Apple Digital Masters

[marcel500]

Anyone seen this? Is it live already?

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8526675/apple-music-launches-apple-digital-masters

 

[B/D]

Apparently not... or I don´t understand what the change is, and what I´m supposed to be seeing.

 

[B/D]

 

[marcel500]

So same like Tidal now?

 

[B/D]

No, still lossy files.

 

[marcel500]

So lossless not MQA?
[doublepost=1565260164][/doublepost]So lossless not MQA?

 

[B/D]

?¿ MQA is not necessary lossless, but this is something different. Is the same that Mastered for Itunes, but with different branding and a dedicated section (in Apple Music)

 

[Shirasaki]

I don’t think this is anything different from an AAC file that is converted from a real MQA file or even 96Khz 24bit FLAC.

 

[B/D]

MP3 and AAC encoders typically don't have enough headroom to handle the very high peak level of complex and nuanced recordings , and so introduce extra clipping distortion as well as all the encoding artefacts. This is what the Mastered for Itunes initiative, now rebranded "Digital Masters", have been trying to avoid, combining the guidelines and tools provided by Apple with their state of the art, and very much improved trough the years, AAC encoder.

Again, all the technicals details can be found here. Is not just marketing, it´s a good thing. By the way, that PDF have been just updated, and it now says this at the beginning

Note: Apple Digital Masters replaces Mastered for iTunes as the name of the program to better reflect the fact that these audio advantages are available to our entire music catalog across the Apple ecosystem, whether streamed or downloaded. All Mastered for iTunes releases are now badged as Apple Digital Masters. All of the Mastered for iTunes software tools are still usable for Apple Digital Masters creation.