And people still had a choice to pick the cassette tape or pick vinyl with a rather expensive setup to boot. Sorry this has been going on long before I was around.... I am pretty sure long before you were too.
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Apple Reportedly Looking to Offer 24-Bit Music Files in iTunes Store
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And people still had a choice to pick the cassette tape or pick vinyl with a rather expensive setup to boot. Sorry this has been going on long before I was around.... I am pretty sure long before you were too.
+1
that's all i need, honestly i'm still asking myself every time i buy a new cd why i'm doing that. because all what's going to happen to that cd is (in that order):
1. unpack
2. put it in
3. rip (to lossless)
4. put back to case
5. put on the shelf
and that's pretty much it
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Yeah I agree that it would be a tough one to pull off, but Apple has already taken an insane amount of business from them with no successful rebuttal. I only buy CDs when I want lossless versions of the songs by artists I really enjoy, so being able to buy 24bit lossless versions, that would sound better than the CD would be fantastic, especially if it were a similar price.
I think if anyone could pull this off, it'd be Apple. And honestly, 24bit is even a big jump from 256 AAC. Not so long ago it was 128 AAC, what a joke that was. Even if they just offered the 16bit masters that go on CDs in a lossless format I'd be happy. And the whole format war thing, FLAC is useful when you don't use iTunes, but the whole point of lossless is that it's perfect. You can use Apple Lossless and FLAC to rebuild the WAV file, so why couldn't you transcode FLAC to Apple Lossless and vice versa? As far as I know there's no data loss and it's super easy with a program such as XLD on a Mac. Although it'd be great if iTunes were to offer FLAC compatibility to make everything easier, gl with that.
iTunes is a step backwards in sound quality. Why should we accept less than we've already had for decades. CD is far superior to iTunes. SACD and vinyl are night and day superior. I'm fine with digital taking over and all of these physical formats disappearing (physical formats are a pain) but NOT at the cost of sound quality.
It'd make the iTunes Music Store more compelling to purchase content from
This would give me a reason to buy music from iTunes.
Currently CDs are the only way to get uncompressed files so iTunes was not even an option for me. No all that remains is to see the price.
actually, 256 color images would be 8 bit. we moved up from 8-bit audio decades ago. you're thinking thousands of colors vs millions of colors.
Thanks for reply, I've got all sorts of 24bit beyond the Beatles including Linn stuff, a lot of DVDA etc which is very recent.
The basic thing here is that my ears cannot hear more than 13bit resolution, and there is no proof I know of where ANYONE at all in the world can hear more than 16 bits in a true double blind test. This means I know of no test that shows 24bit is demonstrably better than 16bit for the listener - if we can't hear the extra 8 bits then what are we paying for?
24 bit has a use in recording studios to apply many layered digital effects without degrading the signal (spare bits in effect) but outside that it is mostly marketing. The difference you are hearing on Al Green (excellent taste BTW) if it is real (ie. you can pick it in a double blind test) could be down to a different master being used from that of the CD.
You don't quite have the correct understanding of sampling frequency.
Yes, technically, when you go from, say 44.1 khz to 96 khz, one of the things that happens is that it becomes possible to "define" (and thus output) frequencies higher than 44.1 khz.
We can't hear those frequencies, it's true. But the other effect of moving from 44.1 to 96 or some higher frequency rate is the NUMBER of samples per second, which results in a "thicker" sound because you've got more linear (time) space in which to "move" the sound wave.
Most of the perceived improvement in audio quality when going from CD to something like SACD or DVD-Audio is the increase in the sampling rate, the "thickness" of the sound. This is, in effect, the advantage vinyl has over digital formats (a theoretically infinite sampling rate). The higher the digital sampling rate, the less difference there is between analog or real-life sound, and digital sound.
Some SACD-based Blu-ray Audio discs utilize 352.8 khz recording!
But you are right that going beyond 24 bit is completely unnecessary in any situation. There are cases where 96 db of dynamic range (16 bit) is not sufficient. But more than ~130 will never be, so providing a digital workspace that is larger than 24 bit is always unnecessary.
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True, but these audiophiles also spend a lot of money, something Aplle might want to cash in on.
headwrong said:
True, but these audiophiles also spend a lot of money, something Aplle might want to cash in on.
I would argue that going from 16-bit to 24-bit is the same for both pictures and sound. You are allowing each sample to be more accurate as to what the original analog waveform/image was. the frequency (sample rate) would be along the lines of the frame rate of video. the difference between 15-fps and 24-fps leads to smoother animation, and if you bump it up to 30, or 60 fps, everything becomes smoother still.
I agree with that comment (and have the credit card bills to prove it), but my sticking point with that is: is the niche audiophile market big enough for Apple to cater to it? I suppose one could argue that the continued existence of the iPod Classic may point to yes, but the lack of focus on fidelity in the past would say otherwise...
Pay for the quality you want
What would be the issue with itunes offering a range of quality from 128 kbps up to 24bit/96khz. Just charge a different price and let the customer pick. The advantage of at least offering CD quality downloads is removing one more issue with getting rid of optical drives.
Personally I have a mix of 320 kbps/ lossless at 16bit and 24bit from vinyl, yes you can tell the difference.
What would be the issue with itunes offering a range of quality from 128 kbps up to 24bit/96khz. Just charge a different price and let the customer pick. The advantage of at least offering CD quality downloads is removing one more issue with getting rid of optical drives.
Personally I have a mix of 320 kbps/ lossless at 16bit and 24bit from vinyl, yes you can tell the difference.
Are you saying that we all have to listen to crappy compressed audio just because some folks use Apple earbuds?
1. Macs can play or decode 24bit, but Audio Midi utility governs if they also output this format or not (your choice) or just downsample
2. ipods, iphones ianything atm can decode upto 24/48kHz but it ALWAYS downsamples to 16/44kHz no matter what! That means that idocks like Wadias and all also stick to that (redbook) 16/44
3. Anything via airtunes atm is 16/44 including the AppleTV
4. If you use an iOS device in the chain the bottleneck is with the iOS device and is limited to 16/44.
Your best option to get pure digital sound from 16/44 upto 24/96 is to use USB, Lan or optical toslink. Macs have all these, but then again the audio midi will still GOVERN output. Audio midi is important, because you sometimes think you hear 24/96 while you dont actually!
Obviously simple switching audio midi won't improve what you hear.
You need audiophile DACs, good Amps and good speakers/headphones.
Lastly you need good music which is the most important of all.
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I don't know about most of it but I know my iPod touch 2nd gen can play back 24-bit, 48khz ALAC files. I think iPods have had 24bit DACs in them for a while (even back to the days of the black and white display iPods).
Foxer said:
I don't know about most of it but I know my iPod touch 2nd gen can play back 24-bit, 48khz ALAC files. I think iPods have had 24bit DACs in them for a while (even back to the days of the black and white display iPods).
WAV files are LOSSLESS. Not lossy. Have been since the very early 90's that the WAV format was born.
Last time i looked at Shannon/ Nyquist sampling theory, it told me that the sampling rate needs to be 2 times the highest frequency to be reproduced, The maths folk put it as : 'If a function x(t) contains no frequencies higher than B hertz, it is completely determined by giving its ordinates at a series of points spaced 1/(2B) seconds apart.' - This means 40kHz sampling frequency for the 20kHz range of human hearing. If we had a 'brick wall' filter at 20kHz, that would be that, but such a filter is not quite possible so to reduce aliasing etc. we go a bit higher to 44.1kHz (the exact figure was the subject of a deal between Sony and Philips back in the day).
What Shannon/ Nyquist then says (you can do this yourself if you are into such things, using the Whittaker-Shannon interpolation formula and the sinc function) is that you can reproduce ANY signal within that Nyquist bandwidth at 6dB per. bit above the noise floor given a brick wall filter which modern equipment very closely approaches. In fact with dithering you can make it sound like you have more than 96dB by shifting the noise to where your ears are least sensitive. There is no 'thicker' with more samples, you simply are able to include higher frequencies (assuming you upped the freq on your filter) which humans can't hear but dogs and cats may enjoy.
Infinite sampling rate on vinyl (dearly as I love vinyl and valves!) is a myth. given 70dB signal to noise in a nigh on perfect vinyl set-up (no rumble and such) that equates to a dynamic range of about 11 or 12 bits.
This is a scam, absolutely. As a music producer, seeing this just makes me laugh. 24-bits is indeed the format recorded by most studios. I myself use 24-bit, standard. However, the reasons for that are because audio goes through many steps of dynamic processing between the mixing and mastering stages, and 16-bit would start to sound more like 8-bit with all the aliasing that would result from it. But as a LISTENING standard, 24 bit has far more dynamic range than 99.9% of humans can detect. And I'm not just talking about pop music, I'm talking about subtle classical tracks and natural audio recordings, things with huge dynamic range. Only the most highly attuned mastering engineers can even tell the difference, and these mastering engineers make "audiophiles" look tonedeaf by comparison.
On the flipside, lossy compression *IS* something that quite a few people can hear. Also, so is the difference between 44.1kHz and 48kHz audio. These are far more relevant.
This is so bewildering, there are only two explanations I can come up with:
A) This really is a scam, and apple are banking that putting a higher number in the specs will make people pay more.
B) There is something else that they are thinking of doing with this, like building in mastering dynamics processing right into the software (a bad idea in most cases). This would be kind of neat, except for the fact that there's NO WAY that you could control it enough to sound as good as a professionally mastered recording. Maybe if it were sort of like camera raw, which has metadata outlining exactly what the master's processing is, and then just gives the user a few ways of tweaking it for their environment. Still iffy, but might be interesting.
On the flipside, lossy compression *IS* something that quite a few people can hear. Also, so is the difference between 44.1kHz and 48kHz audio. These are far more relevant.
This is so bewildering, there are only two explanations I can come up with:
A) This really is a scam, and apple are banking that putting a higher number in the specs will make people pay more.
B) There is something else that they are thinking of doing with this, like building in mastering dynamics processing right into the software (a bad idea in most cases). This would be kind of neat, except for the fact that there's NO WAY that you could control it enough to sound as good as a professionally mastered recording. Maybe if it were sort of like camera raw, which has metadata outlining exactly what the master's processing is, and then just gives the user a few ways of tweaking it for their environment. Still iffy, but might be interesting.
Count me in. Any improvement in sound quality is important to me. I occasionally buy individual songs via iTunes but if I want the whole CD or if the music is very complex I buy a disk and send to to iTunes as a lossless file.
There is no way that I would have paid more for iTunes crappy Beatles versions than to buy the CDs and rip them myself.
Given the chance to upgrade my Apple purchased music to 24-bit lossless for a reasonable price I definitely would. I much prefer two-channel lossless over various lossy surround schemes for DVD music.
Come on Apple. I'm ready!
There is no way that I would have paid more for iTunes crappy Beatles versions than to buy the CDs and rip them myself.
Given the chance to upgrade my Apple purchased music to 24-bit lossless for a reasonable price I definitely would. I much prefer two-channel lossless over various lossy surround schemes for DVD music.
Come on Apple. I'm ready!