iTunes 4.6 Now Available

[sjk]

and sjk, you're right, except that "fair use" is the legal matter in question, and the DMCA is valid only so long as it does not interfere with "fair use"

Yet it remains legally enforceable (sigh) while actions with completely reasonable and well justified intentions of varying risks are currently being taken to discredit its validity. Many (most?) of us "here" agree it's foolishly outdated in light of information age technology/reality. Just another speed bump on the road to the Brave New World, as you say.

Anyway, enough with the temporary reboot of this oft-discussed topic.

 

[jettredmont]

I'd have to have.. like.. a $1000 - 2000 converter minimum to process an optical digital out.

Just what have you been smoking? Most sub-$300 receivers support at least one optical digital input; more money obviously buys a better D/A converter, but if you're an audiophile with a CD player there's no way in hell you're letting the dime store D/A converter in the CD player make sound that hits your ears!

FWIW, I have a reciever I bought over four years ago, a home-theater setup, which has two optical digital inputs. It was a cheapo home theater kit with five satelite speakers and a subwoofer for all of $399. Last I saw this particular model the receiver alone was being clearanced at $129 at Best Buy ...

You don't need to spend money to get an optical input. You might need to spend money on getting a D/A converter worthy of your ears, but that's it.

 

[Wender]

>Rune, the whole point of this was there aren't any converters in the APE if you're outputting to digital. So you'd rely on whatever external converter you want.

Exactly. I have a good amplifier with optical input. I have a CD player from Nakamichi with optical OUT, so I connect the CD player to the amp obviously - with an optical cable.

Can anyone tell me if I'm wrong here: Will these two setups produce the same result - in the end:?

1) Current setup: CD player connected to amp with optical cable.

2) CD audio ripped to Mac uncompressed, streamed DIGITALLY without any analogue conversion or third-party USB connected unneccesary thingey - just CD AUDIO ripped to the Mac lossless - streamed to the Airport Express with has an optical cable connected to the amp.

The same zeroes and ones are travelling to the amp in the end, right?

It's all digital all the way from you buy the CD in the record shop - to the optical input on the amp. Then the D/A converter in the amp is the key factor. Right?

When audio pros are going nuts over the optical output in the new G5, I'm sure everyone would be satisfied with an optical out from an Airport Express. My understanding is - it's 0 and 1 on the CD and all the way to the amp. Right?

 

[ingenious]

>Rune, the whole point of this was there aren't any converters in the APE if you're outputting to digital. So you'd rely on whatever external converter you want.

Exactly. I have a good amplifier with optical input. I have a CD player from Nakamichi with optical OUT, so I connect the CD player to the amp obviously - with an optical cable.

Can anyone tell me if I'm wrong here: Will these two setups produce the same result - in the end:?

1) Current setup: CD player connected to amp with optical cable.

2) CD audio ripped to Mac uncompressed, streamed DIGITALLY without any analogue conversion or third-party USB connected unneccesary thingey - just CD AUDIO ripped to the Mac lossless - streamed to the Airport Express with has an optical cable connected to the amp.

The same zeroes and ones are travelling to the amp in the end, right?

As far as I know, it should be the same. I would go with the Mac hooked up to AEx, but that's just my preference.

 

[jettredmont]

O.. k.. how do people manage to respond to what I say without comprehending a word of what I said.

I'm not looking for true hi-fi.. I'm looking for $1250 2.1 hi-fi. That means I have a good A/D converter for listening (not recording) that does NOT have an optical in.

So, what, it has a coax input? Is that what your whole problem is?

Did you know that you can, right this very minute, go out and either construct or buy an optical-to-coax signal bridge? For significantly less than you originally paid for your coax-only 2.1 hi-fi setup?

And, yes, the signal comes through just as clear after the conversion box.

Here, I'll save you typing it into google:

http://www.smarthome.com/77709.html

Was that really what all your fuss was about? Unbelievable.

 

[Wender]

As far as I know, it should be the same. I would go with the Mac hooked up to AEx, but that's just my preference.

Agreed. Now I have a 5 meter long audio cable of poor quality running from my Mac to my amp. That's really an inferior soultion. This means using the soundcard on the iMac to output analogue audio to the amp.

Obviously - it will be a huge leap in terms of quality to bypass the soundcard and stream the digital content directly to the AEx then into the amp, and let the amp do the D/A conversion. Looking forward to it!! This is THE way it should be!

Runeasgar: Get an amp with optical input next time you can, or an affordable optical-to-digital interconnection now. THEN do the old "my-own-ears-is-the-ultimate-reference-test" to find out if it's for real. And for Jesus Phil Christ Collin's sake end this ranting already

 

[Audiophile]

I'd have to have.. like.. a $1000 - 2000 converter minimum to process an optical digital out.

Alright, rune, you have NO idea what you're talking about!
Spdif, Optical in, it doesn't matter. It doesn't take high end gear. They all provide PERFECT bit for bit data transmission.
AND they all come in low end equipment.
Hell, my audigy platinum has optical in and so does integrated audio's soundstorm.

I saw a cheap receiver at Future Shop the other day that had optical in and it was $129. That's 129 Canadian $ no less. I had no idea that $129 Canadian equals around $1000-$2000 US $!

The optical out on this new apple product is FINE. It's the same as running ANY digital out from a CD player directly into your receiver. It's a mathematically EXACTcopy of the original CD!

How that somehow translates into lower audio quality somehow eludes me!

 

[Bruce Lee, PhD]

It's all digital all the way from you buy the CD in the record shop - to the optical input on the amp. Then the D/A converter in the amp is the key factor. Right?

When audio pros are going nuts over the optical output in the new G5, I'm sure everyone would be satisfied with an optical out from an Airport Express. My understanding is - it's 0 and 1 on the CD and all the way to the amp. Right?

Yep. I suppose the occasional bit will get flipped during the ripping or over cable, but that doesn't really count. As you say, the only real factor in this setup is the D/A converter in your amp. From then on, it's all about how good your analog gear is.

 

[jettredmont]

I've been referring to Analog to Digital AND Digital to Analog using the term A/D. A/D converter just means it converts between the two. We probably just have conflicting terminology.

As a side note, generally people use the term for the function they are using, it helps the conceptual picture greatly. "D/A" (or "DAC") means digital to analog. To make things worse you've on several occaisions said that your "A/D" has no "digital" input. Now, I understand you mean to say "My D/A converter has no Optical digital input", but I can also see why so many here have been confused.

Also, the airport express is $130, I don't want to spend an additional $300 - whatever dollars getting ANOTHER converter to SPECIFICALLY work with the airport express. Optical in is used for speakers, very rarely is it used for A/D|D/A converters, and that's what apple intended it for, direct input to speakers.

Unfortunately, that's the age we live in. Home theater buffs have been living with this for quite some time: you either buy all optical, all coax, or you buy converter boxes when necessary. At $50-100 per box, they aren't cheap, of course. If you're a real cheapskate I believe the parts are more on the order of $20; you can find the wiring instructions several places online. But, that's the age in which we live.

As for Apple's choice ... well, I think they had a pretty much 50/50 shot at hitting the target here. Most home theater receivers (ie, what the non-audiophiles tend to use) have an optical input for the CD player, which is conceptually what the AE would replace, and most have a coax for the DVD player. Given that minidisks (again, another likely device AE could "replace" in a setup) use optical outs, and that Apple could buy a single port to handle both digital and analog output so long as they used optical out instead of coax out, and that coax out by itself is a kinda ugly port ... and I can certainly see why Apple went on the optical out side instead of the coax out side.

It all comes doewn to this: is the AE functionality worth $200 to you (cost of AE plus an Optical/Coax digital conversion box)? If it isn't ... well, then I guess it just isn't, but you don't have a great deal of room to complain.

The airport express doesn't take external or alternative A/D|D/A conversion into account anywhere. The fact that a very small number of good D/A converters accept digital in is more likely a coincidence than intentional.

Again, you mean optical digital inputs.

However, saying AE doesn't take external D/A into account when it explicitly outputs digitally is a bit silly. Of *course* it takes external D/A into account; otherwise, what are you going to do with that toslink port, hook it up to some fiberoptic art piece and watch the pretty colors? It just doesn't take *YOUR* D/A into account.

As for "a very small number of good D/A converters accept [optical] digital in" ... is that really true? My impression was that it was about 50/50 ... but I'm not an audiophile so I don't follow it very closely (just yearn for the day when one or the other is accepted as the standard so I don't have to worry about it when I buy a DVD or CD player ...)

 

[PowerMacMan]

It is wonderful how Apple updates their software not just for the Mac but for Windows as well, and at the same time...

Kudos to Apple!

 

[jettredmont]

For using different music libraries with different music folders?

What I'm looking for is the optimal way to remap pathnames of songs that were originally in two locations (internal iBook and external FireWire drives, outside the iTunes Music folder) to their new "permanent" location on an eMac internal volume (still outside the iTunes Music folder)... without losing play counts, date added, and other library information. Any pointers for how to do that would be appreciated. Nothing I've found so far has seemed quite right but I may have overlooked something obvious. Thanks!

Well. Look in your iTunes Music folder. See the .xml file there? Open it. Save it to a new name. Do a global replace of old path to new path. Save it.

Go into iTunes. Delete all existing songs from the library. Import the editted XML library.

Does that not preserve play counts et al? I'm quite positive it preserves ratings and such because I did just that about a week ago (new drive; did a nice fresh install of the OS on a new smaller partition ...) I don't use play counts etc much, though, so those might get lost in the import process ...

 

[WM.]

Ok, well let me tell you something about upsampling. It has absolutely nothing to do with bit depths. It involves increasing the sampling rate (hence upsampling) via interpolation. This is typically done right before a D/A step, but is of dubious value because it's often done so that the D/A can skimp on the analog filter. (it's hard to make a filter that cuts out everythin above 22.1khz and nothing below, so they raise the sample rate so the nyquist freq. is much higher and then use a more gently sloped filter)

Hey, cool, I learned something about audio on MR. So I guess upsampling is, in a way, applying the filter in the digital domain, where you can implement it more cheaply than in analog. So if you have some cheap gear with crummy converters and analog circuitry, moving your Nyquist filtering before the conversion (i.e. upsampling) might improve your quality a fair bit. But if you have good converters and good analog circuitry (i.e. not this low-end M-Audio garbage), it becomes less worth it to upsample, because your more traditional filter will be pretty good anyway.

Is that about right?

WM

 

[WM.]

The difference is there. Everything sounds smoother. Your 48kHz soundcard in your computer upsamples everything that comes out of it by 4kHz.

Yuck. Don't go from 44.1k to 48k; you'll get all kinds of garbage. If you really want to upsample 44.1 kHz, the only thing that would make sense would be to go to 88.2 kHz, or (if you're really crazy) 176.4. I don't think it's going to do you too much good either way, but at least you'll be going to an integer multiple of your original rate (see Bruce Lee's post, he does know what he's talking about). Going from 44.1 to 48k, your sample rate converter is going to be doing all kinds of fancy math to make the samples work--every single one will have to be adjusted, unlike going to 88.2 when it's just interpolating every other one--and I bet it'll sound like crap.

Someone else brought up another issue here, which is: how do you know that your fancy M-Audio thing really is doing sample rate conversion when you think it is? It's amazing what people will hear when they have a pre-conceived expectation. I don't suppose you've done an ABX test?

That being said, I don't use 96kHz very often because of the digital harshness it adds. BUT, I do use it occasionally for badly compressed music, and I'd like to have that capability in wireless audio.

LOL.

My favorite part is that you go to all this trouble to listen to your lossy-compressed music. What a joke. I might take you a bit more seriously if you had at least losslessly ripped your CDs. Just out of curiosity, what bitrate is most of your music at?

Now, I'm not an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination. I'm perfectly happy, and I listen to my music (from 96 or even 64 kbps CBR MP3 through 128 kbps AAC to 192 kbps-minimum VBR MP3) on my old clamshell iBook hooked up to a $200 pair of powered speakers. I think they're pretty good for 200 bucks, but if I ever start thinking they're actually worth a damn, I just pause the music and listen to the bad-grounding rizz for a second. Which doesn't indicate low quality of the speakers--I think it's probably caused by the situation with the iBook and its non-grounded power adapter--but it is humbling.

FWIW
WM

 

[WM.]

Originally Posted by jsw
I'm going to stay out of the analog-to-digital/digital-to-analog/quality-of-equipment arguments. However, as runeasgar said, once something has been sampled at a certain rate, upsampling - and, in particular, upsampling with intelligent algorithms - can produce better sound, due to the fact that sound is easier to "guess" than, say, pictoral information. It's usually somewhat simple to determine what goes between the sampled audio bits - much easier than guessing what goes between sampled pixels.

The thing is, all DACs do this anyway. So do your ears, actually. It's called antialiasing. So, like I posted a few minutes ago, I suppose it'll help if you have bad converters that do a poor job of antialiasing, but with good ones I don't think it will make much difference. And about the intelligent algorithms--if his M-Audio thing is doing sample rate conversion the way he thinks it is, there's no way it's doing a fancy, intelligent job of it.

I do agree with you overall, though.

Is it guaranteed to be more accurate? No. But, the vast majority of the time, a well-upsampled audio stream will sound better and closer to the source sound than will the original stream. It isn't magic. And it doesn't work as well at the highest frequencies and - I think- at ones which are harmonics of the sampling rate. But it does produce better results. Ultimately, for sound, what sounds better is better.

Yeah. Whatever makes you happy, even if that's tens of thousands of dollars. Audiophiles don't hurt anyone. I just always hope that they've set aside enough money (and time!!!) for their kids, and other family and friends...

WM

 

[nacl99]

hi fi

All this Hi-fi talk is more like a pissing contest.

my 2.1 receiver cost more then yours, mine has tubes....oooh!

everyone knows this apple stuff isn't hi-fi by any extent nor will they ever make something that hard core hi-fi people would ever consider hi-fi, so what is the point?

 

[Rog210]

All this Hi-fi talk is more like a pissing contest.

my 2.1 receiver cost more then yours, mine has tubes....oooh!

everyone knows this apple stuff isn't hi-fi by any extent nor will they ever make something that hard core hi-fi people would ever consider hi-fi, so what is the point?

I think the point is that you can take the optical out from the new Apple widget and feed it into a decent DA converter and the results will be extremely HIFI.

Apple's audio guys know what they're doing and I'd be surprised if a CD ripped in the lossless codec and sent to the optical out wirelessly wasn't bit transparent when compared to the original CD.

 

[jsw]

Yeah. Whatever makes you happy, even if that's tens of thousands of dollars. Audiophiles don't hurt anyone. I just always hope that they've set aside enough money (and time!!!) for their kids, and other family and friends...

FWIW, my current Mac audio system is composed of, er, the internal speaker. I had a decent Onkyo Integra - not audiophile by any means, nor too horribly bad - that went south very recently when my 3.5-year-old poured juice into it. Fortunately, it was off and she wasn't hurt. I appreciate excellent sound. My wife, however, has other plans for the money. Hence, the internal speaker. Perhaps something soon in the $300-$500 range. The best of my meager equipment is a pair of Sennheiser HD600s.

 

[Penman]

I think the point is that you can take the optical out from the new Apple widget and feed it into a decent DA converter and the results will be extremely HIFI.

Apple's audio guys know what they're doing and I'd be surprised if a CD ripped in the lossless codec and sent to the optical out wirelessly wasn't bit transparent when compared to the original CD.

Good point and true. 90% of people working with sound know that 90% of what audiophiles are into is 100% BS. Sound is science not art and we know a lot about it. The idea at the root of audiophile beliefs is that measurable differences are the same as audible differences. Human ears aren't that good - we have trouble enough sensing the direction of distant sounds with real precision. The idea that miniscule vibrations and timing changes are audible is ludicrous. Compared to the audio-quality of a PowerBook's convertors the digital equipment used by Stevie Wonder in the late 70's was rubbish (he recorded pure digital back in the beginning). The Beatles used early 4-track gear that had audible 'wow' going to tape. Don't even start me on vinyl - it's noisy, hard to seperate and inconsistant. It really only sounds 'better' to people whose idea of hi-fi 'is' the vinyl sound and thus love all the imperfections that it comes loaded with.

In a nutshell - the express unit has enough quality for anyone sane. If you want to buy badly engineered tube amps from small manufacturers knock yourself out. The recording industry will continue to use 16, 20 and 24 bit digital at 48/96, monitor on crappy NS10's, push sound through Mackies, Neves and SSL's and, increasingly, do everything in a PC of Mac.

Next time you listen to an 'audiophile' blather on about nuances remember that the artist might well have sung into an old Shure SM57 and then mastered the track through a Soundblaster.

 

[Agathon]

You have to be kidding right?

Just because your ears are damaged or disabled doesn't mean that everyone else's are. If you listen to classical music or jazz, or anything where audio quality really matters and the engineers try to capture the sound of real instruments recorded in real spaces, and you'll find that good equipment makes all the difference in the world.

 

[Audiophile]

90% of people working with sound know that 90% of what audiophiles are into is 100% BS.

Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent.
Fourteen percent of all people know that.

 

[kheller2]

m4p downloaded

Why is it that several people are upset about losing their m4p tracks after they ripped to hymn. Last time I checked, you could re-download all your purchased tracks. In fact, I once nuked my TIG4 and when starting up iTunes it downloaded all my purchased music. Unless I was lucky...

 

[tomf87]

It is wonderful how Apple updates their software not just for the Mac but for Windows as well, and at the same time...

Kudos to Apple!

This is uncalled for. This thread has gone off-topic for too long to go back on-topic.

This is the first on-topic post over the past 9 pages or so.

 

[spankalee]

Why is it that several people are upset about losing their m4p tracks after they ripped to hymn. Last time I checked, you could re-download all your purchased tracks. In fact, I once nuked my TIG4 and when starting up iTunes it downloaded all my purchased music. Unless I was lucky...

I think you were lucky. As far as I know, there's no way to re-download iTMS tracks. There should be though. If Apple ever switches to a different format, or higher bit-rate you should be able to re-download your purchased songs in the new format.

And people who use Hymn and PlayFair should back up their original files. It's their own damn fault they lost their songs.

 

[spankalee]

Hey, cool, I learned something about audio on MR. So I guess upsampling is, in a way, applying the filter in the digital domain, where you can implement it more cheaply than in analog. So if you have some cheap gear with crummy converters and analog circuitry, moving your Nyquist filtering before the conversion (i.e. upsampling) might improve your quality a fair bit. But if you have good converters and good analog circuitry (i.e. not this low-end M-Audio garbage), it becomes less worth it to upsample, because your more traditional filter will be pretty good anyway.

Is that about right?

WM

Basically that's exaclty right, except for one thing. There's no filtering in the digital domain going on. It's actually impossible to filter anything above the Nyquist frequency in digital because nothing can be encoded above Nyquist. If for some reason higher frequencies were recorded into a stream they would be interpreted as (aliased as) a frequency below the Nyquist freq (the half sampling rate acts like a mirror, at 44.1k a 24.2kHz sine wave would be aliased as a 20kHz sine wave).

One reason why some people like the concept of higher sampling frequencies is because of that aliasing (which is different than what most audiophiles think they mean when they use the term). All signals are composed of sums of sine waves at different frequencies. If you draw a signal, sharp edges require higher frequencies, so something like a square wave with a right angle contains very, very high frequencies. A higher sampling rate can encode many more of the harmonics of a square wave. But here's the thing: only the harmonics up to the top of the hearing range contribute to the sound of a square wave, your ear filters out the higher frequencies. You're really hearing an approximation of a real square wave anyway, so it doesn't matter if you can encode those ultra high harmonics. If your converters have real good filters then you can't hear the difference between 44.1k and 96k or 192k.

That's a big "if" though. It's impossible to build a perfect filter that lets everything below 22.1 pass and cuts everything above, so some frequencies get filtered that shouldn't be, and some pass through that shouldn't as well. But, if you're sampling rate is 96k and you have to filter out 48k and above, then you can use a less than perfect filter and err on the side of filtering out signals below 48 to make sure you filter out everything above.

That's the big advantage, and it's most pronounced on low and mid end gear. Not because the converts are crummy though, just the filters. Converters these days are just integrated circuits mass produced in Taiwan or something and I'd say that the conversion from digital to pre-filtered analog is pretty good even in low-end gear.

 

[greg75]

And people who use Hymn and PlayFair should back up their original files. It's their own damn fault they lost their songs.

Nobody has lost any songs. iTunes simply won't play them. That's ok, because there are tons of other AAC players out there. If Apple wants to make their own software less useful, that's their choice.