High Definition iTunes Music Downloads May Be on the Horizon

[G4DP]

Hopefully it'll also mean Apple providing better quality equipment as well. Although I won't hold my breath.

Would think anyone who want to be able to tell the difference in quality wouldn't be buying music from iTunes in the first place. File space also wouldn't be a worry.

The sceptic in me thinks it's just a money grabbing idea, they know that some smucks will buy it. Regardless of the fact that they won't be able to tell the difference.

 

[Haynzee]

HD Music eh? I'll be needing a bigger iPhone. Time to up the default iPhone memory size eh Apple, Please please please

 

[lilo777]

Frankly, Apple needs to make people excited about purchasing music again. Their digital music sales started sliding since the iPhone was introduced.

People used to lose their minds when a new iPod was launched. Apple supplied lots of commercials for those. They made it cool to buy music, digitally.

Those have disappeared since 95% of their money comes from iOS. And yet they wonder why their digital music sales are declining. There's a direct correlation here.

However, to really appreciate this quality people will need to buy something better than Apple gear. Something like this:

and high quality head phones. This stuff is not cheap.

 

[randian]

44.1khz sample rate covers 20hz-20,000hz of sound. most people cant hear anywhere near as low as 20hz or as high as 20,000hz

True but misleading. The filter required for such a low sampling ceiling creates artifacts in the audible range. More importantly, you ignore bit depth. 16-bit Red Book has serious quantization problems at high frequencies. Too few available "buckets" for samples. That's why CD is often characterized as "brittle" or harsh in the high frequencies, and SACD & 24/96 are not.

If this happens, HDTracks may have a big problem staying in business. That depends, naturally, on whether the labels will deliver good quality tracks to Apple, not dynamically squashed and without audio watermarking.

 

[milo]

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

You just don't understand the placebo effect.

If someone is listening and knows what the two sources are, placebo effect is very common. People think they hear a difference when they really don't.

If a person can do an ABX comparison and consistently get it right, no placebo effect.

If a person thinks they hear a difference but when they try and confirm with ABX comparison and fail, THAT is placebo effect.

And in the case of ferrari/bus and satin/sandpaper, if a person truly can't tell the difference but just thinks they can (fails ABX comparison test) then hell yeah that's the placebo effect.

The placebo effect is so strong with audio that you can play the exact same recording for people twice and tell them that one is different (particularly "better", with a convincing story about whatever makes the other such an improvement), and many people will swear they hear a difference. This even happens with people who do audio for a living, it's just the way the human brain works. Apple could release the exact same files upsampled so they're just bigger but sound exactly the same, and a huge number of people would rave about how much better they sound.

Well, It's certainly not a placebo to me.

And you've done the ABX listening test to prove it?

 

[LLIBSETAG]

Neil Young Halo Effect?

Is Apple upgrading their iTunes Store after discussions with Neil Young & now with his Kickstarter money donations for the PONGO 24 bit music player & downloads..?

Hmmm… Old man take a look at iTunes, they just passed you by.

 

[chromite]

Beatport

Been waiting a while for this! Hopefully Apple can put beatport out of business: http://i.imgur.com/O5H28EX.png

 

[nuckinfutz]

This is awesome news!! It would be even better if the next Apple TV supports 24/192. I've wanted high word & bit length audio for a while now. You won't benefit unless your signal path and speakers are solid. If you do have the equipment you will notice a lower noise floor & smooth reverb tails. Pumped

 

[chrmjenkins]

However, to really appreciate this quality people will need to buy something better than Apple gear. Something like this:

Image

and high quality head phones. This stuff is not cheap.

Or the vamp verza.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Funny this comes up just as Pono is about to become a reality.

 

[oneMadRssn]

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...

The number of tracks their mixers had is irrelevant. Further, tape is an analog format. The quality depends on many factors (tape speed, tape quality, recording hardware, etc). Sure it's not perfect, but that's no reason to diminish it's quality further.

Also, many would consider that tape noise to be a desirable aspect of that recording. Hearing the tape noise behind the music in all it's glory would be an accurate representation of how people listened to it when it was first released. Many people listen to records for that very reason - those scratchy imperfections. It's quaint. Compressed music doesn't reproduce this kind of stuff perfectly.

 

[Nunyabinez]

Wow, it never ceases to amaze me how some MR posters never change. The majority of people here believe the they are the arbiters of what everybody else should want.

If you can't tell the difference and don't want to pay extra, great for you. Some of us want super hi res files. Maybe we can't really hear the difference, but we want it, so what business is that of yours?

Every thread is filled with "you don't need a bigger iPhone" or "you're an idiot to pay for a NMP when you could build for less" etc., etc.

I have a high-end set-up and listen to many types of music. Highly compressed speed metal does not benefit from high resolution. Carefully recorded classical pieces with great dynamic range do benefit.

I am thrilled that this is happening. If you aren't that's fine, but do you really need to criticize people because they want something you don't? You must have a pretty empty life then.

 

[tkermit]

16-bit Red Book has serious quantization problems at high frequencies. Too few available "buckets" for samples.

You will have to explain that...

 

[Dubberton]

this would be great. sign me up

 

[Internaut]

An android version of iTunes?

It might make sense. Apple's closed services, like iTunes and iCloud, are no longer a USP but another digital commodity.

 

[oneMadRssn]

You just don't understand the placebo effect.

If someone is listening and knows what the two sources are, placebo effect is very common. People think they hear a difference when they really don't.

If a person can do an ABX comparison and consistently get it right, no placebo effect.

If a person thinks they hear a difference but when they try and confirm with ABX comparison and fail, THAT is placebo effect.

And in the case of ferrari/bus and satin/sandpaper, if a person truly can't tell the difference but just thinks they can (fails ABX comparison test) then hell yeah that's the placebo effect.

The placebo effect is so strong with audio that you can play the exact same recording for people twice and tell them that one is different (particularly "better", with a convincing story about whatever makes the other such an improvement), and many people will swear they hear a difference. This even happens with people who do audio for a living, it's just the way the human brain works. Apple could release the exact same files upsampled so they're just bigger but sound exactly the same, and a huge number of people would rave about how much better they sound.



And you've done the ABX listening test to prove it?

I think the ABX test is a bit overkill for this. A simple blind test is enough. A v. B. Ask which is better? However, do not prompt or prime the person first.

I think the main issue to be careful for is priming / seeding - if you let the person know one sample is better than the other before the test, that will prime them and bias the results by seeding a certain thought process before the test.

If you just say "Hey listen to this A. Now this B. Back to A. Back to B. which do you prefer?

 

[Porco]

Wow, it never ceases to amaze me how some MR posters never change. The majority of people here believe the they are the arbiters of what everybody else should want.

If you can't tell the difference and don't want to pay extra, great for you. Some of us want super hi res files. Maybe we can't really hear the difference, but we want it, so what business is that of yours?

Every thread is filled with "you don't need a bigger iPhone" or "you're an idiot to pay for a NMP when you could build for less" etc., etc.

I have a high-end set-up and listen to many types of music. Highly compressed speed metal does not benefit from high resolution. Carefully recorded classical pieces with great dynamic range do benefit.

I am thrilled that this is happening. If you aren't that's fine, but do you really need to criticize people because they want something you don't? You must have a pretty empty life then.

I could be wrong but I'm not personally convinced lossy 96/24 files would be really worth it over 44.1/16 lossless files (which I would love the option for on iTunes) … But other than that, yeah, I agree with all of your post, well said.

 

[R3k]

This is a pointless endevaour. (16 bit vs 24 bit blind test results: of 500+ listeners, they couldn't tell a difference)

Its far more important in regards to the actual production of the music.
So us music guys, we're all writing music using 24bit recorded files, Why dumb it all down to 16bit at the end? Certain forms of this downward conversion (dithering) actual introduce noise to the signal to help disguise the bad artifacts. This is called noise shaping. Anyways, whether or not the average Joe can tell the difference, 16bit is indeed lesser quality.

 

[Nunyabinez]

Funny this comes up just as Pono is about to become a reality.

Also, many would consider that tape noise to be a desirable aspect of that recording. Hearing the tape noise behind the music in all it's glory would be an accurate representation of how people listened to it when it was first released. Many people listen to records for that very reason - those scratchy imperfections. It's quaint. Compressed music doesn't reproduce this kind of stuff perfectly.

I think it's also related to the resurgence of vinyl as a medium. The really hard-core audiophiles I know always stuck by the "there is nothing superior to an analog vinyl record" mantra.

I have thought about starting to get vinyl and rip it to lossless to see if it is possible to digitally capture some of vinyl's richness. Might be a fun experiment to AB a red book CD and a ripped vinyl to lossless. There goes my weekend...

 

[Analog Kid]

Earlier this week, a report suggested Apple was planning a "dramatic overhaul" of its iTunes Music store to combat declining music downloads... Led Zeppelin remasters...

The decline in downloads isn't a technology problem, it's a content problem. There's just nothing new being put out that's worth owning, so they need to find a way to get us to keep buying Zeppelin and the Beatles over and over.

Also: get off my lawn before I call the cops, you hooligans. I know your mother, Timmy.

 

[jettredmont]

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.

No, a placebo is not defined as "something is different", but as "it can not possibly make a real difference to you or any other human being". Technically, a placebo is just something that is prescribed "more" for psychological effect than for physiological effect, but the original poster was correct even if you push the definition to the "no possible discernible effect" (aside from psychological) boundary.

Homeopathy is placebo. Prayer is placebo. Going from 44.1k samples to 192k samples in audio is placebo.

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.

Non-sequitor. That a difference does exist doesn't mean the difference is perceptible by human sensory equipment.

I suspect cats would be able to tell the difference, as their audio equipment has a much higher range of perceptible frequencies than human ears. But, we're not selling music to cats, and crazy people who live to entertain their cats with the nuances of Nirvana tunes are just not a viable market to cater to.

 

[Nunyabinez]

I could be wrong but I'm not personally convinced lossy 96/24 files would be really worth it over 44.1/16 lossless files (which I would love the option for on iTunes) … But other than that, yeah, I agree with all of your post, well said.

Yeah, I would be trilled to just get ALAC versions through iTunes. I usually buy a CD and rip it. iTunes is super convenient, but I like having as good of quality as I can get, even if might have a hard time distinguishing it, but that's me

 

[johansugarev]

Great marketing, but todays commercial music hardly has the dynamic range to cover even 16-bit word length. Not to mention most studios record at the target sample rate, you will rarely see a 192khz session in a serious studio. By the way 96khz and 192khz are standard sample rates for audio in video (96khz is currently on blue-rays). For music we use 44.1, 88.2, 176.4khz.
A good thing that might come from this is that Apple would without a doubt up the memory capacity of next gen iPhones.

 

[iChrist]

Yay, a niche format most people don't give 2 cr@ps about.

How's that Spotify competitor coming, Apple?

 

[bumblebritches5]

iTunes Plus was the same way when it was introduced--either get the 128 Kbps music with DRM, or get the 256 Kbps file as plain AAC for a little more. You could also "upgrade" previous purchases to iTunes Plus for less than the price of a re-purchase.

I suspect they will have an upgrade option available for the "high def" files. Of course, now iTunes Match exists, as well, so who knows what file type it will choose to match with now. I assume, however, that the 24-bit files will eventually become the norm.



If you already have it on FLAC, shouldn't you be able to convert it to whatever format you want without any degradation beyond whatever may be inherent with your destination format? And you don't have to buy a 24-bit file if your 16-bit file is working just fine. Unlike trying to use your cassette tape songs on an iPod, this will keep working just fine.

FLAC is lossless, as is Apple Lossless, he could easily convert the files over and suffer no degradation *at all*