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Apple Once Again Rumored to Be Developing High-Resolution Audio Formats
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Theoretically, yes. But it's unnecessary to go above 16-bit 44 / 48khz.
Worse, there are many devices out there that are perfectly capable of playing back 16-bit/44khz lossless formats, but haven't been built to handle high resolution - e.g. Sonos.
Let's get the necessary audio format out to the largest market, than the unnecessary one to a tiny one.
Agree, Dynamic range is very high on most modern CD Albums today. they need to stop this !
I've found that other things limit the audio quality in many cases, long before you hit the point where you hear improvement because a track is encoded in more than 16 bits.
For example, for Windows, Sony has a program called ACID Pro, which was practically the standard for working with creating music using looped sound samples.
When you start building songs with it, though, you quickly notice a loss of quality as you add more loops playing simultaneously. Everything takes on a compressed sound and clarity in the original loops is lost. The best sounding tracks make sure only a few loops play at any given point in time.
They started selling 24-bit "superior quality" samples for ACID Pro, but in my experience using it, that was really overkill -- since your production quality problems have more to do with "artifacts" introduced as multiple loops play on top of each other.
For example, for Windows, Sony has a program called ACID Pro, which was practically the standard for working with creating music using looped sound samples.
When you start building songs with it, though, you quickly notice a loss of quality as you add more loops playing simultaneously. Everything takes on a compressed sound and clarity in the original loops is lost. The best sounding tracks make sure only a few loops play at any given point in time.
They started selling 24-bit "superior quality" samples for ACID Pro, but in my experience using it, that was really overkill -- since your production quality problems have more to do with "artifacts" introduced as multiple loops play on top of each other.
Nothing else hurts my ears more than those 7 people obsessing about uncompressed, lossless, gold plated jacks and what not. That hurts my ears the most.
This is a pipe dream, unless it's mandated somehow by law like the RMS level of TV ads (at least in Europe).
Imagine a compilation of pop tracks; suddenly, a "properly" mastered one starts, with its pristine peaks and valleys. The average listener just skips the song then, believing it's broken conpared to the rest. He may also end up returning the product as defective.
Not going to happen.
Good move to have choice if it's true.
I rip my CDs in alac on and carry them in aac, to my ears most songs sound fine with aac.
Maybe it's the mixing but some songs do sound pretty different when compressed.
The only problem is my long loved iPod will be obsolete, but high Def is probably not practical for portables anyway.
I rip my CDs in alac on and carry them in aac, to my ears most songs sound fine with aac.
Maybe it's the mixing but some songs do sound pretty different when compressed.
The only problem is my long loved iPod will be obsolete, but high Def is probably not practical for portables anyway.
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They don't have the power to end it but they've done as much as they can on their end by way of "Mastered for iTunes" and the use of Sound Check on Apple Music/iTunes Radio.
Streaming will be the future and Apple already has "mandated" it by using Sound Check on Apple Music. The record companies can make it as loud as they want but Sound Check will automatically lower it. Game over.
Unless I can download and own my music, it's moot.
As for the quality debate, if you listen to music in a car or on a mobile device you're right.
But if you have the equipment, for music that's worth listening to at higher quality (and was recorded that way), it makes a huge difference. SACD or DVD-Audio blows away CD (which blows away lossy compressed music).
All this makes the elimination of the TOS-Link port on the AppleTV even more odd though. Because if you've dropped a couple of thousand bucks on a good quality amp, you're not going to replace it for a $150 Apple TV.
Agreed - because lossless compression can be reversed (by definition) to restore the exact original bitstream. If you can't reverse the compression, then it's not lossless.
As for the quality debate, if you listen to music in a car or on a mobile device you're right.
But if you have the equipment, for music that's worth listening to at higher quality (and was recorded that way), it makes a huge difference. SACD or DVD-Audio blows away CD (which blows away lossy compressed music).
All this makes the elimination of the TOS-Link port on the AppleTV even more odd though. Because if you've dropped a couple of thousand bucks on a good quality amp, you're not going to replace it for a $150 Apple TV.
Agreed - because lossless compression can be reversed (by definition) to restore the exact original bitstream. If you can't reverse the compression, then it's not lossless.
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Funny how often you see "compression" of data confused with whether something is "lossy".
Zip files don't drop data... Compressed (data) audio is the same.
Also, we deal with lossy video 100% of the time. Somehow audio is supposed to be a higher standard. If you cannot tell the difference in a scientific A/B study to high significance, why do you want it? It's like ripping on handbrake at a q=3 instead of 20ish. You end up with a 3 terabyte movie and you can't really tell the difference.
Rip in ALAC and move on.
Zip files don't drop data... Compressed (data) audio is the same.
Also, we deal with lossy video 100% of the time. Somehow audio is supposed to be a higher standard. If you cannot tell the difference in a scientific A/B study to high significance, why do you want it? It's like ripping on handbrake at a q=3 instead of 20ish. You end up with a 3 terabyte movie and you can't really tell the difference.
Rip in ALAC and move on.
Except that no one who cares about music quality uses Beats headphones. There are plenty of headphones in the $100-200 range that have better audio quality.
Then again, to really benefit from HD audio, you're talking studio reference level of headphones - add a zero to that price range.
The market is home audio, not portable.
Sure convince all the mobile and internet providers in the world to give everyone unlimited data......
ALAC is AAC lossless lol... i'm not arguing over semantics here
Ultimately everything but a live acoustic performance is lossy - as soon as you hear 'sample rate', you know that information is missing. The closest thing to live is why we see the LP resurgence...to get that analog signal. That's why I'll take a 70mm movie over any digital that I've seen to date.
The question is, how much information has been lost, and if the music is impacted. For example, Classical and Jazz, in general, are more sensitive than country, rap and rock. So CD is fine for Garth and AAC for boy bands. But Brubeck, Beethoven, Getz, Davis, Mozart all sound far better in HD Audio than they do on CD's.
It really isn't the same thing at all.
ALAC is a form of data compression, where you throw away in a way that lets you reconstruct the original data -exactly-.
AAC is a form of perceptual encoding, where you throw away data based on a model of human perception, and it's limited ability to notice differences. Data that does not produce a noticeable difference can be thrown away, and produce the same perception.
So maybe a new extension of lifespan for the iPods?
New audio formats means new generation hardware that can support those formats.
New audio formats means new generation hardware that can support those formats.
They both use an MP4 container with .m4a extension, but they are technically unrelated. ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) was developed in-house by Apple, probably with help from some of their Emagic (Logic) ZAP guys, and is now open source. AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is still part of the MPEG-2/4 spec and was developed by Bell Labs, the Fraunhofer Institute, Dolby Labs, Sony, and Nokia. It is not open source, requiring a patent license for end-user encoder or decoder products.
As for the rest of this topic, most producers I know now record at 44.1/24, with some testing the 48/24 waters now that we aren't as concerned with conversion to CD anymore, and also since we sometimes SRC to 96/24 just for mastering. I don't know anyone who actually works at 192 kHz all the time. Point being: Almost no one does their mix-downs at 16-bit today, and 'CD quality' doesn't mean much anymore.
Also — Many beloved vinyl masters in 1990s and 2000s were mixed to DAT at a very digital 44.1/16, because DAT was the hot spit that saved everyone time, space, and money.
yes it is, knowing very well that was the intention in my post but you like to argue semantics so whatever... ALAC used to be referred to as AAC lossless before it was named ALAC. many people still refer to it as AAC lossless or Apple Lossless. they are all the same thing.
Glad you brought up Beatport, I love that place albeit it's pricey! If I have to download music, which means spending my hard-earned money, then I want it to be AIFF (lossless) at least. Juno Download offers WAV (and lossy MP3) as well if you're into electronic music.
Anyone else remember the days of using P2P programs and it ending up being a headache trying to find a decent quality MP3 file? It was a real chore downloading a song only to hear skipping or weird artifacts in the track. That's partly why I strive for lossless, I've lived through that struggle.
The other part is I rip my collection of CDs as lossless to sort of future proof it. One day I'll get a better sound system, or aside from listening, it could serve as a needed backup. Though in recent years, I've heard of high quality formats that go beyond 16-bit, such as 24-bit, so I may yet again need to go back and revisit my collection. Till then, I'm excited to see if Apple will unleash lossless or better. It almost feels as if this is one of Apple's last great frontiers, which is improving audio quality to me.
I am a lurker. Once or twice a year I'll actually comment.
As a former professional PT Certified audio engineer - this comment is 100% accurate. And it needed to be said.
You can't improve the dynamic range of masters. They are already compressed and limited.
The "Loudness Wars" has brought us "here". And for most popular music the consumers/listeners have chosen more punch, less fidelity.
If you want to change the dynamic range you'll have to convince the music industry and record labels to drastically change an essentially ingrained trend.
It won't happen.
If you truly want dynamic range you will have to go back to analog records.
Convenience has trumped the details.
24bit audio .wav/.aiff files are a noticeable and welcome option for me.
*This is why Jimmy Iovine was an important acquisition.