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'Stranger Things' and 'The Get Down' Albums Debut Exclusively on Apple Music

Shirasaki said:
Why you say it is impossible?
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According to ITU-T.

Distinguishable or not is a complete subjective matter with zero chance to actually prove something other than some basic stuff. One can say he is able to distinguish those tiny difference while others can say he cannot, whether he actually can distinguish or not. Who can prove?
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Actually it's not subjective.

It's a simple A/B testing. When presented with a stereo song encoded with AAC 128Kbps and another lossless, without knowing which one is which, the listeners didn't prefer the AAC or the lossless version, i.e. they choose equally the AAC version to the lossless version. Meaning that there's no difference to the human ear.

Lossless is not always the best choice, as lossy is not entirely useless. For most pop music, and casual listening, lossy is enough, for a lot of people. Heck, I am listening to a J-Pop song right now, lossy iTunes format, and I am ok with it.
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Pop music is the worst for encoding. Lots of things going on, lots of effects, I already explained it.

I admit I don't know a lot about audio stuff, signals and those related. But I trust my ear, and choose the best I can get to serve my ear.
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Your guiding yourself
 
BuffaloTF said:
Waste for all music, actually. AAC at this bitrate is transparent to the lossless, which means all you're doing is wasting data to get the same output quality.
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Then we do not need HD, we do not need DTS cause they are some form of lossless audio. We just need AAC and iTunes Store movie files, and we don't need Blu-Ray anymore.

Lossy is lossy. It does throw information away in exchange for file size and quality. Even though we cannot distinguish the difference, it is there. Just because we cannot pick them out. Of course, lossless is lossless.

I don't care if it is market strategy or so. I am happy and mostly only happy with lossless, or CD quality.
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Zirel said:
Your guiding yourself
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Yes. I guide myself because I need to choose my favourite music and preferred taste, not those Apple Music curators. I don't need their suggestions, although discovering theirs is also not a bad idea.
Zirel said:
Actually it's not subjective.
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Everything with human directly involved in IS subjective, especially on this A/B test. I always believe it. However it is reasonable to say statistically, general public cannot distinguish between lossless and lossy music. This is what I actually accept.
 
Shirasaki said:
Then we do not need HD, we do not need DTS cause they are some form of lossless audio. We just need AAC and iTunes Store movie files, and we don't need Blu-Ray anymore.

Lossy is lossy. It does throw information away in exchange for file size and quality. Even though we cannot distinguish the difference, it is there. Just because we cannot pick them out. Of course, lossless is lossless.

I don't care if it is market strategy or so. I am happy and mostly only happy with lossless, or CD quality.
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Uhhhh. DTS... HD. Unrelated in every sense. And now we're talking tv resolutions and movie formats. And both examples are means of compression into digital formats.... Even if what you meant were Master Audio and TrueHD, they're both compression techniques to the lossless master to provide a reproduction that is *transparent*.

Anyhow, we - as consumers - don't need lossless: Because science. You can go spend all the time you want on hi-fi forums where you can visually look at the wave form of each separated piece of the audio, AAC or WMA and see with your eyes there's no differences. The only thing that needs to be lossless is the master recording, and a proper job mastering it for format after that eliminates need for you to have it yourself. Sorry.
 
BuffaloTF said:
Uhhhh. DTS... HD. Unrelated in every sense. And now we're talking tv resolutions and movie formats. And both examples are means of compression into digital formats.... Even if what you meant were Master Audio and TrueHD, they're both compression techniques to the lossless master to provide a reproduction that is *transparent*.

Anyhow, we - as consumers - don't need lossless: Because science. You can go spend all the time you want on hi-fi forums where you can visually look at the wave form of each separated piece of the audio, AAC or WMA and see with your eyes there's no differences. The only thing that needs to be lossless is the master recording, and a proper job mastering it for format after that eliminates need for you to have it yourself. Sorry.
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Ok. I take your sorry and stop here.
I will continue chasing after the lossless even though I clearly know we can hardly distinguish between them.
We are on separate ways.
 
Zirel said:
According to ITU-T.



Actually it's not subjective.

It's a simple A/B testing. When presented with a stereo song encoded with AAC 128Kbps and another lossless, without knowing which one is which, the listeners didn't prefer the AAC or the lossless version, i.e. they choose equally the AAC version to the lossless version. Meaning that there's no difference to the human ear.
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please link and cite that study which was done by a scientifically reputable organization or equally reputable group....
 
leroypants said:
please link and cite that study which was done by a scientifically reputable organization or equally reputable group....
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Google.com

Do your own research. And while you're at it, link and cite a study by a scientifically reputable organization that refutes me.

And next time, skip the straw man and save everyone time.
 
GreyOS said:
so don't post anything?
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They typically post stories that won't gather as much attention, because fewer people are on the Internet over the weekend (it's most peoples' days off, so they spend it with their families or being productive in other ways.)
 
Dj64Mk7 said:
They typically post stories that won't gather as much attention, because fewer people are on the Internet over the weekend (it's most peoples' days off, so they spend it with their families or being productive in other ways.)
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so don't post anything.
no need to post filler.
 
GreyOS said:
so don't post anything.
no need to post filler.
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Some people find the little tidbits of news they post here on the weekends to be enjoyable, or something like that.

Zoboomafoo said:
Thanks for clicking on the story you don't care about to post a comment on the story you don't care about to let us know you don't care.

I know you think you're important, but this site doesn't cater to your tastes alone.
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Don't agree with the tone of this post, but it does get the point across.

EDIT: sentence made no sense.
 
garylapointe said:
I used to be SO excited for new MacRumors stories. It'd be the first thing I looked at.

I just did a quick look over the last few months they averaged over 250 a month.
Ten years ago, 50-100 a month. And that was when Apple was actually releasing hardware ;)

Gary
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Agreed. Mac hardware stories are also what interests me most. I tend to, more or less, take the software side for granted, assuming it'll all work as intended, and (at least mostly) flawlessly complementing the hardware.

Sadly there seem to be more glitches in that software the last few years. To be fair, some of those bugs are no doubt due to increasing complexity, but one can't help but wonder if Tim should run a somewhat tighter ship in the Beta and debugging dept. Apple, and all software developers in general, are obviously caught between getting most (and all major) flaws, and a timely release to the general public.
 
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Those albums will be torrented so much it won't matter that they are exclusives.
 
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leroypants said:
Those albums will be torrented so much it won't matter that they are exclusives.
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Yep. That's exactly what will and probably does happen in the exclusives war between streaming services. The dinosaurs of the music industry aren't ready concede the future just yet.
 
Zoboomafoo said:
Thanks for clicking on the story you don't care about to post a comment on the story you don't care about to let us know you don't care.

I know you think you're important, but this site doesn't cater to your tastes alone.
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that's not actually what i did.

if you see what i was replying to, it was the idea that the writers deserve a break and therefore should post 'slow news' stories. [" It's Saturday. Not much new news is released, and writers need time off, too."]

i replied because that didn't make sense to me- if they really deserve a break we should encourage them not to post anything! i don't think this story is that much easier to write just because the interest is a bit more niche.
 
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Lot of grumpiness in this thread! Hope everyone has a happier time next weekend. :)

I'm not a big fan of exclusives, but I'm not too concerned about exclusives that only last a short period of time any more. I certainly wouldn't bother signing up to a subscription service for a couple of exclusives that will be available elsewhere so soon.

As for 128kbps AAC being the limit of human hearing, er... I really don't agree. But if you're happy to believe that as a fact and it sounds as good as anything can sound to you, then good luck to you.

There are other reasons to desire lossless audio than just the immediate quality anyway, such as the ability to re-encode to other formats whenever you like in the future. In fact if you are someone who thinks 128kbps AAC is the best quality you ever need you're presumably better off ripping CDs at that quality and saving half the space those 256kbps AAC files iTunes sells take up, aren't you?!

And physical media such as CDs can still be nice to collect (though I understand others take the view that they want to de-clutter as much as possible, and that's fine too).

As for encouraging piracy, I would guess that happens a little, sure, as lack of or difficulty in availability has always been one of the motivations for it I think (one I would say that is downplayed by the industry). In general though, I still reckon pirates will pirate regardless and people philosophically opposed to pirating will not be drawn to it because an album (or whatever) takes a month or two longer to become available beyond a retailer exclusive.
 
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I listened to the previews of both albums in iTunes and have to say they all sound really good. I'm a fan of the music they're using in the show and was hoping they'd release this. Now, I want to wait for it to make its way to Google Play Music.
 
Zirel said:
People who don't pay, don't matter.
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Millions of people torrents billions of songs to fill their IPods, unless you believe people were dropping ten to twenty thousand dollars or more to fill their iPods. Like it or not piracy saved Apple and it's the only reason they were able to survive the last decade.
 
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leroypants said:
Millions of people torrents billions of songs to fill their IPods, unless you believe people were dropping ten to twenty thousand dollars or more to fill their iPods. Like it or not piracy saved Apple and it's the only reason they were able to survive the last decade.
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Piracy, not the iPhone. Definitely piracy.
 
Zoboomafoo said:
Piracy, not the iPhone. Definitely piracy.
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You're right, the iPhone was introduced in 2001 and brought Apple back into relevance from the years 2001 to around 2007. It was the iPhone that kept apple in business during the years 2001-2007, oh wait that was the iPod.
 
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