived quality of the recording. Frankly, a lot can go wrong in the mastering process that masks sounds, rolls off frequencies, etc. When I first started getting CDs (and even before that with albums) I noticed some sounded great, while others were flat, dull. In looking at all of the information on the CDs, I noticed virtually all of them I had that sounded good were mastered by Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk. None of the ones that sounded flat & dull were mastered by him. Coincidence?
Did I mention that we had to go to school uphill both ways, in the winter without socks and I had to carry my sister on my back?
Neil Young obviously appeals like all music to those who are moved by it. Excellent CSNY music, some really great solo albums and then for me it deteriorated into noise and animal sounds, when he goes all electric.
I think he is done with ponography and came to his $en$e$.
Obviously, there are opinions on Neil Young's music. Mine is that I like it. Whatever your opinion, let's be thankful that it is available again along with all the other stuff we like or not like. Freedom to listen to whatever we want is good.
You didn't mention his full name:
Bob Ludwig van Beethoven an I think the good ones were early work.
The flat and dull ones he probably mastered later, when he already had some problems.
Couldn't resist, happy Friday. Margheritas at 6
"who were trained to recognise high resolution audio"
If you need to "train" to recognize the difference between normal iTunes downloads and high fidelity sources, then there isn't that much of a difference and it will never catch on as a mainstream thing.
"and the difference is like night and day"
You are lying, unless there were different masterings, which would be why there would be any difference to begin with.
No I don't believe you, where are your ABX test results? There isn't anyone that could realistically recognize the difference between regular AAC 256 kbps files from so-called Hi.Res tracks, providing that they are the same file with the same mastering, etc.
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Except there is, a well encoded MP3 or an AAC file compared to a Hi.Res track is virtually indistinguishable, providing that they are the same master and mix.
There is no difference, learn how your ears work.
Love Neil Young's music as much as anyone's. Maybe he realized that AAC files at 256kbps VBR are scientifically proven to be totally transparent to the human ear. You don't need to waste storage space or bandwidth on anything at higher fidelity.