iTunes Audiophile Downloads

[labjr]

"Abbey Road has more or less confirmed that the upcoming Beatles' re-releases in vinyl are going to be made from the digital transcriptions of the original tape masters."

 

And watch how many they sell. Definitely won't be collectible.

 

[wgb113]

Large amounts of local storage on portable devices will become a thing of the past.

 

Don't forget that last year Apple built a $1B server farm in North Carolina and appears to want to double it this year.

 

The rumors are that Apple will provide cloud access to content you have stored locally on your iDevice. This is NOT cloud storage but more along the lines of what Simplify Media used to offer in their app:

 

1) You have all of your media on a hard drive at home.

2) That hard drive/computer is connected to the internet.

3) You leave that device on all of the time.

4) You access it via and app and the internet on your iPhone and play it as if it was stored on your iPhone.

 

Again, these are the rumors but that's what this thread is about.

 

Bill

 

 

[Turbo]

Long time reader, first time poster.

I was about to ask a question but got distracted by this topic.

 

I think many commenters have misguided excitement.

The general move towards higher quality audio is exiting, but apples approach, not so much.

 

I like the CNN article.

 

“online music stores could eventually offer songs that sound truer to their original recordings, perhaps at a premium price”

Truer? True is the word Audiophiles should be looking for.

“Perhaps”. Thats funny. Try “absolutely without a doubt at a premium price”

 

“audio can be compressed further in order to minimize the time the music will take to download”

“minimize the time”. Thats funny too.

Try “audio can be compressed so that we can slowly uncompress it a little every 5 years until it gets to the quality you enjoyed in the 80s with CDs”. Time and bandwidth issues are both a joke compared to the traditional methods of pressing, packaging, shipping and retailing.

 

I’m betting the new format will be a mix of 16 bit and 24 bit, but only at 44.1 or 48, then in 5 years you can buy the same music at 96, then again at 192. They will blend HD music will CD quality music so that people won’t realize that they have upgraded their music 3 times in order to achieve the quality they could have had with a CD. Instead of “lossless” they will market it as something like “iTunesHD”.

 

High quality music is good, but this whole upgrade process seems strange to me. The comments here, in general, show that people are excited to upgrade their music and hardware.

 

Doesn’t this bother anyone?

 

I would expect these comments from the general public that doesn’t care about quality and only wants a shiny new toy. This is an audiophile website. I don’t understand why anyone here would even consider having iTunes on their computer, or why they would even consider using an iPod. I can understand buying an iTunes exclusive for your favourite band, but other than that, why would any of you buy music on iTunes when the same music is available on CD.

 

Am I the only one that sees this?

 

Are all commenters taking crazy pills?

 

How can iTunes music be involved in the same conversations as $5000 dacs?

 

I don’t understand why anyone here would use any media player other than J River, Media Monkey, XBMC, or Foobar.

I don’t understand why anyone here would use any portable device other than one supported by Rockbox.

There should be an antiCASH list with iTunes, and all its proprietary formats on it.

 

I will end my rant here. All questions have been rhetorical, so need to defend yourselves.

 

Great website. Very useful with very helpful people. Boo iTunes.

 

 

[jhwalker]

iTunes controls (by some counts) 80% of digital music sales. Even an upgrade to CD-quality (i.e., 44/16) would be a big driver in the market, and 44/24, 48/24, 88/24 or even 96/24 would just be gravy.

 

Personally, I use iTunes because it makes it easy to organize my (mostly) ripped music, my hi-def downloads, etc. - that is, the library / sync functionality is easy and good. I don't generally buy songs from the iTunes store - if I want MP3-quality music, I download from Amazon and manage the files / iPod sync in iTunes. And I use iPod because I haven't found a better *portable* music player for my purposes (I travel frequently for work). It sounds "good enough", and I suspect Apple will come up with an audiophile-quality device in the near future (i.e., within the next 2-3 years). I look forward to it

 

[One and a half]

Apart from Apple sourced product and computers, do you know of a hardware product, such as an AVR, Network Media Player, DLNA device, music streamer that supports playing ALAC files?

 

[Turbo]

No, and that is the problem.

 

[cogt3]

Coming from the vinyl nut perspective, I don't think a record from a digital master will sound better than listening directly to the digital files (provided they are 24/88 or great quality). But the problem is, for the most part we don't have access to the digital studio masters. What I have found is most newer recording DO sound better in their vinyl versions. I think this is because the digital master used for the making the vinyl master are hirez studio masters. The only other digital files we have to compare them to are rips from CDs that have been dumbed down to 16/44. So ironically, I think most records are closer to the hirez studio masters, thus the "better" sound. I have a metric halo AD/DA and most of the CDs I have made from a vinyl source sound "better" than the mass produced commercial CDs. Now if we can buy the hirez studio masters that would be great and it would save the time of recording more records, but till that happens I will keep buying records.

 

[ehrawn]

http://gizmodo.com/#!5768446/why-24+bit-audio-will-be-bad-for-users

 

To summerize, if the music is poorly mastered, it doesn't matter if the track is supercompressed or 24 bit.

 

[jhwalker]

Yes, garbage in, garbage out. But that doesn't, in my mind, undermine the benefit of *well*-mastered recordings being presented in higher resolution than is currently available.

 

[jhwalker]

You can bet your last dollar that if Apple begins selling ALAC downloads in large numbers, vendors will *scramble* to support it. There is no support now because only a few folks (who already use Apple equipment, by natural selection) are using this format.

 

Personally, I'd prefer they went to FLAC and orphaned ALAC, but I don't see that happening.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

That Gizmodo article is appalling. The inaccuracies are incredible. I sent the author a private email.

 

[MarkS]

I am not sure I understand your comment. I use ITunes with Pure Music as my player of choice and play highrez files at 24/96 using a mac mini connected via USB to my dac. I buy the files from HD Tracks, then convert them to ALAC from Flac. It is not that much of a hassle.

 

To my ear, there is an unmistakable difference in sound between a cd rip and a 24/96 file played through the method I described above. As a test, I suggest you purchase Steely Dan Gaucho from HD Tracks and rip the cd, then listen to a few tracks from each version. To demonstrate my confidence level that I don't have a better ear than you and that 24/96 is vasty superior to redbook, I make you the following offer - if you can't tell the difference between the 24/96 and the redbook rip, email me your address, and I will reimburse you the $30 cost of this test.

 

[souptin]

The music industry has, for many years, sold the same material several times over - different formats, different packaging. Sometimes I've bought these and felt ripped off, sometimes I think it's been worth it.

 

This process of bringing out slightly higher resolution or less compressed digital versions strikes me as a continuation of the same formula. Also I rather think that the excuse that "this was the best deal we could get out of the record companies" is getting a bit old, when you consider how the balance of power has changed.

 

CD quality, lossless drm free downloads seems like a decent offer, if anyone who can do anything about it is listening. But keep in mind that I can already buy these as a physical product, ie with built-in backup at no extra expense.

 

If the rumour materialises into 24/96 lossless (which I doubt) well that's great but the cynic in me is going to ask how much is just going to be batch processed redbook.

 

Has anyone seen any definite specs on Airplay? I'm wondering if there will be a correlation. For example, 24/48 would nicely match the new Apple TV.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi souptin - I was thinking the same thing about the new Apple TV being 48 kHz. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

 

[Bwilson1]

I have a Roku M1000 network player that natively decodes Apple Lossless files.

 

While no longer in production it can be found on *bay for around 100 USD

 

I have had mine for about 5 years and although it is limited to Redbook resolution I have had no desire to replace it.

 

It communicates directly with iTunes and does not need (nor have) any resident server software.

 

I have a 3 buck app (RokuRemote) that makes it a snap to control from my iPhone.

 

[Turbo]

I’m not sure what exact comment you don’t understand, because my rant was quite long.

I agree high res digital downloads are awesome and I’m not opposed to buying HD downloads. I buy all I can. I like how FLAC seems to be the standard and i hope it stays that way.

 

 

[ehrawn]

Chris, inaccuracies notwithstanding, the point to be taken is that just because a track is 24 bit, doesn't mean we are getting better quality music. I would like to think that high-resolution offerings from iTunes would be an improvement, but it’s possible that we could get caught up in a “specifications” marketing game like we’ve seen with so many other things.

 

[bottlerocket]

If audiophiles are Apple's targeted (sub)market, the competition in this market is CDs, vinyl and HDTracks. Apple can easily best CDs by simply offering 24 bit material at any sample rate from 44.1 up. And it can easily best HDTracks simply with its store interface.

 

From this perspective 24 bit makes sense. They can claim "better than CD". They can't do this now.

 

 

 

[labjr]

I agree souptin.

 

Unfortunately, the record companies have always been all business. I wouldn't buy that Beatles USB apple. The files are only 24/44.1. What's next 24/48 or 16/48?

 

DVD-A and SACD have been around long enough. You think they would be selling us at least 24/96 by now. The reason they aren't is probably because of lack of DRM on downloaded files. I'd pay for the Beatles catalog in 24/192 right now if they'd offer it. But I want it on pressed DVD discs for the kind of money they're gonna charge.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

"Chris, inaccuracies notwithstanding, the point to be taken is that just because a track is 24 bit, doesn't mean we are getting better quality music."

 

Hi ehrawn - I would have no problem if the author even hinted at that point. I agree 100% that number don't mean a thing without quality engineering etc... However the author said no consumer will ever need 24 but music. That's vastly different.

 

 

[zerung]

Is this it? Are we going to have our wishes come true??

http://www.macworld.com/article/158102/2011/02/apple_event_mar2.html#lsrc.nl_mwnws_h_crawl

 

 

 

 

[gaiusparx]

Current iPod/iPod touch/iPad/AppleTV can not support natively playback of 24bit audio. I believe this rumor come out as Apple is building 24-bit hardware support into its mobile devices. And if this happens, we will hear about it in iPod event this September. Negotiation with labels will not be easy, at best only selection of albums will be in high-res.

 

[Erwin S]

I know iWork'11 is long due, so that's probably also on the list of that event. And OSX "Lion" later this year.

 

[Audio_ELF]

Erwin... Or the event could be iPad 2 launch... Corner of the calendar seems to show iPad.

 

Eloise

 

[haujobb]

Current/previous iPod Classic and iPhone (assume iPod touch/iPad as well) can playback up to 24/48. Use it with ALAC and AIFF files. But signal needs to bypass iPod internal DAC e.g. with Wadia iTransport et al.