High Definition iTunes Music Downloads May Be on the Horizon

[keysofanxiety]

well so you cant or you can? I'm not putting words in your mouth, but buying 'placebo' means youre buying something for the 'feel-good' of having it, not because of a tangible difference that the product gives you.
if you can't hear the difference...isn't it placebo then?

1) The original poster said that it's a placebo. That's wrong, because the quality is better. Therefore, it's not a placebo, just because they can't tell the difference.
2) Can I tell the difference? Probably not. But then, I didn't say I would buy it. I simply said it's not a placebo.
3) Other people will be able to hear the difference. Because there is a difference. Hence, I'm saying it's not a placebo.

So what I'm saying is ... it's not a placebo.

May I clarify any of the above points?

 

[bushido]

so 2,29 for a song? thanks but no thanks. 1,29 is already way too much for one song, but i guess we can blame the labels and not apple on that one. also i wont hear the difference anyway lol unless something is mono i dont give a damn

 

[gretschdrummer]

Dude, get some good gear. Had some very expensive headphones and put on the Nevermind CD, and played Come As You Are, specifically listening to the intro and the bass response, etc. Then I put on the same song purchased in iTunes, 256 AAC, and it was night and day. I could hear the difference big time. I also have done some amateur recording most of my life, so I have a keen ear, but I can hear the difference hands down in my test, and that was with 16/44.1 CD.

Are you sure it's not a different master? They came out with a new one a couple of years ago with the remaster, which is what the iTunes one likely is. If you compared the original CD to that, it's probably not a fair comparison.

 

[orioncrystalice]

This is for this audience:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...nd-new-music-player-within-a-day-9187151.html


and for all those whose high-encoded AAC files are such garbage and are simply not delivering the magical 180 in sound quality which will immediately happen should they purchase "HD".

 

[keysofanxiety]

Really? I'd love set up a double-blind ABX listening test for you on equipment of your choice to see if you can tell the difference, if you're in the Toronto area.

Spoiler alert: you can't.

Really? I'd love you to quote where I said I could tell the damn difference.

Spoiler alert: you can't.

I simply refuted the fact that they said it was a placebo.

 

[teknikal90]

1) The original poster said that it's a placebo. That's wrong, because the quality is better. Therefore, it's not a placebo, just because they can't tell the difference.
2) Can I tell the difference? Probably not. But then, I didn't say I would buy it. I simply said it's not a placebo.
3) Other people will be able to hear the difference. Because there is a difference. Hence, I'm saying it's not a placebo.

So what I'm saying is ... it's not a placebo.

May I clarify any of the above points?

no fair enough. you're saying it's not placebo because it's a different product even though practically you can't tell the difference between one or the other. but it's not placebo

 

[Razeus]

see this is why I hate forums sometimes, becasue of comments like this. it's bad for my industry.
you cannot hear the difference between cd and 256kbps vbr aac like 'night or day'
that is pure exaggeration plan and simple.

source: countless, and i mean countless of double blind a/b tests done by various true enthusiast community/actual recording professionals.

Yep, it's placebo.

I can tell CD from 192k, but not at 256k. At 128k I can hear the difference, but 95% of the time, 256k is the sweet spot of files size and fidelity.

I don't know why iTunes would make a full rez file. A full rez CD is like 10x the size of the aac file, soooo..

Why not just make a new "mp3/acc" format that uses the 24-bit/192 files that to make a compressed 24-bit file? It'll be much smaller and I'm sure 99% of the population won't be able to tell the difference between a 24-bit lossless file and the 24-bit mp3/aac file, in the same way they can't tell the difference between the 16-bit CD and the 16-bit mp3.

 

[Bill St. Clair]

I got my first external DAC and good speakers a few years ago. Re-ripped all my CDs as lossless. Upgraded the DAC and the speakers and got some pretty good headphones since then. To my admittedly middle-aged ears, there is no difference between 96KHz/24-bit and 44.1KHz/16-bit. CD quality is as good as it gets. And I've done the blind A-B testing to support that contention, using HDTracks 96KHz/24-bit music, as is and downsampled to 44.1KHz/16-bit. So though I'd be happy if Apple would upgrade to CD quality, and would pay a small premium over 256K lossy compression, I really don't want to pay the money, download time, or disk space for higher resolution.

But hey. They have to respond to Pono, or they'll lose some of their market share.

As for Led Zeppelin in high res. Boy, it would be nice to have better recordings of those albums. But I think the problem is with the original master tapes, so nothing can be done. Great music! Lousy recordings. Except Presence and the 2007 "Celebration Day" concert. Much better recordings.

My sound equipment:

NuForce µDAC-2: https://billstclair.com/udac/ (Geek Pulse coming)
Swan M200MkIII speakers: https://billstclair.com/swan/
Sennheiser HD 598 headphones: https://billstclair.com/hd598/

 

[fertilized-egg]

1) The original poster said that it's a placebo. That's wrong, because the quality is better. Therefore, it's not a placebo, just because they can't tell the difference.
2) Can I tell the difference? Probably not. But then, I didn't say I would buy it. I simply said it's not a placebo.
3) Other people will be able to hear the difference. Because there is a difference. Hence, I'm saying it's not a placebo.

So what I'm saying is ... it's not a placebo.

May I clarify any of the above points?

Simply knowing that it's supposedly a better format makes you feel the sound is better. Once the indicator is taken away, the perceptible sound advantage instantly disappears which means it's placebo.

I got my first external DAC and good speakers a few years ago. Re-ripped all my CDs as lossless. Upgraded the DAC and the speakers and got some pretty good headphones since then. To my admittedly middle-aged ears, there is no difference between 96KHz/24-bit and 44.1KHz/16-bit. CD quality is as good as it gets. And I've done the blind A-B testing to support that contention

That's exactly what I've done too. It was amazing how all the wonderful difference I thought I was listening to disappeared so quickly when I didn't know what quality of MP3 I was listening to.

 

[Razeus]

so 2,29 for a song? thanks but no thanks. 1,29 is already way too much for one song, but i guess we can blame the labels and not apple on that one. also i wont hear the difference anyway lol unless something is mono i dont give a damn

I blame Apple for the $1.29 price point. They passed it off like it's the labels fault.

Notice that when prices went from $.99 to $1.29, that was a 30% increase. Exactly the cut that Apple takes every time it sells something in the iTunes/App store.

 

[keysofanxiety]

no fair enough. you're saying it's not placebo because it's a different product even though practically you can't tell the difference between one or the other. but it's not placebo

Hey, if you can't tell the difference between a Ferrari and a bus, is a Ferrari a placebo?

No.

If you can't tell the difference between satin sheets and sandpaper, does that mean satin sheets is a placebo?

No.

So just because some people can't tell the difference between audio qualities, (even if one is digitally 'better', read the article), that means it's a placebo?

No.

It doesn't matter if 99% of people can't tell the difference. The fact is that there is a difference. It doesn't matter if it's tiny, it doesn't matter if the majority of people can't hear it. It doesn't matter if you can only notice on one set of speakers, or headphones.

I never said I'd get it. I never said I could tell the difference.

What I did say is that, at the risk of repeating myself again, it's not a placebo. Clear?

 

[TsMkLg068426]

And they are still wondering why music sales are down well this is it you want to charge more for better quality, Apple wants to move to Spotify streaming music but you want to make it monthly fee but how about the customers who are signed up to iTunes Match are we going to have to pay monthly fee to stream music? If anything Steve Jobs would have not allowed the record labels to dictate him, see what happened when he allowed the labels to finally have their own pricing the prices went up for albums and single tracks, they use to be $9.99 a album or a track was 99 cents now it $11.99 or $13.99 a album or $1.29 for a single track.


Why do I also have this feeling Apple is going to start charging for ripping CDs at a higher quality I just can not get that weird feeling out of me because of that last few news I have been reading on MacRumors all this monthly fees to get music.

 

[oneMadRssn]

You'll find people with high end headphone setups like mine saying the same thing.

See what you get for assuming what I listen through? I don't even own a laptop.

For $2 a song, Apple is out of their mind.

As with most of life's questions, "it depends" is the answer.

Is there a difference between compressed AAC and lossless when listening to "Get down for what?" absolutely not.

between compressed AAC and lossless when listening to "Dark side of the moon"? absolutely.

 

[XcubusX]

Awesome....

Awesome, now I get to pay to update all my iTunes music all over again!!!

Said no one ever...

I just hope it is not like the other music update debacle... The one where you paid a nominal fee to go from songs at 128 kbps to 256 kbps, then a few months to a year later you can do it for free with iTunes Match... Apple screwed me hard with those "improvements".

 

[Razeus]

I got my first external DAC and good speakers a few years ago. Re-ripped all my CDs as lossless. Upgraded the DAC and the speakers and got some pretty good headphones since then. To my admittedly middle-aged ears, there is no difference between 96KHz/24-bit and 44.1KHz/16-bit. CD quality is as good as it gets. And I've done the blind A-B testing to support that contention, using HDTracks 96KHz/24-bit music, as is and downsampled to 44.1KHz/16-bit. So though I'd be happy if Apple would upgrade to CD quality, and would pay a small premium over 256K lossy compression, I really don't want to pay the money, download time, or disk space for higher resolution.

But hey. They have to respond to Pono, or they'll lose some of their market share.

As for Led Zeppelin in high res. Boy, it would be nice to have better recordings of those albums. But I think the problem is with the original master tapes, so nothing can be done. Great music! Lousy recordings. Except Presence and the 2007 "Celebration Day" concert. Much better recordings.

My sound equipment:

NuForce µDAC-2: https://billstclair.com/udac/ (Geek Pulse coming)
Swan M200MkIII speakers: https://billstclair.com/swan/
Sennheiser HD 598 headphones: https://billstclair.com/hd598/

Yep. 16-bits is more than enough head room to capture dynamic range. Let's not forget the music is sampled 44,100 times PER SECOND. That's as close to the original sound wave you need. Everything else is placebo and diminishing returns. You can't hear anything beyond 22k anyway (I'm probably down to 18k at my age) so 192k is just overkill.

It's just a ploy for the industry to sell you something you already purchased. Again.

This is why I say streaming is the future. It negates all this nonsense. If the industry wants to give a high rez format, so be it. That's Spotifies problem. All those "upgrades" are handled by their servers. Just deliver my music for $9.99 a month with no ads.

 

[teknikal90]

Hey, if you can't tell the difference between a Ferrari and a bus, is a Ferrari a placebo?

No.

If you can't tell the difference between satin sheets and sandpaper, does that mean satin sheets is a placebo?

No.

So just because some people can't tell the difference between audio qualities, (even if one is digitally 'better', read the article), that means it's a placebo?

No.

It doesn't matter if 99% of people can't tell the difference. The fact is that there is a difference. It doesn't matter if it's tiny, it doesn't matter if the majority of people can't hear it. It doesn't matter if you can only notice on one set of speakers, or headphones.

I never said I'd get it. I never said I could tell the difference.

What I did say is that, at the risk of repeating myself again, it's not a placebo. Clear?

i never wanted to get into a bun fight with you over the use of a word dude. never my intention thats why i said fair enough.
but yes you're right, 99% of people, probably even more, won't be able to tell the difference

 

[djphat2000]

I just started using HDtracks to get a few of my favorite albums. All are 24-bit with sampling rates of 88-192 kHz. And, of course, they are sold as uncompressed full-wave PCM in various forms. Since I also have the iTunes Plus versions of the same albums, it's been interesting to compare. I have a high-quality home-theater system with relatively nice speaker. I compared by creating a USB stick with both the iTunes AAC versions and the 'high-res' versions. My Pioneer SC-72 can play both versions directly.

So is there a sound difference? Yes. The high-res versions feature treble which is less 'harsh'. So there's less ear-strain. That's good. The high-res versions have more dynamic range with less compression (thank goodness). But the biggest difference is that the bass has more definition. For example, Michael Jackson's Thriller shows the biggest difference for me. The bass lines actually sound like a real electric bass as opposed to the lower-res versions where the bass is just low notes.

But I can't hear a night-and-day difference with other recordings. Listening to Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (greatest jazz album ever, for sure) gives better definition, but I still don't feel like I'm standing in the same room with him.

Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe my system just can't really bring out the changes. Maybe I just can't hear them.

Listening to the files on a lower-quality DAC (like an iPhone, or even a Mac) will be even more of a waste. A listener would hear a difference, but would it really be that big for files that are 10 times the size? High-res albums take 2.5-3.5G as opposed to 250-350M.

I would be interested if Apple were to release high-res versions. But I would really limit the number of purchases I did with high-res.

I agree with your statement here. And as far as expectations go, it does depend on what your audio system can do as far as what you will hear. But, it also depends on how it was recorded in the first place. Some recordings (usually in Analog originally, converted to 24 bit 96/192k digital) sound indistinguishable from the original reel to reel. But, you go to MP3 or AAC, it sucks dramatically. I personally can NOT turn the music up on these formats. While on a good recording in hi-res, I can't stop turning it up. Sounds fantastic.

 

[Jensend]

1) The original poster said that it's a placebo. That's wrong, because the quality is better. Therefore, it's not a placebo, just because they can't tell the difference.
2) Can I tell the difference? Probably not. But then, I didn't say I would buy it. I simply said it's not a placebo.
3) Other people will be able to hear the difference. Because there is a difference. Hence, I'm saying it's not a placebo.

So what I'm saying is ... it's not a placebo.

May I clarify any of the above points?

There may be animals that can hear a difference.
From the studies I've read, increasing the resolution of an audio file above CD quality is as useless as adding an infrared channel to a video file.

 

[TsMkLg068426]

Awesome, now I get to pay to update all my iTunes music all over again!!!

Said no one ever...

I just hope it is not like the other music update debacle... The one where you paid a nominal fee to go from songs at 128 kbps to 256 kbps, then a few months to a year later you can do it for free with iTunes Match... Apple screwed me hard with those "improvements".

If you only knew how many songs or albums I have purchased from iTunes just imagine over a thousand songs I have to pay extra just to convert it to higher quality I might as well buy a new iMac. As you said also I hope it will be free for iTunes Match or else this is going to be bad and I still have 128 bit with DRM purchased form iTunes never repurchased them for iTunes Plus quality too many.

 

[keysofanxiety]

i never wanted to get into a bun fight with you over the use of a word dude. never my intention thats why i said fair enough.
but yes you're right, 99% of people, probably even more, won't be able to tell the difference

Sorry buddy, sarcasm's difficult to discern through text I'm just getting hundreds of quote notifications with people saying the same thing.

Didn't mean to snap. Hope we're good.

 

[teknikal90]

As with most of life's questions, "it depends" is the answer.

Is there a difference between compressed AAC and lossless when listening to "Get down for what?" absolutely not.

between compressed AAC and lossless when listening to "Dark side of the moon"? absolutely.

i really don't think that's true.
abbey road at the time, if im not mistaken was using 16 track tape mixers.
the amount of noise that tape makes already would negate the additional 'clarity' that a lossless track would posess over a 256kbps vbr aac.

and that's IF you can even hear the difference...

 

[Razeus]

And they are still wondering why music sales are down well this is it you want to charge more for better quality, Apple wants to move to Spotify streaming music but you want to make it monthly fee but how about the customers who are signed up to iTunes Match are we going to have to pay monthly fee to stream music? If anything Steve Jobs would have not allowed the record labels to dictate him, see what happened when he allowed the labels to finally have their own pricing the prices went up for albums and single tracks, they use to be $9.99 a album or a track was 99 cents now it $11.99 or $13.99 a album or $1.29 for a single track.


Why do I also have this feeling Apple is going to start charging for ripping CDs at a higher quality I just can not get that weird feeling out of me because of that last few news I have been reading on MacRumors all this monthly fees to get music.

The best thing for Apple to do is this:

1) Switch to a streaming/radio system. All you can eat for $99 a year, no ads.
2) If you really want to purchase an album or song, it's a discount off the normal price, say 25% if your a subscriber.
3) iTunes Match for music in the cloud is no extra charge. This is needed because alot of albums (especially 80's, early 90's hip-hop that haven't cleared their samples) aren't available on iTunes. NOTE: iTunes Match no longer gives you or replaces the files (since your a streaming member you can always download the files to your device, like Spotify). It simply puts your songs that iTunes doesn't have in the cloud so you can download them to your device when on the go.

 

[teknikal90]

Sorry buddy, sarcasm's difficult to discern through text I'm just getting hundreds of quote notifications with people saying the same thing.

Didn't mean to snap. Hope we're good.

all good

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

500gb ipod classic

That's the mini. The one we'll need is the new iPod Classic Raid featuring two 3.5" 4TB drives. Yes, it's much thicker and much heavier but it's been so long since they updated the Classic, maybe no one will notice? Apple will just spin it as "heft = quality" and we'll swallow that like 4" is the new perfect-size screen (between when he 3.5" was perfect and when the new 4.7" or 5.5" are perfect).

And one more thing: lightning connector.

"Shut up and take my money"
"I'm already in line"
"It's now got the right heft that every music player should have"
"This is the music beast I always wanted" (so you should too, "because 9X% of the people want exactly what 'I' want")
"Thicker is better. I hate it when my thin Samsung phone slips through a crack"
"Stacking two 3.5" hard drives are perfect for one-handed use" (we all know how important that is).
"The new one is so much snappier" (like Safari)
"new iPod Classic Raid G5 next Tuesday"

 

[TrentS]

What!!???

Neil Young won't be too happy about this.