More on iPod and WMA

[ccuilla]

I still don't understand why so many people don't recognize that this is a format/DRM battle Apple is fighting.

Step back. Look at the WHOLE board.

Apple is battling to control DRM for digital music/media. So is MS. Apple knows this. MS knows this.

You are about beging hearing a whole more FUD from the MS camp. It is going to get ugly...fast.

The HP deal is brilliant. Bring on the rumored McDonald's deal now!

Next...say by summer...make iPod Mini $199 (this is likely to happen).

This is Apple's game to lose, and I think that the only way for them to lose it, is (much like my beloved Green Bay Packers), by being too conservative. so far they are not showing signs of this. They are making all the right moves...so far.

Another thing that it important to understand is that MS doesn't dominate EVERYTHING. This may be one thing they end up not dominating.

 

[fatfish]

Whilst I have "mounted my high horse" and "blown my apple trumpet", I do believe this quality issue is nonsense. We are talking highly compressed audio to a mass market in most cases.

Super-duper quality is not required by the majority, and for those that do want it, we have lossless compression, uncompressed digital audio, Phonographs and multi-track cartridge and who knows there's probabally some super quality digital audio being used in some recording studio somewhere that may be available to a small but prestigious minority.

WMA lossless is pretty low down the list of these superior products, but still shouldn't be compared to AAC.

So returning to the issue in hand for the majority of the digital music market and whether WMA files should be supported by apple. No God forbid (lossless compression issues aside) it is AAC's poor relative - don't cheapen the superior product Apple have given us.

I feel that we are locked into a fight to the death between M$ and Apple and why should Apple give up now when they are winning (for once). Let's each stick to our own side of the battlefield - after all does WMP support AAC or is it likely to until it throws in the towel.

 

[greenstork]

Originally posted by shamino

First off, the iPod minis cost the same as other 4G music players - like the newly announced 4G Rio Nitrus.

While most of your post was spot on, the iPod Mini also comes in priced at exactly the same as at least one 15GB music player, the Dell DJ. For ease of use, style, etc. there is no comparison but if we're just talking GB, then the Dell DJ is a better value.

 

[shamino]

Re: Re: Re: Re: WMA = Better Audio Quality

Originally posted by boros
I agree with your assumptions on the future of bandwidth and consumer hifi... Also, look at SACD, DVD-Audio, etc. the difference with these vs. regular CDs is huge. and is likely to spoil consumers to want better audio quality.

Interesting you should mention this. It's worth noting that most people have no problems with Dolby Digital/AC3 on their DVDs, which is about 10:1 compression (about equivalent to 140Kbps for 2-channels.) and DTS is about 4:1 compression (about 360Kbps for 2 channels.)

I think compressed vs. uncompressed is less of an issue than the quality of the compression.

It's also well known that professionally-encoded MP3/WMA/AAC files sound better than the ones you rip yourself. And for the ones you rip yourself, different programs do produce different levels of quality (it's easy to test this with the MP3 format, where there are a wide variety of encoders available to compare.)

 

[Lancetx]

Originally posted by greenstork
While most of your post was spot on, the iPod Mini also comes in priced at exactly the same as at least one 15GB music player, the Dell DJ. For ease of use, style, etc. there is no comparison but if we're just talking GB, then the Dell DJ is a better value.

Except that you're comparing apples (no pun intended) to oranges if you're comparing the iPod mini to the 15GB Dell DJ. The Dell is almost twice the size and weight of the mini and is not even in the same class of player as the iPod mini or the Nitrus. You're paying extra for the small form factor of the mini and/or Nitrus, not for the price to capacity ratio. If you want to make an accurate comparison, you need to compare the DJ to the $299 15GB iPod.

 

[arn]

Originally posted by greenstork
While most of your post was spot on, the iPod Mini also comes in priced at exactly the same as at least one 15GB music player, the Dell DJ. For ease of use, style, etc. there is no comparison but if we're just talking GB, then the Dell DJ is a better value.

best value for $/storage.... but not the best value for $/compactness

arn

 

[Photorun]

WMA sucks. If they do any standard, it should be the best, that should win out. You know, just like Macs are winning out over WIntel... er, oh, that's right. Sadly the general public can be shoveled a plate of s*** and ask for seconds. Need proof? Microshaft. They'll throw marketing and misinformation, Apple will drop the ball, and we'll be where we are with iTunes/iPod where we are as a platform.

 

[amin]

Re: Re: Re: WMA = Better Audio Quality

Originally posted by boros
Also, for some reason, WAV (uncompressed audio) always seems just a tiny bit more dynamic than even lossless-compressed files on my system... probably player issues...??? This has just been my personal observation. Has anyone else seen this with lossless .APE or Lossless WMA9s vs WAVs?

This is the reason why WMA has no role in my life. I like to use AAC on my iPod and stick to uncompressed formats on my home system. I'll just continue to archive without compression.

 

[gothamac]

What a lousy day for the rumor sites

 

[fatfish]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: WMA = Better Audio Quality

Originally posted by boros
OK, Not sure how this got convoluted in all of the threads, but....

1. WMA 9 losless is a better ARCHIVE Codec than AAC because it is lossless...
2. WMA 9 also supports lossy compression... If we're saying that this is a seperate CODEC than the lossy WMA 9, then we should, perhaps, consider treating the AAC CODECs as a family of CODEC. Regardless, we are splitting haris here... LOSSLESS = BETTER ARCHIVE. WMA INCLUDES LOSSLESS. AAC DOES NOT. AAC INFERIOR FOR ARCHIVE. AAC INFERIOR FOR ME.

The fact of the matter is that the WMA 9 lossless CODEC, an evil proprietary MS CoDEC, saves all of my audio data while copressing the files to 30-50% of thier original file size. The evil MS player does this with a very intuitive interface... it's dead-simple.

having said that, it is proprietary... I'd rather it be open and from Apple. 🙁 Now that they're not going to support WMA, they'd better introduce a lossless format soon.

Why on earth should we treat AAC as a family of codecs like WMA, AAC is one codec, it is the audio part of an MPEG4 file.

Also, your compression seems to have got much better using WMA lossless since your last quote (about an hour ago), hell some 50% better. I thought your first quote was fairly accurate, simply find your quote of 30-50% hard to believe, hell no I'm quite prepared to say your telling whoppers.

Don't you realise what I'm saying, I understand why you use WMA lossy, BUT it's a different animal for a different market and shouldn't be compared with AAC, just like you shouldn't compare a fridge with a freezer or beer with a sports drink.

 

[fatfish]

Re: Re: Re: Re: WMA = Better Audio Quality

Originally posted by amin
This is the reason why WMA has role in my life. I like to use AAC on my iPod and stick to uncompressed formats on my home system. I'll just continue to archive without compression.

Don't understand your quote, why would you have a role for WMA - WMA is compressed whatever the codec, but you say your going to stick to uncompressed. Both WMP and iTunes support uncompressed files - but all WMA's are compressed.

 

[rdowns]

Originally posted by radiofreak
My point is,it would be nice if we had the option to search 3 or 4 music stores..buy the songs we want and then download them onto the mp3 player of OUR choice. If a person could buy from any music store.....and use any player....I still think the ipod would still dominate..it may even make it a more attractive buy.

The market for online music stores is in its infancy. I think your vision above will one day be realized. The wars must first be fought.

 

[shamino]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: WMA = Better Audio Quality

Originally posted by fatfish
Both WMP and iTunes support uncompressed files - but all WMA's are compressed.

I guess you haven't read all the prior messages. In addition to its lossy-compression codec, WMA also supports a lossless compression codec. Which sounds the same as uncompressed (because no data is lost) but is smaller than uncompressed. You can expect about 2:1 compression with such a codec (vs the 11:1 compression ratio that a 128Kbps format will give you.)

The person you were replying to did say "uncompressed", and maybe that's what he meant, but others here have been discussing WMA's that use the lossless compression codec.

 

[whodatrr]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: WMA = Better Audio Quality

Originally posted by fatfish
Why on earth should we treat AAC as a family of codecs like WMA, AAC is one codec, it is the audio part of an MPEG4 file.

Also, your compression seems to have got much better using WMA lossless since your last quote (about an hour ago), hell some 50% better. I thought your first quote was fairly accurate, simply find your quote of 30-50% hard to believe, hell no I'm quite prepared to say your telling whoppers.

Don't you realise what I'm saying, I understand why you use WMA lossy, BUT it's a different animal for a different market and shouldn't be compared with AAC, just like you shouldn't compare a fridge with a freezer or beer with a sports drink.

OK, now we're getting non-productive and nasty here... this is my last post...

Re. My "Whopper" ... I originally said "50-70% compression" I supsequently said "50-30% of the original file size"... I think the two are fairly consistent... again, you can (and I suspect you will) cut hairs. Actual rates vary, depending on the complexity of the music... my observations are somehwere in this range. You can choose to belive that this is a whopper if you like.

Re the rest of your post, we're essentially agreeing... though you tend to do so in a contrary and fairly cheeky way. Yes, AAC is good for things like iPods...

IMOHO, WMA 9 lossless is a better format for high-quality archives.

People should be made aware of the disctinction between lossy and lossless compression, beferore they spend time ripping their CD collections. This distinction might not be important for many people, but they should be aware of the tradeoffs nonetheless.

Plenty of people maintain archives with dupes in numerous formats.

Apple should strive to deliver lossless audio compression...

 

[rdowns]

Re: Re: WMA = Better Audio Quality

Originally posted by greenstork
Right now I would have to say that this is the biggest downfall of digital music. And you'd think with the enormous growth of hard drive sizes that someone would drive home a good lossless codec. My guess is that when the bandwith of the average hosehold increases more, that we will start to see lossless codecs take hold because then people will be able to download higher quality music from their favorite music store. Until that time, I'll never use iTMS, or perhaps I should say rarely. I need a CD for my high end audio system.

Please, my Mark Levinson system is begging for it.

Right now the format wars are being fought with all sides trying to reach the masses. The masses do not have Mark Levinson systems. You opted for a real high end piece of equipment; the masses never will. As/when the market ages, someone will step up and ater to the very high end.

 

[amin]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: WMA = Better Audio Quality

Originally posted by fatfish
Don't understand your quote, why would you have a role for WMA - WMA is compressed whatever the codec, but you say your going to stick to uncompressed. Both WMP and iTunes support uncompressed files - but all WMA's are compressed.

Oops, I meant to say "no role," not "role." I fixed my statement to say what I meant.

 

[jettredmont]

Originally posted by boros
It would also gr great if the songs we paid $.99 a piece for were in a format that sounded as good as a CD. WMA lossless gives us that.... .APE gives us that... AAC doesn't.

Where, exactly, are you buying WMA lossless songs for $.99?

No WMA music store I know of is selling lossless. They are all compressed at about 128k, same as Apple's AAC (and comparable quality; different profiles, but it all evens out to about the same quality IMHO).

 

[fatfish]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: WMA = Better Audio Quality

Originally posted by shamino
I guess you haven't read all the prior messages. In addition to its lossy-compression codec, WMA also supports a lossless compression codec. Which sounds the same as uncompressed (because no data is lost) but is smaller than uncompressed. You can expect about 2:1 compression with such a codec (vs the 11:1 compression ratio that a 128Kbps format will give you.)

The person you were replying to did say "uncompressed", and maybe that's what he meant, but others here have been discussing WMA's that use the lossless compression codec.

I rather think it's you that havn't read all the previous posts, this topic has been well discussed.

The two points I have raised are that WMA lossless is not a reasonable comparison with AAC, and that WMA lossless is far from as good as other lossless codecs which are available on both PC's and Macs.

And rather than you post (as you just have done) without reading previous posts, let me clarify my last statement:-

All lossless codecs should by nature produce a lossless playback of data, however this is rather dependant on your processor and if it's not up to sctratch, quality will suffer. WMA lossless is average at best, there are far superior codecs in terms of compression/decompression rates that relegate this WMA lossless supporters club to division 3.

 

[jettredmont]

Originally posted by crees!
Even after his reply to all this critizism he still can't get some things correct. Codec stands for compressor-decompressor. Geez oh flip.. this guy is a joke. Besides, you like how he says Apple is locking everyone into their protected proprietary format.. well was in MS doing with WMA at the same time.. huh?

Umm, no. Codec stands for coder-decoder in the original usage. Codec's don't always compress. In more recent usage, people have re-christened it as an abbreviation for compressor-decompressor. However, still, codec does not necessitate any sort of compression from the source material (lossless or lossy).

The whole idea of "compressing" an analog source into a digital stream is a bit odd. This is what codecs in the larger sense were for (encoding analog so that it could be reasonably accurately decoded back to analog at some later time). Even in current usage, if you call something a compressor, the obvious question is: "compressed from what?" WAV audio uses a PCM codec. This is generally referred to as uncompressed; what is the "codec" doing? If PCM is uncompressed, then by extension any "codec" should produce a smaller file size than a WAV, right? But that's not true either (WAV is big, but other formats are less efficient in storage).

IMHO, "compressor-decompressor" is just something someone made up when they couldn't remember what "codec" really meant, and it stuck even though it never made much sense 🙂

 

[whodatrr]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: WMA = Better Audio Quality

Originally posted by fatfish
I rather think it's you that havn't read all the previous posts, this topic has been well discussed.

The two points I have raised are that WMA lossless is not a reasonable comparison with AAC, and that WMA lossless is far from as good as other lossless codecs which are available on both PC's and Macs.

And rather than you post (as you just have done) without reading previous posts, let me clarify my last statement:-

All lossless codecs should by nature produce a lossless playback of data, however this is rather dependant on your processor and if it's not up to sctratch, quality will suffer. WMA lossless is average at best, there are far superior codecs in terms of compression/decompression rates that relegate this WMA lossless supporters club to division 3.

Editied: as I came off as a bit of a jerk...

this thread started with a discussion of WMA being supported in iTunes/iPod. In that context, WMA lossless was discussed as potential beneficial. Were WMA 9 actually supported, there would possibly be a lossless CODEC supported in iTunes. Thus, theoretically, one could use iTunes to rip in lossless WMA 9 format for archiving. One could subsequently use one of numerous available toos to make copies and convert the entire librabry into AAC, MP3, or lossy WMA for portability. Something like this, IMOHO, would be a good thing.

I don't know about your other point as to many available lossless CODECs for the Mac and Winblows... I've tried a lot of them and and haven't found one I particularly liked.... APE was OK in many cases, though I didn't like the Mac sipport. It should be noted that this was almost a year ago, so APE may have improved on the Mac.

 

[svenas1]

Re: Re: WMA on Ipod....

Originally posted by greenstork
While many would say you are dead wrong, that Apple is a hardware company, I will not. Instead, I'll say that Apple is a systems company that offers hardware AND proprietary software. Anyone who says differently is dead wrong.

Apple is far more than a software company. But it hardly develops any hardware any more. It develops nearly exclusively software products. All of the hardware - that as you rightly note drive profits - does not stem from Apple. All of the major components come from OEMs. Harddisks, optical drives, displays, CPUs, GPUs, wireless cards, networking chipsets etc etc. Please mention a hardware technology Apple has developed recently ? Firewire comes to mind, but that's about it.

The reason that many consider them a hardware company is that hardware drives all profit at Apple. The cost of reaserch and development on their software far outweighs the revenue they pull in. I would not be surprised to see that most of their software departments are losing money. Until recenly, all of the iApps were free so certainly hardware is where the bread is buttered.

All that said, it's just impossible to label Apple a software company because they make hardware whereas Microsoft, Adobe, et al, do not.

Which hardware does Apple actually make, as in manufacture ? Don't get me wrong, their approach to making computers is far superior to that of any other company, in terms of providing a complete solution. Apple still makes their own motherboard designs, but most of your computers innards don't bear the name 'Apple'.

 

[NusuniAdmin]

ummmm no offense but read his article

Originally posted by jettredmont
Where, exactly, are you buying WMA lossless songs for $.99?

No WMA music store I know of is selling lossless. They are all compressed at about 128k, same as Apple's AAC (and comparable quality; different profiles, but it all evens out to about the same quality IMHO).

he said "It would be great" meaning that he thought that would be great if they came out wit that in the future. He did not mean present. read before u post.

 

[jettredmont]

Originally posted by greenstork
I guess I just disagree that the digital music revolution is just about kids. IMO, Apple wants it to be about *everyone*, isn't that the point of revolutionizing the way people buy and play music, that it has broad appeal.

Unfortunately, like everything with broad appeal, there are segments left out, like high end audio. Yes I know I can rip to a .wav file but codec technology is improving and I'd like to see Apple improve with it.

The growth segment is certainly kids and some sort of market saturation will have to occur before there are any changes to the status quo for iTunes. AAC is certainly here to stay, and so is the money making machine that is the iPod. I can always hope for something better, I wouldn't expect anything less from Apple.

Apple is not targetting high-end audio codecs today. That is a simple, self-evident fact. When/if they do, they'll let you know it. They *have* targetted high-end video codecs (pixlet).

Today, for high-end audio, you do not have a digital purchase choice, unless you go through rather obscure means (direct to the musician or such). This is true on both sides of the digital music business.

Apple having an AAC/lossless would not improve this picture whatsoever. You would still not be able to buy it from iTMS. You would still have to rip it from your CDs. I suspect that when Apple supports a lossless compression codec for audio, it won't be called AAC, as AAC is targetted for lossy compression and Dolby isn't as loose with its branding as Microsoft is with WMA (where the goal is, essentially, to have every possible audio and video stream be labeled with "Windows Media", confusing the consumer into thinking that the 128k WMA they just downloaded is essentially the same as the WMA 7.1 surround track they heard in the theater).

In other words, the distinction really shouldn't matter this much. If you want WMA/lossless, then rip your CDs to that (and use something besides iTunes to listen/burn them). If you want lossless with iTunes then buy a second HD and rip to AIFF/WAV uncompressed (not all that much more space if you're saying WMA lossless gets a max of 50% savings ... just one more HD 🙂 )

In either case, you'll want to re-code them down to AAC for your iPod if you use an iPod, as the space vs quality argument doesn't make sense there (until iPods have 250GB drives ...)

OTOH ... that's kinda a good idea for Apple. Debut a lossless codec. Provide a new option for iTMS downloads in the new lossless codec. Push the massive-sized iPods ... hmmmmm ....

 

[greenstork]

Re: Re: Re: WMA on Ipod....

Originally posted by svenas1
Apple is far more than a software company. But it hardly develops any hardware any more. It develops nearly exclusively software products. All of the hardware - that as you rightly note drive profits - does not stem from Apple. All of the major components come from OEMs. Harddisks, optical drives, displays, CPUs, GPUs, wireless cards, networking chipsets etc etc. Please mention a hardware technology Apple has developed recently ? Firewire comes to mind, but that's about it.



Which hardware does Apple actually make, as in manufacture ? Don't get me wrong, their approach to making computers is far superior to that of any other company, in terms of providing a complete solution. Apple still makes their own motherboard designs, but most of your computers innards don't bear the name 'Apple'.

I hate it when people use car comparisons but in this case, it seems appropriate. BMW doesn't actually make all of the components of their car, indeed most are outsourced. However, by most accounts, BMW still makes cars. The same theory applies to Boeing and on and on.

Aside from that, a company is not defined by what it develops but rather, by what it sells. That is why in every business listing of Apple, it's called a computer company with many subcategories of software and *hardware*.

Lastly, you're just dead wrong. All Apple computers are designed by Apple engineers, all one has to do is look inside and outside of a new G5 Power Mac to see this. Believe it or not a whole computer is a piece of hardware and not just a sum of its parts. Thank goodness that Apple does *develop* its own hardware or we'd end up with just another beige box.

 

[x86isslow]

Originally posted by Lancetx
Except that you're comparing apples (no pun intended) to oranges if you're comparing the iPod mini to the 15GB Dell DJ. The Dell is almost twice the size and weight of the mini and is not even in the same class of player as the iPod mini or the Nitrus. You're paying extra for the small form factor of the mini and/or Nitrus, not for the price to capacity ratio. If you want to make an accurate comparison, you need to compare the DJ to the $299 15GB iPod.

perhaps the analogy is best put apples to lemons.. two of my friends were gifted dell djs for the holidays, and lo, within days, they were malfunctioning 🙁