Apple Reportedly Looking to Offer 24-Bit Music Files in iTunes Store

[grapemac]

What's the difference between "lossless" audio, such as an Apple Lossless file ripped off a CD, and this 24-bit audio?

That Apple Lossless file is the same information that was on the CD in a smaller file size.

24-bit audio is better than what's on any normal CD (which is 16-bit).

For decades, what has limited the quality of music sold is the size of the physical format, be it tape, vinyl or CD. It's seemed so absolutely bloody CRAZY that, now our only restrictions are hard drive space, that higher quality music is so rarely sold. I'd never heard of hdtracks.com before this thread.

 

[Popeye206]

Better quality... cool. Always go for that.

I'm surprised more people have not commented on the "lacking any DRM restrictions" part. This seems like one of the best parts... no more DRM with the new format.

But will the record people go for that?

 

[r2fa3l]

They'll more than likely use .aiff.

W/E i still get my mastered wavs from
masterbeat.com

Lossless tracks/Sold individually

 

[jowie]

What's the difference between "lossless" audio, such as an Apple Lossless file ripped off a CD, and this 24-bit audio?

24-bit gives more detail for each sample... It is analogous to comparing a 256-colour image to a full colour (16.7 million colour) image. The dynamic range is that much more than a CD (the difference in volume between the loudest and quietest sounds).

Whether Apple choose to make their 24-bit audio files lossless or not is unknown. But I think it'd be silly to go to all the effort of creating a format for audiophiles if it isn't perfect.

 

[BubbaMc]

People use audio equipment to listen to their music.

Audiophiles use music to listen to their audio equipment.

16-bit/256k sounds absolutely fine to me.

Glad I'm not you

 

[bushido]

Better quality... cool. Always go for that.

I'm surprised more people have not commented on the "lacking any DRM restrictions" part. This seems like one of the best parts... no more DRM with the new format.

But will the record people go for that?

huh what do u mean? theres already no DRM on music in the iTunes store ...

 

[grapemac]

Better quality... cool. Always go for that.

I'm surprised more people have not commented on the "lacking any DRM restrictions" part. This seems like one of the best parts... no more DRM with the new format.

But will the record people go for that?

iTunes music is already DRM free.

 

[contractcooker]

Wonderful (and funny)

Even if you never use this feature it's good to see someone pushing the envelope on audio quality. That being said I can't wait for someone using stock ipod headphones to tell me how great the new format sounds lulz.

I just recently converted all my ALAC files into 320K LAME mp3s because I needed the extra space on my laptop (I don't like using an external drive and I'm switching from a 640GB hard drive to a 512GB SSD) I wish space was no longer a concern for me but it is so for me, currently, 320kbps LAME encoded MP3s are the level of compromise I'm willing to make.

As time goes on and storage capacity increases more and more people will be able to store media in formats with less compression and that's good. I hate poorly compressed MP3s with a fiery passion. I wish that only 320 LAMEs existed . it makes me happy to read a story like this. Gives me some faith in apple (and that hasn't been happening so often as of late)

 

[LagunaSol]

Bah. I still haven't been given the option to "upgrade" all my older 128 kbps tracks to 256 kbps, even though those songs are now available in 256 kbps. Only a small percentage of my purchased songs were ever made upgradable. Lame.

What happened to this, Apple???

 

[BubbaMc]

I bet my left nut that that 16bit lossless would be the result of this, not 24bit.

Still, I'm happy

 

[WilliamTM]

CD's have a bit depth of 16bits. Studios usually record in 24bits. The advantage is increased dynamic range (a much lower noise floor).

I'd be happy enough with 16bit lossless from itunes.

That Apple Lossless file is the same information that was on the CD in a smaller file size.

24-bit audio is better than what's on any normal CD (which is 16-bit).

For decades, what has limited the quality of music sold is the size of the physical format, be it tape, vinyl or CD. It's seemed so absolutely bloody CRAZY that, now our only restrictions are hard drive space, that higher quality music is so rarely sold. I'd never heard of hdtracks.com before this thread.

24-bit gives more detail for each sample... It is analogous to comparing a 256-colour image to a full colour (16.7 million colour) image. The dynamic range is that much more than a CD (the difference in volume between the loudest and quietest sounds).

Whether Apple choose to make their 24-bit audio files lossless or not is unknown. But I think it'd be silly to go to all the effort of creating a format for audiophiles if it isn't perfect.

Aha. So CDs are 16-bit. I don't think I've ever heard a 24-bit track in that case, I'd be interested if I could tell the difference or not.

I still somehow doubt that this will happen, since it seems you can't play 24-bit music to it's full advantage on a lot of equipment. Also I've not heard any demand for 24-bit, a couple of people I know have 24-bit tracks but I've never heard anyone else say "oh I wish I could get 24-bit music".

 

[adbe]

Pretty sure my 39-year-old ears couldn't tell the difference between 16 and 24-bit.

Damn you, aging!

I'm pretty sure they could[1]!

Frequency response gets harder. I'm starting to lose the ability to spot 256kbps / CD now, but I can still clearly hear the difference between 16 and 24 bit. The effect is especially pronounced with high dynamic range material such as classical.

[1] unless you listen only to modern pop, in which case it's pretty much all 12/13 bit nowadays anyway.

 

[jowie]

Glad I'm not you

I wish I could tell the difference too... I'm unfortunately a bit of a cloth-eared nincompoop

However I like storing certain music in lossless for future-proofing reasons, and because I have the space. And when I'm working on mastering remixes I always use 24-bit because if I ever want to mess with it at a later date I can do so without any noticeable loss in quality.

 

[scott911]

Wonderful! I've used itunes since the beginning - and will always buy somewhere else (for the physical disc), unless I just want a single track for the kids...

There is most certainly an audiable difference - although I have good equipments finally driving THIEL speakers.

There are obviously equipment set ups where better quality can't be heard, but this move is great or those who can hear the difference and care about it.

 

[LucasLand]

rip in lossless

after reading article i decided to try and rip a pink floyd cd in apple lossless. Music sounds great, but files sizes are very big. Does anybody rip all their music in lossless and does it take up way too much space? what do you do to compensate for it? recently i bought a mac mini server which has more than enough HD storage, so I think i'm going to try and rerip many of my cd's in lossless and see how it goes.

Since the files sizes are so much bigger, will it mean I'll be able to burn less songs on a cd if i want to listen to some in the car?

 

[Going Digital]

Nothing more than a marketing gimmick.

There would be very little if any valid technical reason to increase bit depth to 24bit, it would simply be a marketing gimmick that would fool people who don't know any better.

24bit is valuable in the recording stage as it allows the original source that has a wide dynamic range to be captured without clipping but then the audio is mixed and compressed, not compressed as in file compression but the dynamic range of the audio is reduced so that you can hear it better.

Do you sometimes find that watching a movie the explosions are ear drum bursting loud where as some of the dialogue is so quiet you find yourself reaching for the remote to turn the volume up ? Well that is because the dynamic range is to wide, in music it is all normalised using audio compression so that you can comfortably hear the whole track. So after mixing and compression your average music track is not going to have a dynamic range anywhere near 24bit and in most pop music they are not even using the range of 16 bit.

What would make a better sounding music is the number of samples rate, so going from CD rate of 44.1 kHz to perhaps 96 Khz providing the original source was sampled at that rate or higher would yield better results.

However the whole thing is mute as SACD and DVD-A never caught on despite their improved quality. The reason being the vast majority are more interested in convenience than quality, so fitting 1000 songs on your ipod instead of 100 is more convenient and the quality is good enough. It might attract the small number of audiophiles who spend $100 on a HDMI cable but larger file sizes will just be an inconvenience for most. and going 24 bit will give you all the inconvenience of larger files with virtually no benefit.

 

[iansilv]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148a Safari/6533.18.5)

Oh. Hell. Yes.

I would buy music from iTunes if they did this.

 

[chirpie]

You know, I have a top flight a/v system (dedicate room, acoustically treated, various brands of speakers that swap out like B&W, Energy Veritas, some DIY creations, etc) and I have some fairly nice phones (Grados SR325) and I've heard my fair share of great sounding recordings... (The stereotypical stalwarts of Patricia Barber and Diana Krall come to mind) and I'll agree there's a benefit to the jump to lossless 24 bit from 256kbps.

Honestly though? For 90% of music out there, it's so dynamically compressed and mastered poorly that the much bigger enemy of higher quality sound isn't the 16 bit - 256kbps thresh hold, but the development process of bringing it to market.

Whether it's the loudness wars, or every producer thinking they need to degrade the sound for the sole purpose of getting their own "stamp" on the audio of it, it'll all need to change before this type of news will truly benefit the average listening taste out there.

(I don't want to poo-poo the announcement though, I think something like this would be a good option for those musicians who do take pride in the sound quality of their work...)

 

[rhett7660]

after reading article i decided to try and rip a pink floyd cd in apple lossless. Music sounds great, but files sizes are very big. Does anybody rip all their music in lossless and does it take up way too much space? what do you do to compensate for it? recently i bought a mac mini server which has more than enough HD storage, so I think i'm going to try and rerip many of my cd's in lossless and see how it goes.

Since the files sizes are so much bigger, will it mean I'll be able to burn less songs on a cd if i want to listen to some in the car?

This is all I rip to now. Yes you will take up more space however hard drives are cheaper now thus I can afford to. Basically getting a one to one rip from a cd. I wish Apple iTunes would support FLAC thou. That would be really nice.

 

[GyroFX]

would be awesome if this is true. Let us make more use of our Dac/Amps capable of handling 24/96. The details in 24bit files are pretty amazing if it was mastered correctly.

 

[adbe]

Do you sometimes find that watching a movie the explosions are ear drum bursting loud where as some of the dialogue is so quiet you find yourself reaching for the remote to turn the volume up ? Well that is because the dynamic range is to wide, in music it is all normalised using audio compression so that you can comfortably hear the whole track. So after mixing and compression your average music track is not going to have a dynamic range anywhere near 24bit and in most pop music they are not even using the range of 16 bit.

Do you sometimes find that listening to classical the hits are loud and full but the following flute response sounds like arse? Well that is because the dynamic range is wide, but classical music is not mastered to the modern standard of turning everything into a PWM square wave. To encode the hit using even the maximum 16 bits available, the single flute voice might be encoded using as little as 2 bits.

 

[BubbaMc]

I' m unfortunately a bit of a cloth-eared nincompoop

Nice Mike Oldfield reference. Did you like Amarok?

 

[rhett7660]

There would be very little if any valid technical reason to increase bit depth to 24bit, it would simply be a marketing gimmick that would fool people who don't know any better.

24bit is valuable in the recording stage as it allows the original source that has a wide dynamic range to be captured without clipping but then the audio is mixed and compressed, not compressed as in file compression but the dynamic range of the audio is reduced so that you can hear it better.

Do you sometimes find that watching a movie the explosions are ear drum bursting loud where as some of the dialogue is so quiet you find yourself reaching for the remote to turn the volume up ? Well that is because the dynamic range is to wide, in music it is all normalised using audio compression so that you can comfortably hear the whole track. So after mixing and compression your average music track is not going to have a dynamic range anywhere near 24bit and in most pop music they are not even using the range of 16 bit.

What would make a better sounding music is the number of samples rate, so going from CD rate of 44.1 kHz to perhaps 96 Khz providing the original source was sampled at that rate or higher would yield better results.

However the whole thing is mute as SACD and DVD-A never caught on despite their improved quality. The reason being the vast majority are more interested in convenience than quality, so fitting 1000 songs on your ipod instead of 100 is more convenient and the quality is good enough. It might attract the small number of audiophiles who spend $100 on a HDMI cable but larger file sizes will just be an inconvenience for most. and going 24 bit will give you all the inconvenience of larger files with virtually no benefit.

Heck, even the studio's who were releasing SACD's and DVD-A never really caught on. It felt like they really didn't want to let go of such high quality music. It would be nice thou if Apple gave us the option for Lossless Audio thou. Whether 16bit or 24bit.

 

[shurcooL]

I have no positive feelings about this.

I don't mind if they do this, as long as they don't remove the current 16-bit stuff that takes up less storage space and is cheaper. I want my songs to be 3 mb per, not 20 mb.

I appreciate that it may be useful for other ppl, hence I hope they have both options available.

 

[benpatient]

24-bit gives more detail for each sample... It is analogous to comparing a 256-colour image to a full colour (16.7 million colour) image. The dynamic range is that much more than a CD (the difference in volume between the loudest and quietest sounds).

Whether Apple choose to make their 24-bit audio files lossless or not is unknown. But I think it'd be silly to go to all the effort of creating a format for audiophiles if it isn't perfect.

no, actually, you have the wrong comparison.

going from 44.1 khz to 192 khz would be like going from 8 to 16-bit color.

16 to 24 bit would be the analog of an increased color gamut on your monitor.

In theory, you would be technically correct in your comparison, but images and sound a inherently different things from the perspective of our brain.

Going from 256 colors to 16.7 million, you aren't adding a "blacker black" or a "whiter white" or a "redder red," you are just filling in more of the spaces between the different extremes of hue and value. This is the equivalent of increasing the sampling frequency in an audio file, not increasing the potential dynamic contrast.

Even if these rumored new files are lossy, at 24-bit, they could potentially sound better than 16-bit lossless files, but that potential is entirely dependent upon the original recording, and the rate of compression applied.

If you ever owned a good DTS-encoded CD, you know what I mean. They squeezed 5-6 channels of 24/96 audio into the space of 16/44.1 uncompressed audio, and more often than not, it was an incredible improvement. That said, DTS CDs were typically not 24/44.1, and I'm of the opinion that the increased frequency was as important, if not more so, than the increased bit size.

The main problem I see with this rumor is that Apple has specifically removed compatibility for these sorts of files in their new iOS-based Apple TV. The old one would play both 24/96 ALAC (from FLAC) and DTS-encoded ALAC (masquerading as CD-Audio) files, both locally and over a networked iTunes library. The new one will play neither, because it converts everything to 16 bit, 48 khz (typical DVD audio format) on the way to the receiver.

Maybe they can create a format that works where the existing ones do not, but I'm betting they can't.