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iTunes quality increase

M

MikaelSmoot

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 26, 2009
84
0
Does anyone think that apple will increase the quality of there
iTunes stuff like 320kbps for music or 1080p
for movies.

Is there any real difference between 320 and 256kbps
 
For music, there's probably not much audible difference between 320 and 256 AAC on most systems. 128 kbps mp3s sound thin on my speakers compared to 256 AAC though. Lately I've been ripping CDs with Apple Lossless, just because I have a ton of drive space.

For video quality, I think there is a difference between 1080p and 720p when you get into the larger screen sizes. Again, probably not a huge difference for most people depending on size of your screen and how far away you sit.
 
Most of my music is at 192 and above. I can usually hear the lack of quality with 128 or 160. 192 seems to be the "sweet spot" that's balanced between CD quality and reasonable file size. I've never noticed any difference between 192 and 256 or 320.
 
Remember Apple's huge new expensive data center? there's rumors that this will support higher quality digital downloads.
 
Higher quality from the iTunes store would be awesome. I've stopped buying until I can get at least lossless 16-bit 44.1kHz.

I already buy the 24-bit studio masters from Linn Records at 1.7GB per album.

And yes, the difference is very noticeable on a good sound system (read: not Bose). Good speakers and a dedicated DAC are useless if you feed them lossy crap.

C'mon Apple, sell to audiophiles! We want to spend our money, really. ;)
 
Until Apple starts offering Lossless at comparable prices to CD's I will continue to spend less money while getting much more (including much better audio quality and a hard copy).;)
 
Julien said:
Until Apple starts offering Lossless at comparable prices to CD's I will continue to spend less money while getting much more (including much better audio quality and a hard copy).;)
Click to expand...
Same here. if you only play music on an iPod then iTunes Plus is fine, but if you use a decent audio system then lossless is essential. And CDs are usually cheaper, which doesn't make any sense. They won't be getting a penny out of me unless and until they drop the prices and up the quality.
 
I've come to the conclusion that the vast majority of people who are listening to the pop/rock music of the day dont really care about quality. They hear it on the radio, its been squashed, and bit compressed to timbuktu n back so they cant particularly be bothered to tell the difference between whats crap, i.e radio, and not so crap.. i.e itunes and ripping at 192.. I have been using 192 for years now never notice the difference particularly.. I record all my own music, bounce it out as wav-44.1/16 n then convert it, its quite hard to tell the difference between the two.. I can tell the difference when its 96k though, as my music used to be..

Afterthought
and of course myspace n such have file restrictions in place so the file has to be small, i.e lower bit rate... bummer! :s
PTP
 
Music from Linn Records is encoded between 4608 and 9216 kbps. The sound is sublime. :cool:
 
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