iPod LP as audio source for AACs from iTMS?

[germ war]

I downloaded the Bouncing Souls' "Hopeless Romantic" last night, and I'm listening to it today and I'm REALLY annoyed with the sound quality.

At the beginning of the album, you can hear a needle being dropped onto an LP. At first I thought, "Oh, that's just probably how the album is". However, over the course of the record, I can hear all sorts of needle pops, and the drums are really crunchy sounding. The SOURCE of the AACs is from an LP!! This would MAYBE be acceptable if the album wasn't available in other formats, but I know for a fact that the Bouncing Souls released "Hopeless Romantic" on CD.

Is there anything I can do? Had I known I was going to download something so awful sounding, I would've tried to track down the CD from a store, not AACs from Apple.

This is really disappointing and poor quality control, in my opinion.

 

[AppleAce]

I downloaded the Bouncing Souls' "Hopeless Romantic" last night, and I'm listening to it today and I'm REALLY annoyed with the sound quality.

At the beginning of the album, you can hear a needle being dropped onto an LP. At first I thought, "Oh, that's just probably how the album is". However, over the course of the record, I can hear all sorts of needle pops, and the drums are really crunchy sounding. The SOURCE of the AACs is from an LP!! This would MAYBE be acceptable if the album wasn't available in other formats, but I know for a fact that the Bouncing Souls released "Hopeless Romantic" on CD.

Is there anything I can do? Had I known I was going to download something so awful sounding, I would've tried to track down the CD from a store, not AACs from Apple.

This is really disappointing and poor quality control, in my opinion.

Ummm, that's how the song is, it sounds exactly the same on the cd. They (The Bouncing Souls, NOT iTms) put the record player static pops sounds at the beginning and end for effect. There aren't any pops when there is actual music playing. Also, if you listen to the other songs on the same album, you'll notice that there aren't any pops in those songs either. Also- the album was released in what, 1999? Why would iTms have to use an LP as a source?

 

[germ war]

Ummm, that's how the song is, it sounds exactly the same on the cd. They (The Bouncing Souls, NOT iTms) put the record player static pops sounds at the beginning and end for effect. There aren't any pops when there is actual music playing. Also, if you listen to the other songs on the same album, you'll notice that there aren't any pops in those songs either. Also- the album was released in what, 1999? Why would iTms have to use an LP as a source?

There ARE pops. The sound degradation is especially noticeable during "Bullying the Jukebox". Like I said, I figured the beginning was put on to make it sound like you're listening to a record, but all the fuzz and pops over the course of the record shouldn't be there.

And, well, maybe the album just sounds awful, but I'd be really surprised if this was true. I'm going to have to track down the CD, I guess.

 

[Frisco]

That would be funny if Apple did use LPs for the conversion.

What a huge pain the butt that would be

 

[mduser63]

If the album was originally released in 1999, there's no reason at all for them to have mastered the iTMS AAC file from an LP. There are OLD albums (50s and earlier) for which the master tapes have been lost or destroyed, and so CD releases of those albums get mastered from the LP. When that's done, it's usually done very carefully with high-end equipment by experienced sound engineers and the sound quality can be very good. Although I'm not familiar with the specific album you're talking about, I'm willing to bet that the pops are there on purpose to give the sound of a record.

 

[Flowbee]

That would be funny if Apple did use LPs for the conversion.

Apple does not encode the music that's on the iTMS. The record labels submit the tracks already encoded.

 

[timdeleware]

i've actually found that some itunes songs do have auditory imperfections, or so it seems.

i recently purchased the album "spike" by elvis costello, and parts of it sounds like its
ripped from a scratched cd... although i guess im not positive that it isnt done for effect,
but that seems out of character for elvis...

 

[freiheit]

AAC (and MP3 and WMA) is a lossy format

Keep in mind we are talking about a lossy compression format -- some sound quality IS lost no matter the source. That is the nature of mp3, wma and aac. That is how a 50MB CD audio track becomes 5MB. Depending on just how bad the imperfections are that may be cause for alarm, but to expect zero imperfections from a format that throws away bits that it doesn't think are important is asking too much.

Lossless compression only gets at best 40-50% of the original CD audio file size, and that is still way too big for many users to download and would throttle sites like ITMS which get millions of downloads a day.