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Apple's Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) Now Open Source
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nope, you're blessed with something called 'enjoy the music and ignore the sound' - i'm somewhere in the middle, back home i have something more like a high end system, here where I am I have only laptop and speakers. when i get home it's mostly vinyl and here it's lossless rips. but i enjoy music the most from vinyl, it's more alive
Yes, the output pins on the bottom of an iOS device are small but the signal is pretty good (from what I've read). The headphone jack isn't as great for hi-fi audio, but at least with a good connector to your amp, you can get a lot of the fidelity out of a 24/96 file. I like the idea of connecting my device to a fantastic audio system - and like a lot have said, why start with inferior audio if it's not necessary.
The only valid argument for lossy over lossless right now is size. Regardless of whether you can hear a difference, whether the "masses" can tell or need it, whether consumers want it, it IS a "closer to the original" copy of the music. Every day the argument for lossy based on size carries less weight for lossy advocates as our ability to store larger files becomes available and more economical. Literally, we're looking at a few years to bridge the gap...
But there are a lot of opinions out here. I think lossless advocates would simply be happier if 24/96 or better playback was allowed and lossless files were available for purchase. This is THE only reason I've never bought an album available on iTunes for myself - I know I'm not the only one.
The only valid argument for lossy over lossless right now is size. Regardless of whether you can hear a difference, whether the "masses" can tell or need it, whether consumers want it, it IS a "closer to the original" copy of the music. Every day the argument for lossy based on size carries less weight for lossy advocates as our ability to store larger files becomes available and more economical. Literally, we're looking at a few years to bridge the gap...
But there are a lot of opinions out here. I think lossless advocates would simply be happier if 24/96 or better playback was allowed and lossless files were available for purchase. This is THE only reason I've never bought an album available on iTunes for myself - I know I'm not the only one.
I'm one, too.
I've never bought a single song from iTunes. If ALAC tracks were available on iTunes, you'd never get me off of it.
I would like the best quality that my ears will allow, without an ear upgrade, that quality doesn't need to be very high. I don't however begrudge those that have younger and better hearing than me, higher quality downloads. I have very good quality headphones (Audeze) my ears don't do them justice, but the enjoyment, nevertheless is still there in spades.
True true... However, what gets under my skin is the fact that we are fed what someone decides is good enough for us. If I bought a car with so so paintwork I would demand a respray! Why not go for the best and be done with it regardless of what you feel the sonic qualities are?
I mean, £10 for a compressed download v £10 for the CD, that's just the smartest trick big business ever played on us!
C
in this regard, i completely disagree. you only have to visit one of the many torrent websites out there and search for FLAC to see how popular the format is.
As many people are downloading the new Coldplay album in FLAC format right now as there are people looking at this forum.
As for power usage, I had one of the few native FLAC-playing mp3 players a few years ago (rio karma), and we got our best battery life when listening to lossless FLAC files. Significantly better than MP3.
Exactly. If I'm going to purchase an album from iTunes I'd like to have it lossless because as of now I think AAC is superior to MP3. But in 5-10 years I could feel totally different, if I had it in lossless I could just convert it to any format I wanted without loss of quality.
The space issue is only an issue for the specific person.
There is something that people don't really understand about audio quality and the way we listen.
You already "fill in the gaps" in any sound that you hear with your brain.
digital formats with low sample rates by definition are full of holes between the samples.
That's one of the reasons why people liked SACD, because there were no holes at all. You can't hear this, but you can most certainly feel it. If you've ever been to a concert and thought that it just sounded more "alive" and real and full, that's because it is.
If you've never experienced a well-recorded SACD or DVD-Audio (or even Blu-ray Audio) album on a very good set of speakers, you've never felt the warmth and fullness that comes with it. Lossless CD quality is better than lossy, and lots of people can actually hear a difference, but when you move into high-resolution, high-sample rate audio, it's not something you hear, it's something you feel.
The same here, not one album or song. I enjoy app store (both mac and iOS) and would love to do the same with music. All i do is buy CDs, rip them to ALAC and that's the only time I use that CD, it goes back to caddy and on the shelf
with the redownload feature added to iTunes store I'd like to see iTunes upgrade to 320kbps files as standard with the option to download as alac.
Also, add the ability to set the encode quality for syncing lower bitrate files to iOS devices instead of locking it to 128kbps.
That way people who prefer smaller files can do so while those who prefer quality could have a lossless iTunes library with the synced tracks at 320kbps.
Also, add the ability to set the encode quality for syncing lower bitrate files to iOS devices instead of locking it to 128kbps.
That way people who prefer smaller files can do so while those who prefer quality could have a lossless iTunes library with the synced tracks at 320kbps.
This is great news. I've been ripping my CDs to ALAC for some time now (since it's lossless and FLAC is not an option in iTunes and that's mostly what I use to rip them), but was always afraid that, some day, I'm might be stuck with Apple-only format. Now hopefully a lot of app, like Max, can offer this format as an option. Good move.
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The truth is, there are very few 'audiophile' classified people in the general public, and even among audiophiles, there is a constant debate among compression formats and levels, versus old physical media. If anything I am a hobbyest, I don't get too serious about sound quality, but I do try to invest in good sounding audio equipment, and avoid the current "bass" craze that makes almost every stereo / headphone sound boomy and flat.
I recently listened to an interesting episode of Home Theater geeks that discusses issues with sound sampling, and how the human brain can be tricked into thinking a format is better than it really is. It actually goes a little into the science of listening itself.
Ironically, there are compression issues with the Skype connections for the main host in this podcast, but totally worth a listen!
http://twit.tv/show/home-theater-geeks/84
I recently listened to an interesting episode of Home Theater geeks that discusses issues with sound sampling, and how the human brain can be tricked into thinking a format is better than it really is. It actually goes a little into the science of listening itself.
Ironically, there are compression issues with the Skype connections for the main host in this podcast, but totally worth a listen!
http://twit.tv/show/home-theater-geeks/84
On the one hand I think this is good news because it brings more attention to lossless compression formats. While I understand people's arguments against including FLAC support in the Apple ecosystem, I respectfully disagree.
Sure Apple might want to keep the number of available formats low, but one only has to look at their lossy support to make a case for FLAC. Apple supports MP3, which has long been the dominant format (not necessarily standard, but certainly dominant), as well as their native AAC lossy format. The choice between two different formats is a much simpler than choosing between any number of different bit rates (128, 256, 320, etc.).
If FLAC users are willing to sacrifice a bit of battery life (is there a metric that measures that the actual difference is between the two?) to use their preferred format it seems like something users should be able to decide for themselves. Therefore, offering a lossless format that is currently dominant (not standard, but certainly dominant) as well as Apple's proprietary (now open source) lossless format would simply mirror how things already stand in iTunes and the Apple ecosystem.
The nice thing about ALAC is that iTunes is a great database manager and I love the tagging options in iTunes. This is one area where FLAC lags. Would FLAC support standardize FLAC tags? Is this a significant obstacle? I'm not a programmer, etc. so I don't know the logistics of that.
Just my $0.02.
Sure Apple might want to keep the number of available formats low, but one only has to look at their lossy support to make a case for FLAC. Apple supports MP3, which has long been the dominant format (not necessarily standard, but certainly dominant), as well as their native AAC lossy format. The choice between two different formats is a much simpler than choosing between any number of different bit rates (128, 256, 320, etc.).
If FLAC users are willing to sacrifice a bit of battery life (is there a metric that measures that the actual difference is between the two?) to use their preferred format it seems like something users should be able to decide for themselves. Therefore, offering a lossless format that is currently dominant (not standard, but certainly dominant) as well as Apple's proprietary (now open source) lossless format would simply mirror how things already stand in iTunes and the Apple ecosystem.
The nice thing about ALAC is that iTunes is a great database manager and I love the tagging options in iTunes. This is one area where FLAC lags. Would FLAC support standardize FLAC tags? Is this a significant obstacle? I'm not a programmer, etc. so I don't know the logistics of that.
Just my $0.02.
I'm not an audiophile at all, but only rip my CDs to lossless (ALAC) I then have an identical copy of my library in 320kbs mp3 that I use for my mobile and other portable devices.
I don't rip to ALAC because of better audio quality I rip to it because it gives complete flexibility,
I get an exact copy of the CD (you never know in 5 years there may be some breakthrough that gives every £50 pair of speakers the quality of £10,000 ones)
and if at any point in the future FLAC/AIFF/any-other-audio-format becomes 'the best/most useful' I can very easily convert the lossless ALAC to that new format and the outcome would be the same as if I re-ripped the original CD (which would take a lot of time)
storage space is cheap why would anyone not rip to lossless, if you need the files smaller for an mp3 player/mobile phone just keep an identical library in aac/mp3 (use playlists to keep the files separate) or even use the itunes auto convert to 128aac.
lossless = future proof
I don't rip to ALAC because of better audio quality I rip to it because it gives complete flexibility,
I get an exact copy of the CD (you never know in 5 years there may be some breakthrough that gives every £50 pair of speakers the quality of £10,000 ones)
and if at any point in the future FLAC/AIFF/any-other-audio-format becomes 'the best/most useful' I can very easily convert the lossless ALAC to that new format and the outcome would be the same as if I re-ripped the original CD (which would take a lot of time)
storage space is cheap why would anyone not rip to lossless, if you need the files smaller for an mp3 player/mobile phone just keep an identical library in aac/mp3 (use playlists to keep the files separate) or even use the itunes auto convert to 128aac.
lossless = future proof
AAC is the successor to mp3, both are standards, AAC as part of the MPEG-4 spec and mp3 as part of MPEG-1. AAC is standardized by both ISO and IEC.
I was unaware of that. Thanks subsonix!
Nevertheless, this does not drastically change the essence of my argument/suggestion/query.
This is the way I see it, now we have two open lossless formats instead of one. And in this case ALAC provides the most generous licensing.