Apple Once Again Rumored to Be Developing High-Resolution Audio Formats

[Benjamin Frost]

I need the performer in my house singing next to me. Compressed audio, lossless audio, or even original masters don't quite cut it. I won't be satisfied until Apple ships the performer to my house after I purchase the track. I won't even bother with your inferior algorithms.

I wish I had your laxity of standards.

Unless I can hear the music in the place where it was originally performed, by the original performers, in the same concert dress, at the same time of day as the first performance, and on the same date, it doesn't cut it for me.

 

[nt5672]

I wish I had your laxity of standards.

Unless I can hear the music in the place where it was originally performed, by the original performers, in the same concert dress, it doesn't cut it for me.

Plus at the same altitude, temperature and humidity.

 

[foxcub6]

Could we just have lossless audio please. These higher bit rates and depth sound no different. Also, sort out dynamic range, that's the biggest problem right now.

I would be happy to get decent volume out of this I phone 6S not giving me that extra edge the 4S had ok mane gettin a bit deaf but clearly a different volume level between phones

 

[NDRes]

I welcome improvements, but as hard as I've tried, with my Senn HD-600s and my AKG-702's I have so far hit a limit on what I can hear.

 

[prowlmedia]

ALAC or FLAC is not good enough, you need AIFF or WAV to really hear it as it was intended...better yet, vinyl

or even high end studio over-ear monitors, so you would not be be able to tell a difference.

1. Lossless.. means... Lossless.
2. Vinyl is only perceivably better with someone with fantastic hearing, a $5K deck with $1K needle on a perfect pressing with great speakers / cans. 99.9% of vinyl for the rest of us is fuzzy static cracklefest.

 

[AleXXXa]

Gotta love those people who claim FLAC is better quality then AAC lossless...

There's no such thing as AAC lossless. AAC is lossy, so yeah a FLAC (or ALAC which is apple's version of flac) will always sound better than a lossy file (like aac, mp3).

 

[Benjamin Frost]

Plus at the same altitude, temperature and humidity.

Good points.

And the background noise needs to be recreated faithfully, too. No word from Apple on that front.

 

[duncanmc]

Lossless is just a term used to name it because most people will view this as no loss in quality...NOT TRUE -- it is compressed about 3x smaller size than the original using algorithms which change the audio - it is NOT the exact sound as the original but instead a 400kbps or 500kbps file, which will take less space than an AIFF substantially but is not the RAW quality of the master.

This is incorrect. Lossless compression by definition will reproduce the original source bit for bit when uncompressed.

 

[gnasher729]

"Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space."

The video adds a lot to the understanding, but the actual argument why 24 bit / 192 KHz for distribution is pointless is found here: http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Basically the article claims (quite believably): 1. 24 bit in distributed material doesn't help at all, but it doesn't hurt either. 2. 192 KHz doesn't only not help, it actually hurts by introducing artefacts in analogue parts that just can't handle the ultrasound frequencies. 3. 16bit / 44.1KHz for distribution is absolutely fine. It is even better if dithering is used, especially shaped dithering which reduces quantizing artefacts in areas that we can hear and moves it to other areas where our hearing is worse.

Much more important is to absolutely avoid clipping which leads to massive + unnecessary distortions, and to use high quality encoders with high quality settings - which very often doesn't happen.

I listen to all my music on a Yamaha speaker system. Recently I downloaded two versions of an album, one from iTunes at 256k AAC and one from Beatport at 1411k AIFF uncompressed. The difference in the quality, the sharpness, and the detail throughout the tracks on the album is astounding. Even the artist said in an interview he was upset about the compressed version only being available in this format from the Apple Store, mentioning that "two of the basslines in one of the tracks were just not even there" -- T

Read the article quoted above. As an example, he reports that people found SACD had much higher quality than CD. It turned out that the SACD recordings used better masters; converting them to CD format produced a CD that sounded exactly the same as the SACD and better than the CD that was on sale. All a matter of using a better master.

Same could have been happening in your case. Try converting the 1411KBit/sec version to 256 Kbit AAC and compare the results. Quite possible that your 1411KBit/sec download was based on a better original.

Lossless is just a term used to name it because most people will view this as no loss in quality...NOT TRUE -- it is compressed about 3x smaller size than the original using algorithms which change the audio - it is NOT the exact sound as the original but instead a 400kbps or 500kbps file, which will take less space than an AIFF substantially but is not the RAW quality of the master.

When you play music with lossless compression, your music player decompresses the compressed audio, and gets exactly the same data as the original CD. No difference at all.

 

[WigWag Workshop]

Wish I could hear the difference in Hi-Res music. Is Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead still remastering some of their albums to take advantage of the technology?

 

[Sill]

But the truth is, iTunes listeners are mostly headphone listener. And stereo is a waste.
PLEASE, log on to NOUVOSON , and listen to Binaural mixes. Then you'll understand what your daily sound experience, with your same pair of headphones can be.

Let's be immersive, and detailed.... Not just broader in spectrum

Very true. Stereo works optimally when you have an airspace between the source and the listener, so you can enjoy the crossover between the channels. Of course that same crossover provokes artifacts as well. Stereo is a compromise between best soundstage and worst enemy to the audio experience. James Bongiorno developed his Trinaural system to combat this, with some success.
Listening via headphones, binaural is the way to go and has been for decades. When I worked in audio, we had albums available which were recorded live, with a mannequin head wearing earpiece mikes for inputs. Perfect soundstage but of course you had to mix live as well since there was no way to do a multi-track master and mix in post. Very cool stuff when I looked at in the late 80s.
Since you're involved in this, how are they recording this now? Are they still using live stage or is there a way to do post-mixing with binaural?

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Let's hope that Apple takes advantage of utilising MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) that has been developed by Meridian. This reproduces audio as the studio intended, at lossless high-res quality, but in the same space as that normally associated with compressed audio.

That's physically not possible. Analog conversion to Digital guarantees at that moment the complete sound wave has been compromised and sampled to compress in favor of better data transfer rates. There is no means of restoring that original analog wave form and the entirety of ambient noise that the original recording session captures on tape or other non-digital recording.

 

[grahamtriggs]

Lossless doesn't cut it for me. I need the full raw uncompressed quality to hear it as it was mastered. Lossless dulls out some of the minute details, sharpness and punchy bass elements that you don't really get until you jump up past about 900k -- ALAC or FLAC is not good enough, you need AIFF or WAV to really hear it as it was intended...better yet, vinyl

Basically, anytime you add any kind of compression algorithm to the original it dumbs it down, fuzzes up the highs and makes the sharper elements of the bass less pronounced.

Lossless is exactly what it says - there is no loss. Literally no loss. Not just no loss in perceivable sound quality, but expands back out to be exactly the same WAV / AIFF that was used as input for the compression - bit for bit identical.

In theory, there might be an issue with a particular decompression routine - a bug, or a shortcut taken to save processing power / battery life. Or, there might be other issues with the audio signal path when playing back a FLAC / ALAC on a given device.

But it's not a failure of the format.

 

[bommai]

This is so true! This link explains why high resolution downloads are pointless:
https://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Lossless is useful because it allows you to transcode to other smaller formats without artefacts.

The "loudness war" of popular music is indeed the biggest problem with audio quality today.

You can have both. Get lossless ALAC at 24 bit 96khz.

 

[grahamtriggs]

16-bit/44khz/stereo @ 256kbps AAC is good enough for me and the vast majority of consumers. Honestly, people that jerk off over "high res" audio above CD quality spend so much time thinking about bit rates that they forget about the actual music.

256kbps AAC is fine on a portable device with earbuds. But it's not good enough when listening at home with a high quality separates system. Funnily enough, people that spend a fortune on home hi-fi equipment ARE actually listening to the not obsessing over the numbers (although that doesn't make them immune to suggestion).

 

[Sill]

Lossless is just a term used to name it because most people will view this as no loss in quality...NOT TRUE -- it is compressed about 3x smaller size than the original using algorithms which change the audio - it is NOT the exact sound as the original but instead a 400kbps or 500kbps file, which will take less space than an AIFF substantially but is not the RAW quality of the master.

If you're talking about an analog master, you'd be correct. Analog has an infinite sampling rate - essentially, an analog recording is one continuous sample. A high quality raw analog master can't be surpassed by digital technology, IMO, and that of a lot of people I know with sound engineering experience. You can come close, but there's all sorts of tradeoffs in choosing sides in digital vs analog. You get incredible clarity from digital and a lack of the old analog hiss, but you lose out on that warmth that turns out to be less subjective than people think. Digital gives better transient response, but analog gives a better soundstage. In my experience, I can "hear the room" better when I listen to a recording that is HQ analog at most if not all of the steps. Without getting into talking about the limitation of the SPARS code, AAD sounds better to me than ADD, which sounds better to me than DDD. I could never understand the point of a DAD recording, but thats another topic.

As a few others have pointed out, the quality of the equipment plays a big part and the talent level of the engineer plays an enormous part, more so than the bit and sampling rates these days. I'd rather have Alan Parsons mix my next recording on five year old gear at 16/44 than whomever turns out the latest interchangeable pop on the newest boards in 24/92 or whatever.

 

[Soni Sanjay]

I have extensively been writing about this in several other threads on here...

Apple needs to make raw uncompressed, full-quality AIFF versions of their music available to download at the Apple Music Store. I would not have a problem paying extra for the higher quality audio, much like Beatport already has available,

The audio quality difference IS noticeable on good speakers, or good studio monitor headphones, but it is neglibible if none on the standard white earbuds,

I listen to all my music on a Yamaha speaker system. Recently I downloaded two versions of an album, one from iTunes at 256k AAC and one from Beatport at 1411k AIFF uncompressed. The difference in the quality, the sharpness, and the detail throughout the tracks on the album is astounding. Even the artist said in an interview he was upset about the compressed version only being available in this format from the Apple Store, mentioning that "two of the basslines in one of the tracks were just not even there" -- The difference is real, and 256k AAC just isn't that great compared to the original full-quality. You would be even better using your ripped CDs at Apple Lossless or raw than downloading the music from Apple.

So, I hope that Apple will start selling full quality uncompressed versions of the music. It's something I really hope will happen. Maybe like "iTunes Plus," they can do an upgrade fee if you already have an AAC file to get the AIFF for llike $1.00 extra. I would gladly pay extra for higher quality. I think other people feel the same way about this.

Golden Ears? Lol...

As others have said, it makes no difference, 256k AAC is perfectly fine.

Now, if they ended the Loudness Wars, that would be something...

 

[grahamtriggs]

More bits. When you move from 16 to 24 bits, you move from a resolution of only 64000 steps to a better 2 million steps in quantifying, and for only just an wheight aggravation of 1,5 ....
So let's move to 32 bits quantification, if not 40. My Lawo desk works in 40 floating.... And that mean 512 db of dynamics....

That can be beneficial for mixing, but not for playback. The absolute limit of dynamic range for humans is about 120db. In the real world, when you don't want to go deaf and have a noise floor - even in a "silent" listening room - to contend with, you only need 40 - 60db of dynamic range.

The problem with 16 bit audio is the choice made in production to compress the dynamic range and push the loudness of a track. 16 bits are perfectly sufficient if people bothered to use them correctly.

 

[displaced]

What I'd really like to see is availability of multichannel music. A handful of artists (R.E.M., Orbital, Lamb, to name a handful) have mastered their albums in 5.1 surround. It's really quite fun to listen to.

 

[grahamtriggs]

Lossless is just a term used to name it because most people will view this as no loss in quality...NOT TRUE -- it is compressed about 3x smaller size than the original using algorithms which change the audio - it is NOT the exact sound as the original but instead a 400kbps or 500kbps file, which will take less space than an AIFF substantially but is not the RAW quality of the master.

No - lossless is FLAC or ALAC, and they genuinely are lossless, in that when uncompressed you end up with the IDENTICAL set of bits that you started with.

FLAC / ALAC do not result in 3x smaller, apart from maybe unusual test cases. Generally, it's about 40% smaller - which is better than zip or RAR, but that's because it can take advantage of common characteristics of audio data, that general purpose algorithms don't do.

 

[Sill]

As others have said, it makes no difference, 256k AAC is perfectly fine.

Now, if they ended the Loudness Wars, that would be something...

256AAC is great through earbuds, but I'd really disagree with that over ALAC from vinyl on my home stereo.

 

[QuarterSwede]

Its not the engineers, its the people that buy the music regardless how bad it sounds. Most engineers, at least the ones I know, could certainly do better but the band or their marketing people don't want to take a chance on the music not being the loudest on the market. Today's pop listeners equate loud and compressed with good. They don't like subtleties, they want music in your face. They want to listed to the first few bars, bounce their body to the beat a few times to prove they are in the popular crowd, then forget about the music while they start texting or whatever.

Sorry, I was unclear. I wasn't linking the two thoughts (paragraphs). The engineering is poor these days in other ways that have nothing to do with compression. I agree that the producers/marketers are usually at fault with regard to compression.

 

[grahamtriggs]

1. Lossless.. means... Lossless.
2. Vinyl is only perceivably better with someone with fantastic hearing, a $5K deck with $1K needle on a perfect pressing with great speakers / cans. 99.9% of vinyl for the rest of us is fuzzy static cracklefest.

Vinyl has lower dynamic range and signal to noise ratio, and degrade during playback. People might prefer them because it presents a certain type of sound that they prefer (unless you are in the mixing studio, you can only really judge on a personal preference, not on accurate reproduction), and/or during manufacture they have been "messed with" less than other formats (e.g. deliberate choice to compress a dynamic range and push the loudness).

But technically, 16-bit / 44khz digital recordings are a superior format to vinyl. We just need to convince the music industry to use the digital formats correctly.

 

[Julien]

...But technically, 16-bit / 44khz digital recordings are a superior format to vinyl. We just need to convince the music industry to use the digital formats correctly.

The problem is that ironically the vinyl will often be offered with less dynamic range compression (loudness wars) than the CD release. So sad.

 

[grahamtriggs]

That's physically not possible. Analog conversion to Digital guarantees at that moment the complete sound wave has been compromised and sampled to compress in favor of better data transfer rates. There is no means of restoring that original analog wave form and the entirety of ambient noise that the original recording session captures on tape or other non-digital recording.

Conversion to digital means sampling - there is absolutely no implication that it is then compressed in favour of better transfer rates.

Studios are (almost?) entirely digital now - they sample, store and mix at a very high resolution, and then create other formats from there. Every new "analog" media that you buy now will have gone through a digital process.

Not only are the digital formats used in studios perfectly capable of capturing and retaining during mixing the subtleties that you claim digital is missing, even CD resolution is perfectly capable of representing them for playback.

Don't confuse bad production - where detail is deliberately compressed out of the audio in favour of loudness - with the technical capability of the format.