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There is Nothing "High-Res" About Apple's iTunes

killmoms said:
ROFL. I love how this guy thinks that "many users" would appreciate a lossless offering from Apple. The percentage of people who want lossless, high-res audio downloads is a fraction of a fraction of a percent.

Earth to idiot: most people can't tell the difference between 128kbps AAC and a CD, much less 256. Yeah, maybe you can, and if you can, you can still go out and buy DVD Audio or SACD discs. :rolleyes:

Such nonsense.
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I couldn't disagree more. You should have your ears checked.
 
netdog said:
I couldn't disagree more. You should have your ears checked.
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There's a running joke in the video world about how we're so happy HDTVs are catching on so that people can finally watch TV the way it was meant to be seen... as standard def content horribly up-scaled and stretched out. :D

If the masses really cared about audio quality the biggest thing to hit the consumer side of the music industry in 20 years wouldn't have been 128k mp3s.

Which pains you worse? People not hearing the difference or people hearing the difference and not caring?


Lethal
 
Wow, quite a diatribe you've posted.

I don't think high end users will be downloading music anyways. It would be like buying a 1080p television, and then you never watch anything but old VHS movies on it. Uncompressed music is simply too big for most people to download routinely, and most people don't want to fill up their ipod with uncompressed music.

The key is to get the bitrate into that sweet spot where it pushes the limits of whatever sound system the end user might have, without being so large as to be a burden.

Personally, this is why I don't like downloading music. I would much rather buy a CD and rip it myself. That way I can quickly listen to any music in my library on my laptop or ipod -- where the sound quality is more than adequate for listening while I work, while I drive, etc. -- but when I really want to listen carefully to a favorite I go and put in the CD.
 
TheAnswer said:
Higher would be the key word there. Not highest or best quality, just higher.
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This would be a good place to post a link to what APPLE actually said, and not just some 3rd party take on it:

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/02itunes.html

Of particular interest:

Apple Press Release said:
DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song.
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This sentence right here sums up the argument that MacCurry is making...it's very clear that these are "higher quality", but you'd have a hard time saying "indistinguisable" to anybody with a good hi-fi. They should have qualified that statement by saying "nearly indistinguishable" which would be a far more tenable stance.
 
savar said:
They should have qualified that statement by saying "nearly indistinguishable" which would be a far more tenable stance.
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EMI's CEO did qualify it...the PR wonks disqualified it. I'd hope people that interested in high quality music would bother to read the whole high quality press release:

“EMI and iTunes are once again teaming up to move the digital music industry forward by giving music fans higher quality audio that is virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings, with no usage restrictions on the music they love from their favorite artists,” said Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group.
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TheAnswer said:
EMI's CEO did qualify it...the PR wonks disqualified it. I'd hope people that interested in high quality music would bother to read the whole high quality press release:
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What do PR people have to do with this? Jerry Del Colliano, the guy who's rant started this whole thread, decided to omit it from his piece.


Lethal
 
LethalWolfe said:
What do PR people have to do with this? Jerry Del Colliano, the guy who's rant started this whole thread, decided to omit it from his piece.


Lethal
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The first paragraph of the Apple press release also omits it, even though it's in the EMI CEO's quote further down the page. That's where the PR people come in.

If it was correctly qualified throughout the release, the whiners wouldn't have a leg to stand on...whereas now they've got a little tiny skinless bloody stump of one femur left.
 
savar said:
Just because they got it right in one place doesn't mean they a deserve a free pass everywhere else.
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Quote from mouth of CEO = DVD-Audio
Press release copy = bad copy of a friend's friend's mix tape

I'm assuming those who can tell the difference in one area are adept enough to tell the difference in the other.
 
TheAnswer said:
The first paragraph of the Apple press release also omits it, even though it's in the EMI CEO's quote further down the page. That's where the PR people come in.

If it was correctly qualified throughout the release, the whiners wouldn't have a leg to stand on...whereas now they've got a little tiny skinless bloody stump of one femur left.
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That is just a creepy (though apt) metaphor, and—you guessed it—it gimme da jibblies.
 
A lot of the Beatles CDs were mastered in the late 1980s and in the process of encoding the CD, they used poor ADCs and a sloppy mastering technique. If you go back to the vinyl albums, they do in fact sound better. It wasn't until '1', 'Let it Be - Naked' and more recently 'Love' that came out where you had the CD mastered correctly.

Another problem is where fair use laws permit the ripping and burning of CDs, but don't allow you to do that for DVD-A. I guess thats why iTunes never incorporated ripping DVD-A, SACD and DTS discs.
 
What the original poster doesn’t understand is that the only TRUE way to enjoy music is having the original artist play it for you in your sound proofed listening room! I would never accept one of his so-called “recordings”.

How DARE Apple claim their music is as good as what I hear in my listening room! (GET BACK IN THE ROOM, BONO! 25% LOUDER!)

(By the way, I think DVD audio died because of the DRM. What use is it if you can’t play it wherever you want? None.)
 
Ron Barron once told my uncle: "Recordings, you can listen to 'em, but don't believe 'em."


Paraphrased: Take all the money you spent on gear and $30k speaker cables to go see a concert in a good hall, like this one, rather than try to recreate a recording studio. I wonder just how many people would actually want to listen to music in one. Dead spaces suck.
 
There is no exception to live music and in fact the future of rock is live performance. This according to Pete Townshend of 'The Who' that is STILL a great LIVE performance.

When the original artist is no longer in this world or is no longer performing, then you have NO CHOICE but to listen to the original recordings that do NOT come from iTunes!
 
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