Apple Had 'Worked On' Offering a High-Definition Music Format

[ThunderSkunk]

My neighbor is an audiophile, with over half a million into his system, and probably as much into his enormous vinyl collection. Over a hundred grand is in the turntable alone. The needles are $5k a pop. He had two specialized rooms built within each other around it. Puts my old cd-sourced digital collection & fancy headphones in perspective. They're portable and inexpensive.

I do use Apple lossless on classical & really choice tracks to share with him, but it requires dragging the MBP over to get the fiber optic output needed to make the difference apparent.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

As someone who greatly appreciates high fidelity audio, I've got to say, high definition (aka. lossless) music is rather pointless.

The difference between a 256 kbps AAC file and a lossless file is incredibly minor - especially with the audio equipment that the vast majority of people use. Even to a discerning listener with high quality speakers or a great pair of headphones, the difference will still be very minor. Once you've reached 256kbps, you've passed the point where diminishing returns has taken over any additional data is hardly noticeable - even to an audiophile.

Besides, as long as record producers keep releasing overly compressed, loudness war'd garbage, most music will continue to sound horrible regardless. In most cases, upgrading to lossless music would be like offering a multi-vitamin to someone who has just had his legs blown off. The level of dynamic range compression that exists throughout the music industry is many orders of magnitude more significant in harming overall sound quality than the 256kbps bitrate is.

I've highlighted the two reasons for 256kbps being the threshold where very little difference is discernible, not because it's just science, but because the quality of scientific output is both crap piled on top of poorly used spectrum in the mix. Everything is at 11 today and then the heavy compression makes it all noise.

Remastering discs of prior old CD/Vinyl even from bands like RUSH has ruined much of their catalog. I almost picked up a Marantz Hi-Fi 1968 Receiver the other day. It was in perfect condition for $300. I don't listen to music out of the PC speakers. I've got a home sound system for that.

 

[TrentS]

8-Track

Actually, I prefer my 8 track tapes to any other music source. You talk about full volume... Wow!



Just kidding.

 

[Noodlefarmer]

Wow

Some people have way too much time on their hands. The fact is that the vast majority are fine with mp3's. Being able to carry around your entire music library on your iPod, iPhone is pretty amazing. And to most, offsets the quality issues.

Apple is going after the masses.

And don't be surprised if you see the Mac Pro's bite the dust too.

It's all about the $. And as a shareholder, that's fine with me.

The true audiophiles are only a significant market in their own minds.

 

[Riemann Zeta]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

My neighbor is an audiophile, with over half a million into his system, and probably as much into his enormous vinyl collection. Over a hundred grand is in the turntable alone. The needles are $5k a pop. He had two specialized rooms built within each other around it.

Damn! Some people have too much money...and I felt kind of nuts spending $250-300 on headphones. I can certainly hear the difference between good cans and crappy ones (in-ear monitors are a must) and between 16bit/44.1 and 128kbit MP3. But 256kbit VBR AAC is pretty much undifferentiable for all genres of music, even with audio perceptually enhancing chemicals in a totally silent environment. Maybe I just don't have dog ears.

 

[milo]

Sound is Analogue. A Vinyl is a true Analogue reproduction of the sound captured in a Studio (assuming the recording process is also analogue), it therefore the BEST reproduction of sound available.

Any Digital format (including CD, SACD, DVD Audio, DVD, Blu-Ray) is merely a snapshop/approximation of an analogue recording. In the case of CDs, the original Audio is captured at a 44,100Hz Sampling Frequency...it is by definition not as good as the original source.

Hate to break it to you but ANY recording is by definition not as good as what's making the original sound. It's simply impossible for a mic to capture sound perfectly, and any recording medium is going to be inexact to some degree.

But the notion that analog is better by definition is simply hogwash. Analog recording techniques have flaws and limitations, just different ones than digital. The laws of physics say that the way air moves can't be exactly reproduced by magnetic charges on a strip of tape or a groove in a plastic disk.

An old crappy cassette tape played on a beat up, dirty, uncalibrated play head is analogue. You honestly believe the sound coming from that is going to be better or more accurate to the original source than the best digital playback equipment available?

...a Vinyl is an EXACT copy of the sound that the Producer had on his mixing desk and in his monitors.

Blatantly false. You may LIKE how vinyl sounds, but there are many many differences between a master recording and how it sounds coming from vinyl.

Unfortunetely they do, I see (and hear) those white headphones everywhere on the train.

For someone listening in that situation you really think the weak link is the headphones? It couldn't be that they are doing their listening ON A TRAIN? Don't get me wrong, there are much better headphones, but that sounds like a situation where the headphones used will make the least possible difference.

 

[stordoff]

SACD has finally been ripped but the native format is DSD and for the most part that requires a DSD->PCM conversion (very little equipment and receivers support DSD streaming). But in the case of Blu-Ray and DVD-A it's very easy to get to PCM and then to ALAC. See my above post about iTunes and those ALAC files...

I've converted a few of my concert DVDs like this (and kept them at 48kHz sample rate), and it is very easy. I've also got a few 24-bit recordings I purchased online and keep in ALAC. It handles both perfectly.

 

[bretm]

Finally some one that speaks my language. I'm 31 and in remember that in past people used to have an hi-fi system an listen to vinyl and CD. Today people listen to music in crappy pc speaker and ipod headphones. Most people don't have hi-fi system. That's not evolution!

When I was a teen (I'm 40+) I listened to music on a crappy boombox type thing off of cassette tapes. Cassette tapes had half the fidelity of any mp3 today. We proceeded to duplicate those tapes and pass them around where the quality got even worse. Music like Neil's in the early 70s was recorded on equipment so inferior to today's equipment that his 100% was probably in line with today's 5%. So yes, today's music could sound amazingly better. But even in it's quality, it's so much better than recordings of yesteryear. Neil is practicing a little revisionist history. I'm surprised he even remembers making half the recordings he did. He also has the luxury of working in expensive audio suites. I'm a professional video editor. We work on 20" professional monitors that cost two grand just so we can get the color right. We use expensive speakers (probably not up to Neil's standards) and we edit high quality or even uncompressed 1080p HD Media. I see my stuff compressed onto a DVD and played back on a crappy Samsung TV where people are seeing 5% of the data too. You don't see me complaining that they should have uncompressed TVs and delivery systems. I also don't look back to the analog tape to tape editing days of my early career and say it was so much better then. We were getting 100% of the video! Ok, yes we were. But it sucked. The resolution was inferior. The color rendition was noisy (signal to noise ratios alone of the old analog stuff, yikes!) and editing degraded the image just as mixing and recording his analog formats degraded the quality as they made analog mix downs and bumped tracks.

 

[stordoff]

SACD is high definition music. CDs are 44.1 kHz. Hi-def music starts at 88.2 khz. It gets really good at 176 khz. Most hi-def is available only via download and usually in FLAC (which indeed is a PITA on Macs). Also, an external DAC is required to properly get hi-def music off a computer.

For analogy, if music were video, MP3s would be analog, CDs digital, 88.2 kHz 720P, and 176 kHz is like 1080P.

If you can tell the difference, I would be _incredibly_ surprised (in a proper ABX test, not just "it sounds better"). Music is basically band-limited to about 0-25kHZ (allowing for above average hearing). Using the Nyquist theorem, it can be completely represented using a sample rate of about 50kHz.

 

[milo]

mp3 and wav comparison:

http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2010/04/sound-test-difference-between-wav-vs-mp3/

Night and day.

I'd say that 256 AAC would be a better comparison, and keep in mind that that wav is 24 bit as opposed to the 16 bit found on CD. For a comparison of lossy compression I'd also have chosen material with more high frequency stuff, like lots of cymbals. But at least it's something that can be compared.

Did you do an ABX comparison or just listen to both?

ABX app here:
http://emptymusic.com/software/ABXer.html

I'd encourage anyone who insists they can hear the difference between high bitrate MP3 or higher quality files to take the ABX test and post their results.

 

[tkermit]

Lossless is not high definition music. CDs are not high definition music.

SACD is high definition music. CDs are 44.1 kHz. Hi-def music starts at 88.2 khz. It gets really good at 176 khz.

Setting aside for a moment that 44.1khz/16bit may even be enough, or certainly very near the sweet spot for the final delivery medium, there comes a point where increasing the sample rate will in practice actually lower the sound quality. "More" is not necessarily better in this case.

See also: http://www.lavryengineering.com/documents/Sampling_Theory.pdf

 

[negativzero]

Actually, yes I do need a study for this. Otherwise it's your word against someone else's. I don't get tired from listening to MP3s. Therefore your argument is plain wrong. You don't need a scientific study to say that you are wrong.

What? You disagree? Maybe there should be some third party way to test this objectively? I know - how about a scientific study?

Maybe you don't, but have you tried comparing an mp3 to a FLAC or ALAC song? You'll notice the difference immediately and after sustained listening you'll pretty much feel your ears more fatigued when you listen to lower quality music over a sustained period.

Next thing you know, you'll be asking for me to conduct a study.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/j567304r6464w69l/

Pick up these books if you can. Learn how the cilia in the ear drums pick up and process sound before you dismiss my hocus pocus.
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Physiology-Hearing-Third/dp/0120885212/ref=pd_vtp_b_1
http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Clinical-Audiology-Jack-Katz/dp/0683307657

 

[milo]

Analogue doesn't have specs or numbers to display that it is better than a digital medium...that's part of the beauty of it. It's a literal reproduction of the sound waves that were recorded in the studio.

No. It's. Not.

Analog can sound really pleasing. But you need to let go of this delusion that analog is equivalent to "exact" or "literal" or anything of the sort.

Just to be clear...my argument is less that Vinyl > Lossless (that's more me being sentimental), more that Analogue Recording for true sound capture is inherently and conceptually > Digital

Just to be clear...you're dead wrong.

Movies are a great example to display my point. "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Baraka" were shot on lovely 65mm Film. They have subsequently been released on Blu-Ray...

Your example is only talking about relative resolutions, it has nothing to with analog versus digital.

Sure, a movie shot digitally at 4k can't be upgraded to 8k or 16k if those resolutions become available later on. But the same is true of film, if a movie is shot on 16mm, blowing it up to 35mm isn't going to add any detail, just make the blurry bits larger. Same goes for shooting on 35mm and blowing up to 70mm. If someone released a 150mm film format in the future, the examples you listed wouldn't gain from being converted either.

As you said, those films will never truly be better than that 65mm resolution that was current at the time of "filming". Exactly the same situation regardless of whether it's digital or analog.

 

[Kimmo]

Neil's right. iTunes is a poor quality substitute as compared to other listening formats. Like many "innovations" it's great success owes more to convenience and cost than to ultimate quality.

For a good explanation of compression and what it does to the quality of sound see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

 

[nutritious]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A405)

If Apple really cares about audio quality, they'd ship and sell better headphones. Music is only ever as good as the speakers being used.

The apple ear buds that come with iPods get a lot of criticism, but apple spent a lot of time trying to get them to sound as good as they could. Ear buds usually don't sound very good in comparison to in ear monitors. But apple had to use ear buds to go with their iPods because they needed a solution that would work for everyone's ear. And for an ear-bud, apple's are actually pretty good sounding.

In actuality, apple made one of the best ear-buds ever. Check out this article: http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/lauding-jobs-least-loved-product-basic-apple-ear-bud

 

[flashframe]

We Are Overlooking The Obvious

When did Neil Young ever record anything high quality?

 

[nilk]

Screw Apple Lossless though...What we need is support for FLAC or some other true Open-Source Lossless format on iPod/iPhone. I will pay more and should be the one to decide on how much I'll compromise on Fidelity vs. Space-Saving.

Apple Lossless is open source: http://alac.macosforge.org/
Granted they only open sourced it very recently. But in any case, FLAC doesn't have any advantage that I know of, except maybe a larger install base in non-Apple devices.

But ultimately, as long as you are using a lossless format, it doesn't matter which format, because you can always transcode to another lossless format without losing anything. That is the whole point.

So the question of whether 256kbps AAC sounds good enough is not the issue. The issue is if I transcode 256kbps AAC to another lossy format, is the compounded loss of quality going to be noticeable?

This is why I rarely buy from iTunes and other stores that only sell lossy music, though I would very much like to. I continue to buy CDs even though they are waste of plastic. Ideally, my main music collection for listening at home would be lossless, while my syncing software would transcode to a more compact lossy format for my mobile devices in the near term (and eventually mobile devices will have enough storage for a large lossless collection). I don't have exactly this setup right now, but I would like to in the future.

 

[milo]

Maybe you don't, but have you tried comparing an mp3 to a FLAC or ALAC song?

Have you, at least in a reliable way? Fire up an ABX app comparing a 256 AAC or 320 MP3 to lossless and report back.

http://emptymusic.com/software/ABXer.html

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The issue is if I transcode 256kbps AAC to another lossy format, is the compounded loss of quality going to be noticeable?

Why would you do that conversion?

 

[charlituna]

If Apple really cares about audio quality, they'd ship and sell better headphones. Music is only ever as good as the speakers being used.

ANd if Apple owned every patent related to headphones and speakers and could do what they want when they want they probably would.

Just like if they and not the record labels, studios and networks had the power to decide on when and how to release movies and such we'd probably have 1080p with 5.1 sound, multiple language audio tracks and subtitles for $15.00 tops on a movie and $25 tops on a tv show released within a month on the movies and day after on all shows.

But they don't.

 

[The Norman]

Whether you like them or not, it seems that there is a market for lossless and HD lossless downloads. Does anyone have a guess as to why neither Apple nor the record labels seem to be interested in making more money? Last I checked, they both seem to like money.

 

[Prodo123]

How did he pull that number up? Maybe if the MP3 was @ 64kbps...

And there is a "high-definition music format." It's called FLAC.

There's also ALAC.

 

[Aragornii]

The large majority of posters are missing his point entirely. He's not saying that various compression technologies versus "lossless" are crap, he's saying CD's are crap. Thus, by extension anything you rip from a CD, whether FLAC or 256kbps AAC, is crap.

What he's saying is that we need an entirely new high quality digital format. Something that produces the experience of vinyl. I, for one, agree with him. I can't tell the difference between 256kbps AAC and ALAC, but I can easily tell the difference between CD and vinyl.

 

[milo]

Whether you like them or not, it seems that there is a market for lossless and HD lossless downloads. Does anyone have a guess as to why neither Apple nor the record labels seem to be interested in making more money? Last I checked, they both seem to like money.

The question for any business isn't whether something will make more money, but how much the additional money exceeds the additional costs. Sure, they'd sell some at a higher cost and make more money, but it would it be enough to cover the costs of creating millions of new files and adding the options to the iTunes store? In the case of HD lossless it would require getting new masters as well. They could start a test program with a few albums to see the reaction before applying it to everything.

Plus you're assuming Apple isn't interested, it's possible they want to but the record companies don't allow it (or vice versa). But I suspect Apple doesn't think it's worth their while, now that they have iTunes Match a new lossless format would complicate that as well.

 

[negativzero]

Have you, at least in a reliable way? Fire up an ABX app comparing a 256 AAC or 320 MP3 to lossless and report back.

http://emptymusic.com/software/ABXer.html

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Why would you do that conversion?

I actually did.
Ripped my SACD copy of Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond in 24bit/192khz and 256 AAC using XLD to compare. Got the first 8/10 correct and gave away the last 2 tests cus I got bored. Distortion was a big giveaway on the guitar track for the 256 AAC file. Mind you I'm using a lousy pair of B&O earbuds to do this test on my MacBook, not my home setup which I feel would blow the difference out of the water.

 

[hissyfit]

Agreed... sorta

I agree that HD music should be made available to sell but I think that Neil Young's pitch (all be it valid) was poorly executed. People will buy a coffee for $3 at Starbucks and they should want to buy a well engineered/ mastered record too. I make music for a living and disagree that piracy hasn't harmed folks ability to make a living these days. I have had to let most of that go because ultimately, you do want your music heard. The idea being that you can sell tickets to your live show. Go with the flow.