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High Definition iTunes Music Downloads May Be on the Horizon

jettredmont said:
Homeopathy is placebo. Prayer is placebo. Going from 44.1k samples to 192k samples in audio is placebo.
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I think you need a qualifier in the last one. I agree if you say, "for most people, with most music on most systems..."

I'm sure that there are people who with the right equipment and the right source material could tell the difference.

It's not really different than saying most people won't be able to tell the difference between a blu-ray movie and a 4K movie, but in certain circumstances you might be able to.
 
On the go, I could care less between 16-bit 44khz and 24-bit 192khz. I prefer the convenience of Bluetooth headphones and 1. it downsamples the music to 128kbps anyway, and 2. you won't hear much of a difference on earbuds.

But at home, I love my vinyl player but just not the hassle of flipping over the record every 5 songs, the maintenance required for the player. I bought a few DVD-Audios back in the day that were 24-bit 192khz and liked the near vinyl levels of warmth. The clarity is about the same, when the vinyl record is brand new. A digital 24-bit 192khz file will never degrade over time.

I will not upgrade everything to hi-res when it comes, but there are definitely a few albums that'll be worth the upgrade. FYI, I don't think any iOS devices can support 24-bit 192khz output, but my Mac definitely does.
 
keysofanxiety said:
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.
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The average human being can discern a difference between each of those pairs.

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.
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No, the fact that it is scientifically proven that no people can hear the difference between 44.1k and 192k sampled music that makes it a placebo.

Not "some people". "No people". None. Ever. Period.

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?
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Clear that you both don't know what a placebo is, and don't know that there is absolutely positively not a single person out of the 7billion+ people on this earth today who can with "normal" audio pressures (i.e., which would not lead to instant hearing loss if a normal-range note were played at that volume) hear the range of frequencies needed to get any kind of a different experience from a 192k audio file.

Yes, I'm going out on a limb there. Nature is diverse. There are very outside-of-normal-range people out there. But please, prove me wrong. The bell curve for maximal hearing range descends far below 1 in 10B (and below 1 in 100B) far below 22kHz. Makes it very very unlikely I am wrong.

That makes it placebo. Like homeopathy: sure, one in every 10^1000 bottles of homeopathic "cure" might have a single molecule of the purported active ingredient, but that doesn't mean that "to some person somewhere" it isn't pure placebo.
 
Jimmy Page is heading the remaster, and they are doing it from the master recording. 24bit 96kHz, This makes me very happy.

Wow some people are going at it, yes we can not hear a ton of the extra added sounds, but its not the sounds were looking for. What happens is that the extra sound waves bounce off each other and produce more unique dynamics. So its not that we have added sound, we have more crisp, well intended sound. This also brings the quality in par with that of vinyl, without the decay in sound overtime. And Zeppelin is all about the sound.
This is kind of like retina, who needs a screen with so many pixels right?

Hope this helps. I just want to hear zeppelin as intended until I can see them live.
 
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jettredmont said:
No, the fact that it is scientifically proven that no people can hear the difference between 44.1k and 192k sampled music that makes it a placebo.

Not "some people". "No people". None. Ever. Period.
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I'm sorry, but such a statement requires a citation. Please provide a source. No, it's not my responsibility to Google it when you state it as a scientific fact.
 
Nunyabinez said:
I think you need a qualifier in the last one. I agree if you say, "for most people, with most music on most systems..."

I'm sure that there are people who with the right equipment and the right source material could tell the difference.

It's not really different than saying most people won't be able to tell the difference between a blu-ray movie and a 4K movie, but in certain circumstances you might be able to.
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But that's just it. It isn't the equipment that needs to change drastically to discern such a difference. It is your genes, and the audio mechanics and neurological connections inside the middle ear and brain which need to change.

No one, period, is able to hear sound at the frequency ranges above 22kHz. No matter how many tens of thousands of dollars they spend on their electronic audio equipment.

This is not Bluray vs DVD. There is a physiologically plausible mechanism by which HD video is perceived as better than SD video (primarily: move a little closer to the screen). There is no such physiological plausibility here.
 
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Very interesting conversation here. From my own experiences I have found the following to be true -

Not all headphones are alike in quality
Not all speakers are alike in quality
Not all players are alike in quality
Not all people's ability to hear the difference in quality
Not all recordings are the same in quality

and the list goes on...

For my iPhone ear pods, I use the app Dirac for about 90 percent of my music. I also own 3 sets of headphones that range from medium to high end. They all sound different when playing 256 AAC, lossless from CD and quality 96/24 flacs.

I have downloaded music from iTunes and some of it works very well and some of the recordings are just terrible. I have no idea why my CDs would sound so much better than the iTunes version (just in some cases) other than they were mass dumped rather than mastered with care for 256 AAC.

My iPhone and iPad handle 256 AAC, CD converted to Apple lossless and FLAC 96/24 (and 192/24) converted to Apple lossless. For my home AV system, I play CD lossless via flac, 96/24 and 192/24. I can tell the difference easily between the above and most 256 AAC unless the original recording was crap. Garbage in and garbage out as they say.

Last - it also depends on the type of music. All electronic music doesn't gain really much (for me) in 96/24. Accoustic and heavy orchestral really does sound different when comparing 256 AAC and 96/24 flac when the originals are well crafted.

Just my two cents.
 
Nunyabinez said:
It's not really different than saying most people won't be able to tell the difference between a blu-ray movie and a 4K movie, but in certain circumstances you might be able to.
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My wife happily watches movies in 480p because she can't tell the difference. I lowered the Netflix quality because our bandwidth usage is through the roof.
 
Razeus said:
Only a fool would by 24/192 "hi-res" files. It's placebo.
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Try this: buy the DVD or Blu-Ray version of your favorite album. Compare it on a surround sound system to the CD version. Which one sounds better? I guarantee you it'll be the one with more information.

People always reference the law that says that all you have to do is double the highest frequency and use that as your sampling rate, and then you can represent every frequency accurately. The problem is that in the source material, there are frequencies higher than we can hear, so in limiting the sampling rate by human hearing, there are audible frequencies that get distorted.

It's called aliasing. It's a bit like the audio version of the Moire Effect.
 
jettredmont said:
But that's just it. It isn't the equipment that needs to change drastically to discern such a difference. It is your genes, and the audio mechanics and neurological connections inside the inner ear and brain which need to change.

No one, period, is able to hear sound at the frequency ranges above 22kHz. No matter how many tens of thousands of dollars they spend on their electronic audio equipment.

This is not Bluray vs DVD. There is a physiologically plausible mechanism by which HD video is perceived as better than SD video (primarily: move a little closer to the screen). There is no such physiological plausibility here.
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Your statement is accurate, but it's a little more complex than that:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9462448/The-quest-for-higher-quality-digital-music.html

[...] although the human ear can't hear much above 22KHz - and that level declines with age - it doesn't follow that frequencies above that level can be removed from a recording without an impact.

[...] "The missing high frequencies affect the way you perceive the lower frequencies. In other words, the ear is a much more complex organ than people thought it was. That's one of the problems with CD: there was a complete cut-off at 22k. That's not enough for your ear. Even though you can't hear a 22k sine wave, you need those higher frequencies there."
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It does require quality audio equipment to truly appreciate the finer details of high def music. It's hard to tell the difference if you don't have the right system or 'phones. My ears are extremely sensitive and MP3 compared to lossless is like night and day to me.

More data at higher frequencies allows for clearer and higher quality audio in the audible range of human hearing.


Detrius said:
Try this: buy the DVD or Blu-Ray version of your favorite album. Compare it on a surround sound system to the CD version. Which one sounds better? I guarantee you it'll be the one with more information.

People always reference the law that says that all you have to do is double the highest frequency and use that as your sampling rate, and then you can represent every frequency accurately. The problem is that in the source material, there are frequencies higher than we can hear, so in limiting the sampling rate by human hearing, there are audible frequencies that get distorted.

It's called aliasing. It's a bit like the audio version of the Moire Effect.
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^^^

What this guy said.
 
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$2.29 per song for yet another "new" music format? No thanks. 99% of people won't be able to tell the difference. Plus it requires more bandwidth to stream and more storage space on iPods and computers. Very little advantage.

I'm betting this is Apple's first move to start charging more for songs. A year after it's release, only HD songs will be available from the iTunes Store and everyone will be forced to pay $2.29 per song and $24.99 per album. Just what the record companies have always wanted.
 
Nunyabinez said:
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...
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I'd be interested in the result if you do decide to try this. Why not give it a shot?
 
dona83 said:
My wife happily watches movies in 480p because she can't tell the difference. I lowered the Netflix quality because our bandwidth usage is through the roof.
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Ha! Mine too. I obsess about the quality, spend countless hours with test patterns fine tuning my TVs and I'll walk in and she's watching an SD channel.
 
Nunyabinez said:
Ha! Mine too. I obsess about the quality, spend countless hours with test patterns fine tuning my TVs and I'll walk in and she's watching an SD channel.
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If the film is good, you tend to completely forget about the resolution; you admire the picture, not the canvas.
 
jettredmont said:
No, the fact that it is scientifically proven that no people can hear the difference between 44.1k and 192k sampled music that makes it a placebo.
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Nunyabinez said:
I'm sorry, but such a statement requires a citation. Please provide a source. No, it's not my responsibility to Google it when you state it as a scientific fact.
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http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=14195
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

"This paper presented listeners with a choice between high-rate DVD-A/SACD content, chosen by high-definition audio advocates to show off high-def's superiority, and that same content resampled on the spot down to 16-bit / 44.1kHz Compact Disc rate. The listeners were challenged to identify any difference whatsoever between the two using an ABX methodology. BAS conducted the test using high-end professional equipment in noise-isolated studio listening environments with both amateur and trained professional listeners.

In 554 trials, listeners chose correctly 49.8% of the time. In other words, they were guessing. Not one listener throughout the entire test was able to identify which was 16/44.1 and which was high rate"​
 
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MacWhiners!

Can there be positive posts for anything?

If apple waited 2 more years and amazon started a hi-res music store and apple lost market share, we'd be demanding that apple start innovating!

If you don't want hd music, don't buy it...stick with the basic format.

If it's my most favorite music, I might buy the hd version. If it's just the latest pop song, I might buy the regular version.

Maybe apple will have a simple offer to upgrade your current library at a lower price, who knows.
 
Razeus said:
Only a fool would by 24/192 "hi-res" files. It's placebo.
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Oh man, you're going to try to argue with audiophiles? It's a lost cause. Have you seen the magic rocks? That's a real product. Don't forget to re-cable everything with silver, because *waves hands*! ****ing electrons, how do they work?!

Sure there's no scientific reason to believe that 24/192 could ever improve audio quality in any way (nor are there any legitimate blind tests which show people successfully picking the 24/192 file over the 16/44.1). Doesn't matter; Bigger numbers are very impressive to consumers. The target market isn't experts in sonic science, it's people with disposable income who want the best quality audio and aren't interested in doing the research. 192 is a way bigger number than 44, case closed. The files are like 5-6x larger than standard lossless, imagine all the extra magic you can fit in there.

Lossless is a different story though. It's true that not many can pick the lossless file in a blind test, but the fact remains that any lossy compression is going to (by definition) lose data. The biggest impact of this is that you can't freely re-encode the file into the format you want because you'll be doubling up on compression artifacts (and then it becomes far more likely that you'll notice the quality degradation).

So personally I'd prefer lossless formats when I buy music simply so that I have a re-compressible permanent backup. I don't particularly need the files to also be 6x larger because they contain audiophile magic.
 
unibodydesign said:
If the film is good, you tend to completely forget about the resolution; you admire the picture, not the canvas.
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True, but when the resolution draws attention to itself, it pulls you out of the experience. Maybe my wife has a better attention span. I am ADD, so when something distracts me it really distracts me, which is why I want the medium to be transparent.
 
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