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

[drumcat]

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.

No one is discussing CAPTURE. We are discussing a consumer format. And no, I don't buy vinyl at all, since I don't need any white noise to warm my music. Nor is a vinyl more accurate; it cannot be for several technical reasons. Hell, you have frequency issues as you get near center. Nice for the 20th century.

 

[JamesPDX]

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.

This won't stop the loudness wars. I can provide you with a stereo master that is 24/192, but what I do on the master bus that can determine whether the tune has 90dB or 9dB of dynamic range.

Still, a downloadable and uncompressed ( and I'm talking data compression, not bus compression) 24/44.1 .wav file will sound better than a "lossless" 24/192 "whatever" file. Lossless is a marketing term. Streaming 24/192 is a waste of data bandwidth.

 

[Sevenfeet]

This won't stop the loudness wars. I can provide you with a stereo master that is 24/192, but what I do on the master bus that can determine whether the tune has 90dB or 9dB of dynamic range.

Still, a downloadable and uncompressed ( and I'm talking data compression, not bus compression) 24/44.1 .wav file will sound better than a "lossless" 24/192 "whatever" file. Lossless is a marketing term. Streaming 24/192 is a waste of data bandwidth.

This has been an interesting argument but the bottom line is that the mastering process is a huge determination of the final quality of the recording. This is readily apparent in early CD recordings from the 1980's when engineers were still learning how to properly master music digitally. Many of my CDs from this era have great dynamic range versus vinyl or tape but have a pretty harsh edge to them that disappeared in later recordings when best practices and technology improved.

I would disagree that streaming 24/192 is a waste of bandwidth. A properly recorded and mastered 24/192 performance is something attractive to audiophiles and I would gladly pay for it since I have the equipment to properly reproduce it. Not everyone does in their home. We have this very same argument for streaming 4K video. Some people cannot tell much of a difference and if the original stream is overly compressed, then they are right since detail suffers. But a good quality stream produces more detail and fewer artifacts. And yes, there is a market for it. Lastly, streaming Hi-Res music may have not made sense 10 years ago but in the Netflix-binge era, even these large streams are a pittance next to 1080p video streams we watch every day.

As for me, I'm looking forward to the day that Apple finally offers Hi-Res streaming (or purchases through the iTunes Store). iTunes itself has supported up to 24/192 Apple Lossless files for quite some time (HDTracks.com and others sell music in this format). Redbook quality audio is one of the main reasons while audiophiles got behind Tidal originally. If Apple ups the game and does 24/96, then they become the instant leader with a group of customers who spend a lot more money on their music and don't mind spending extra at HDTracks.com.

 

[pat500000]

stupid apple...what's with you and music...stay on computers, phones, ipads.

 

[eow]

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.

Are you even sure what you're talking about? Lossless compression is just a way to manipulate bits — to convey the same amount of info in fewer bits. The original can be recreated from a lossless compression, or it is not lossless.

Also, there's nothing intrinsically good or bad about FLAC/AIFF/ALAC/whatever lossless codec/container (there are tradeoffs, but hopefully you know what I mean by "intrinsically" here). I can convert a lossy AAC to a FLAC file with FFmpeg in a second; it's no good, but it's not FLAC's fault. It's the source stream that matters.

 

[GermanSuplex]

Can't hear any difference between CD audio (or higher-quality) and 128kbps AAC or Lame MP3, let alone iTunes Plus quality. Especially not where I do most of my listening, on the go or in a noisy work environment. It takes very expensive equipment and the right listening environment to tell a difference (for the few who can, I suppose) between lossy formats and higher quality versions. I stopped worrying so much about this when I scored about a 8% on an abx test... I could have done better just guessing. I try not to convert lossy to lossy, and I do have secure ALAC rips of all of my CDs, but they sit on a drive and all of my listening library are mp3s or iTunes AAC.

 

[drumcat]

This has been an interesting argument but the bottom line is that the mastering process is a huge determination of the final quality of the recording. This is readily apparent in early CD recordings from the 1980's when engineers were still learning how to properly master music digitally. Many of my CDs from this era have great dynamic range versus vinyl or tape but have a pretty harsh edge to them that disappeared in later recordings when best practices and technology improved.

I would disagree that streaming 24/192 is a waste of bandwidth. A properly recorded and mastered 24/192 performance is something attractive to audiophiles and I would gladly pay for it since I have the equipment to properly reproduce it. Not everyone does in their home. We have this very same argument for streaming 4K video. Some people cannot tell much of a difference and if the original stream is overly compressed, then they are right since detail suffers. But a good quality stream produces more detail and fewer artifacts. And yes, there is a market for it. Lastly, streaming Hi-Res music may have not made sense 10 years ago but in the Netflix-binge era, even these large streams are a pittance next to 1080p video streams we watch every day.

As for me, I'm looking forward to the day that Apple finally offers Hi-Res streaming (or purchases through the iTunes Store). iTunes itself has supported up to 24/192 Apple Lossless files for quite some time (HDTracks.com and others sell music in this format). Redbook quality audio is one of the main reasons while audiophiles got behind Tidal originally. If Apple ups the game and does 24/96, then they become the instant leader with a group of customers who spend a lot more money on their music and don't mind spending extra at HDTracks.com.

This is also an interesting point. Because video is lossy, perception changes based on the bandwidth coming through. 4K is great, but so is 1080p with sufficient bandwidth- something most cable providers do not give.

Audio streaming certainly can improve, but it can improve fastest by the streams just offering more bandwidth!

 

[JamesPDX]

This is very interesting:

http://www.gatewaymastering.com/gateway_LoudnessWars.asp

There's some great stuff on YouTube about this. I'm dealing with perceived loudness right now with my old band's reunion recording. The fun part was recording; the PITA is the mix, continuity, and finally what will be the master, or stems. -And it's all 24/44.1 because I had to record so many drum channels at once from a tube-pre via ADAT in to Pro Tools. But hey, at least there won't be a sample rate conversion! The masters will eventually be on Bandcamp.com where fans can either choose a 24/44.1 .wav file all the way down to an mp3. The price will be the same, but I hope people will choose the higher-quality files, even if they want to convert them to a more portable format later. The important thing is that the tunes are cool, it's all real guitar, bass, voice, and drums, and... I'm giving fans a choice.

 

[moxin]

Hi-Res means higher prices

 

[topmounter]

While I own a DAC that support 24/384 and DSD128... Tidal's 44.1 KHz lossless streams are nice, but what I'd like is legit 24-bit support for the greater dynamic range. DSD sounds amazing, but the folks producing DSD content typically have very high recording and mastering skills which is really the key to great sounding music. The reality is that I find 256+ Kbps MP3/AAC files to sound just fine on my factory car stereo or with canal phones plugged into my phone (infinitely better than the cassette tapes of my youth).

 

[driceman]

Sweet! Now we can hear everyone complain how Apple music is chewing through their data plans.

Unless they use T-Mobile where it doesn't count toward their data plan.

 

[kalafalas]

"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."

This is absolutely correct. What we do need, is bitrate way higher than 256. What's wrong with ALAC? Apple already has the format, and it's perfectly ready for MP4 format DRM that they use with AAC because it's the same container. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS

 

[chromite]

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.

Spending that much on an amp means it better have HDMI (which is superior to optical audio anyways.)

 

[allenvanhellen]

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.

Preach! Getting producers to cut back on DRC and brick-wall peak limiters is going to make the biggest difference. And after that, I do much prefer losslessly-compressed CD-quality music to anything lossy. The big difference between CD-quality music and standard-definition video is that, when recorded, mixed, and mastered well, CD-quality can sound absolutely stunning. In contrast to the HD/4k video revolutions, I'd argue that the only reason another revolution in the audio space would be useful is that it might stimulate demand for (and supply of) music that has more than the ~4db of clipping dynamic range of modern music.

 

[Aston441]

A real, system wide graphical equalizer, like Android has had for more than half a decade, would go a long way towards improving sound for the average Joe, without requiring the consumer to spend additional money. I guess that's not how Apple operates anymore. It seems like anything Apple does with media these days is carefully crafted to take and rake in the bucks, rather than just make things nicer.

 

[Porco]

It ludicrous it's taken this long already. I would be so much more likely to buy music on iTunes if it was actual CD quality or better. As things stand the CD or a lossless purchase from elsewhere is often cheaper or very little more than the lossy iTunes version, which is just silly.

 

[randian]

Why do they need a new format? ALAC supports 24/96kHz or 24/192kHz PCM just fine. They could go DSD or 2xDSD but most people don't have the equipment to play it.

 

[hiddenmarkov]

Hi-Res means higher prices

This I think is the main problem. The audiophiles have chimed in saying they found their sites for this and pay for it. What 3rd party is for, it fills needs not met by a vendor.

Apple if implementing this...needs a lot of work. Work means money. Money we all pay in some way worst case.

If one site, its 2 dl links. Props go to apple for slick displays on iTunes or app store. An extra icon will be at the minimum some web design hours put in to have this implemented seamlessly, easily and tastefully. I've seen just slap it in go awry...

And added confusion (for some, one of apple's things is ease of use over other vendors where I can see a plethora of DL options depending on application site looked at). Apple was here long ago with apps. The old days of HD version and non HD version. back when there was clearer divisions between phone/pad lines. This by and large is gone now or its at least handled internally in code to go ohh I am on a phone not a pad. I don't go do I get new new Angry Birds HD or non HD like years ago, its the one link and sorts itself out on device.

Or apple is standing up 2 sites and has 2 icons....music as we know it now one plus a new HD music. Which tbh I'd say go for it.


If the normal store doesn't see price creep.

And its not yet another icon on my devices I can't delete. I'd want and require Music HD as an application be removable.

This not causing price creep on "normal" I don't see. Nor do I see apple giving us an icon/app we can delete. We the people who will never own an apple watch lost that fight and have yet another icon we will never, ever, eva use.

Fixing by hiding is not a fix. Its akin to having my son clean his room. Good job son, room all organized now. So...son....what's going to happen if I open up your closet door? Will I be even more amazed or shall I prepare for an avalanche of crap to fall out? Moral to this story, cluttered crap hidden away is not removing it, its hiding it

 

[drumcat]

Why are you talking about downloads? The article is about a streaming format...

 

[usarioclave]

A real, system wide graphical equalizer, like Android has had for more than half a decade [cut]It seems like anything Apple does with media these days is carefully crafted to take and rake in the bucks, rather than just make things nicer.

iPods and IPhones have had that since they came out. They're in, you know, the EQ section.

 

[Jake Jacobs]

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.

You make a valid point

 

[drumcat]

iPods and IPhones have had that since they came out. They're in, you know, the EQ section.

Please do tell how you get that v shape adjusting the 38 hz runner...

 

[hiddenmarkov]

Why are you talking about downloads? The article is about a streaming format...

Apple would have to offer 2 setups for it. One normal, one HD. That be 2 services. If not using HD...why would I want to pull its streams killing bandwidth use in the first place.

Downloads given as an example of how it was handled before. If I didn't need HD at the time...I went for the non HD version. Unless you have another way they'd provide both contents in mind this would follow a similar setup/model from the past off the top of my head.

 

[Jake Jacobs]

Where you guys are getting that 24/192 is inferior to 16/44.1 I have no clue. I do believe it may be overkill to stream. The bottom line is that sound quality is subjective. Garbage in garbage out. No amount of bit depth and sample rate will fix bad source. With that said I challenge anyone to play back two sources of 16/44.1 record one at 24/192 and the other at 16/44.1 The 16/44.1 that was recorded at 24/192 will sound better. The rule Ive used for years is to record at sample rates and bit depth as high as your computer can handle. The mixdown will sound noticeably better. Now I know many of you will flame and try to geek me to death which is fine. If Apple's so called pointless venture goes nowhere and they dont sell anything, you can say you told me so, but we both know thats not going to happen.

 

[SactoGuy18]

There has been a rumors bandied about a couple of years that Apple has been working on a new version of the Apple Lossless format that essentially is the equivalent of 96 kHz sampling rate at 24 bits digital audio--the same digital format used on Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio tracks on Blu-ray discs. With the A8 and A9 SoC's, they have the computing power to easily decode such audio formats.

But why would Apple go to such a new format? Simple: vastly more "natural" sound quality on acoustic instruments with a lot of high frequency sounds, such as violins, cymbals, and the higher notes on a piano. This new format could be spectacular on symphony orchestra and full acoustical band recordings, that's to be sure.