Nice.
B&W's headphones are a bit of a disappointment, but I find their loudspeakers are excellent and well worth their price. However, every speaker has their own unique sound, so they may not be your cup of tea.
Speakers, headphones, earbuds any transducer really has its own unique sound. What you prefer is very subjective and personal and may not reflect what others like. None of these devices really reproduces what is heard live.
I doubt Apple is going to release HD audio soon. Nobody can hear the difference between CD and HD audio, and very few believe they can. It's not a large market.
It is about marketing. As to hearing the differences that is in the engineering of the recording. A carefully mastered recording can sound better and if you offer it up as an HD recording people will pay extra for it.
As an aside I have to have annual hearing exams for work, where they plot the hearing response of both ears. Even my left and right ears show remarkable differences in response over the audible spectrum. In other words one ear shows more hearing loss over the norm than the other. No two people hear the same sounds in exactly the same way. This is why all this nonsense about what headphone is best just irritates me. What is good depends upon your expectations, your physical make up and what you are listening too.
I know that comment is going to generate some
but until anyone can provide evidence that any human can hear the difference between 16/44.1 and HD audio, there's no point. The science is here:
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
He is at times correct and then contradicts himself.
For example the idea behind higher sampling rates isn't so much to acquire higher frequencies but rather to capture more data in the frequency range humans can hear.
As for data size he is right that 16 bits is enough in a perfect world. However the recording industry is far from a perfect world. 16 bits is feasible if you assume that the recording studio does a good job of mastering the recording into that range. Much is released that is just plain sloppy in its mastering.
There are something's he has presented that I consider a bit bogus or maybe just not clearly presented. For example 16 bits should be plenty of dynamic range in an ideal world. The problem is the recording studio isn't the ideal world and as such you are dependent upon the audio engineer properly mastering the recording to 16 bits. He actually alludes to this several times but seems to mis the dots so to speak.
In a nut shell it is the quality of the engineering that makes or breaks 16 bit audio for playback. There is more than enough dynamic range to handle the music if mastered properly.
I must admit, I'd be happy if they released ALAC files at 16/44.1, but I'm not expecting it. I'd actually start buying from iTunes if they did that.
I usually turn on a radio! Sorry to disappoint! I do have some iTunes music in my possession and frankly I prefer it to vinyl by a large margin. My hearing isn't that good but there is considerable noise in vinyl that I can easily hear. As to CDs in comparison to iTunes again not a huge difference, at least not in the way I usually listen to music. The normal way I listen to music is in the background while doing other things, as such the source doesn't have much impact.
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Not sure why you putting B&W in same sentence with Beats and Bose. B&WMakes audiophile quality products.
Maybe because he is under the influence of somebodies marketing? The problem with headphones, earbuds and the like is that you really can't do blind testing of the products. As such people respond to the logo or known shape of the devices.
Beyond that every transducer ever manufactured offers up its own coloring of the music. It makes one look like a fool to categorically say one brand is better than all others for every use.
