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Apple's Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) Now Open Source
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Forget about any other ripper XLD is the one and only to use, easy fast with superb results and we all know cables make no difference.
http://tmkk.pv.land.to/xld/index_e.html
Yeah, it would be a huge waste of bandwidth and storage to offer ALAC from upconverted MP3s. It's not even smoke and mirrors -- consumers could see right though that one. No sale. When I said if iTunes ever offered ALAC I meant converted from the original track. I'm OK w/ 16/44 though. It's all most CDs are anyway and 24/96 files sizes are massive.
More Info
I may have missed it in the discussion, but where is the better place to read more about bit rates and such.
I have spent over $60k in audio (car) in my lifetime and only use cd's because
I definitely notice the loss of quality. Not an SPL fan but a friend took my car to 140 db in competition - not my interest.
IMO sound is the movement of air, period, and if you are not moving it all then... ?? well you are not getting it all (that we are paying for).
Thanks in advance.
ALAC on itunes would be Significant!
I may have missed it in the discussion, but where is the better place to read more about bit rates and such.
I have spent over $60k in audio (car) in my lifetime and only use cd's because
I definitely notice the loss of quality. Not an SPL fan but a friend took my car to 140 db in competition - not my interest.
IMO sound is the movement of air, period, and if you are not moving it all then... ?? well you are not getting it all (that we are paying for).
Thanks in advance.
ALAC on itunes would be Significant!
Significant because one can re-encode to any format they desire at their will, not significant because you're going get some magical sound improvement.
Here are two places with some very good information
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=16295
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ
Interesting that you mention SPL, a DJ I know suggested that while he couldn't hear a difference between lossy and lossless music he could physically feel a difference in the bass when played back over his full-monty system. This could of course be the placebo effect showing again but there might be something to it technically. The acoustic models that lossy codecs use are obviously going to be tuned for sounds that people can hear and maybe they don't do a great job with sounds that are more felt then heard. Setting up an ABX test of this might be interesting!
I can't see Apple going to ALAC downloads as the default option on iTunes any time soon. The iCloud stuff is going to increase the amount of bandwidth that the Store needs so Apple are not going to be looking to double or triple download sizes. Plus direct downloads to iOS devices are becoming much more important and here limited storage and bandwidth caps are real problems. The most I can see happen is a small 'audiophile' section of the store with a selection of music with lossless compression and/or higher bit-depth and frequency.
What claims have I made? Oh, the one where "transparent" is a useless word for audio. Exactly how do I ABX that? 2 dictionaries?
WTF do you people see when reading?
At some point, people are just making baseless claims. No one can tell the difference between these things unless they have superhuman hearing. If people don't believe me I'd love to see someone try to ABX a couple files I could send their way. I am 21 and have a good listening ear even for my age compared to others I know, and I find it almost impossible to tell the difference between 192 VBR AAC and FLAC on a $500+ pair of headphones with a DAC and headphone amp. If I concentrate EXTREMELY hard I can maybe pick out a few minor things. But unless you're listening to the best speakers/headphones ever you're kidding yourself unless you're one of the very few "special" people.
ALAC will only be useful for converting to other formats. There's no way you need it to get the best quality. I have 27 gigs of lossless, but you won't find one in my library. I'll stick with 1/3-2/5 the size and do AAC True VBR 127 quality to keep my Classic from needing a HDD replacement (usually 320-350 VBR for my music). The rest is V0. I'd love to see anyone on earth decipher the difference between that and lossless.
ALAC will only be useful for converting to other formats. There's no way you need it to get the best quality. I have 27 gigs of lossless, but you won't find one in my library. I'll stick with 1/3-2/5 the size and do AAC True VBR 127 quality to keep my Classic from needing a HDD replacement (usually 320-350 VBR for my music). The rest is V0. I'd love to see anyone on earth decipher the difference between that and lossless.
i find that there is a significant difference between the lossy formats and ALAC or FLAC.
maybe it is different for everyone?
Thanks for the links, good info.
I am the type who makes subtle changes in EQ for almost each song and definitley each album. I definitely notice difference in recording quality.
Some posters are saying that no one can notice the difference in higher quality recordings so is this a mistake by Apple??
Should we have less data in the tracks we play through our ipods.??
No magical difference right.
Just Kidding, everyone hears differently. I would feel better knowing I am getting the full deal with the recordings I am playing.
As for feeling the difference (lower Frequencies) I will experiment with that (would SPL change when tuned to a low frequency and given full data as opposed to just a little data).
Most music in ALAC is very simular to the MP3 bretheren, except for the pain associated with Mp3, but some songs especially with actual insturments, there is a notable difference.
Long overdue!
Great news for anyone who actually cares about the quality of audio they listen to, which apparently is the minority these days. And to think before internet downloads came along we were climbing towards massive improvements in sample rates/quality.
Great news for anyone who actually cares about the quality of audio they listen to, which apparently is the minority these days. And to think before internet downloads came along we were climbing towards massive improvements in sample rates/quality.
You've actually answered your question and the anecdote explains exactly what lossy codecs do, remove information that produces sounds that are 'less important' - those that are outside of or close to outside of the typical human hearing range. So being able to hear the bass in the same way while not being able feel the sub bass is a great example.
Totally agree with your thoughts about bandwidth as it ties into iCloud etc. Apple will already be taking a massive bandwidth hit with iCloud / iTunes Match.
The vasty majority meaning 99% can not tell a high quality MP3 (Lame V0) from the original Lossless source. The other 1% can tell maybe 1 or or second once every blue moon under an ABX double blind test. AAC is even better as it deals with artefacts much better.
Going lossless is simply not going to improve the sound quality
Whats your point with them links? The more expensive the equipment does not mean lossy will show it's shortcomings any more.
If you can't hear the difference then you can;t hear the difference. Lossless isn't going to help.
Many people make claims but not many people post actual abx logs to prove their claims.
And whats my lousy spells have to do with it.
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Isn't this the truth. Great news. I have been encoding using ALAC and AIFF...... More AIFF now a days though. Either way this great news!!
Not cost, but quality.
You can get $80 Skullcandy cans and hear no difference between ALAC and AAC. But when you get $80 cans from a hi-fi audio company (e.g. Sennheiser, Grado Labs, Yamaha, Audio Technica, etc.), you can hear the difference immediately.
99% of people can't hear the difference between lossy and lossless because their equipment is crap.
Is anyone keeping track of how many times I say this? Because it'd be over 30 by now.
I didn't mention this before, but EQ ruins the integrity of lossless files. I wonder how much of the general public has EQ settings on.
They are claims which are not backed up by a proper abx test. At say 256 AAC it is absurd to think that you can hear the difference immediately. 99.9% it has been proven just be be placebo.
The quality of equipment has virtually no bearing on the difference.
If you can immediately tell the difference between 256 AAC and lossless then you must have dog hearing.
Using the inferior iTunes mp3 codec of course. The test is void either do it properly and fairly or it's pointless.
Seems like you didn't read his full experiment.
http://www.vel.co.nz/vel.co.nz/Blog...sless_versus_MP3_-_Part_1_-_Introduction.html
http://www.vel.co.nz/vel.co.nz/Blog...sus_MP3_-_Part_2_-_Materials_and_Methods.html
http://www.vel.co.nz/vel.co.nz/Blog...us_MP3_-_Part_3_-_Results_and_Discussion.html
And please, don't TL;DR this, it'll knock some sense into you.
You fail. Big time.
iTunes 8.2 was released in 6/1/2009, I believe
iTunes - Wikipedia said:
Doesn't matter when iTunes was released the fact is that an extremely out of date poor codec was used.
Your stubbornness never ceases to amaze me.
iTunes MP3/AAC encoder is ON PAR with LAME, Fraunhofer, MP4 HE-AAC, Helix, and whatever else encoder is out there.
And AFAIK LAME's encoding quality hasn't improved much since then anyway.