[apostacy]

I have no agenda, and I hope posting the link to this article isn't seen as apple-bashing (I'm actually a big apple fan), but I had been making plans on going completely mp3 and buying all my music through iTunes (I've bought about $70 worth of music through iTunes so far) when I read a New York Times article called "From a High-Tech System, Low-Fi Music." (See the link below.) It goes into how the songs downloaded from the iTunes Music Store are of much lower quality than what you would get from a Cd or even compared to the mp3s you would get if you converted them yourself from Compact Disc. And the difference in quality is enough that even the most casual listener would notice if they were burned onto CD and played on a full stereo system. (Apparently you dont need as good of quality when you're playing through little ear buds, so it's hard to know if you've only been using your iPod up until now.) I think it's only fair that Mac users know what they're buying through the iTunes store.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/04/bu...ey/04digi.html

(NYTimes.com requires free registration.)

[cpac]

yep well we all knew this. You're buying 128k AACs. OF COURSE they aren't CD quality - if they were they'd take up just as much memory as an uncompressed CD song does and you could fit what - about 8 or 9 CDs on an iPod mini? (and would take up similarly huge amounts of space on Apple's servers, on your hard drive, and would take forever to download - instead of a few megabytes, you'd be talking hundreds of megabytes for an album)


I doubt that many people will really notice the difference in sound (whether they listen through a stereo or ear buds or not), but if you're a true audiofile, you knew all this before you even considered purchasing music online - and you may well have your problems with CDs too (preferring the vinyl versions)

ps - if you really want to talk about quality of encoded music - look at Sony's new service you get a mere 40k bitrate, which will sound slightly better than your 20 year old am radio playing in a bomb shelter.

[cpac]

Originally posted by apostacy:
I I think it's only fair that Mac users know what they're buying through the iTunes store.

PS - unlike the other services, the iTunes store works for both Mac users and windows users, and given the way the market share is, my bet is that more purchases are made by the windows kiddies...

[Spheric Harlot]

Yes, 128 kbps compressed audio sounds worse than 1.4 mbps CD-resolution audio.

Kind of obvious, no?

I do think it's a given that the iTMS will move to lossless encoding eventually. When it does, I might actually start buying there.

-s*

[JKT]

If Apple does eventually convert to ALC or higher bitrate AACs in the iTMS, what do people think the chances are of them offering current iTMS users a cheap way to upgrade their catalogue of 128k AACs? (E.g. 5p to upgrade to cover the cost of the download). Or do we think that they will continue the absurd notion that people buy the medium and not the actual song so you'll end up having to buy the same song at full price all over again?

Wrt to the thrust of the article, I wonder what impact AirTunes/Airport Express will have on people's perception of their downloads? I suspect that the majority of the people who use iTMS are playing them on low-fi systems like their computer or iPod anyway. Do many people actually burn CDs with their iTMS songs for use in Hi-Fi systems?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by JKT:
Or do we think that they will continue the absurd notion that people buy the medium and not the actual song so you'll end up having to buy the same song at full price all over again?

Seeing as that absurd notion has been the basis of music copyright for the past 200 or so years (you never own the song, you only own the copy on your medium), it's unlikely to change.

Did you try to get your purchased cassette tapes upgraded for 90� (cost of medium) when they released CD versions?

If you're not comfortable with not getting the highest-quality version of the song you're buying, then the iTunes Music Store is not for you.

-s*

[JKT]

Originally posted by Spheric Harlot:
Seeing as that absurd notion has been the basis of music copyright for the past 200 or so years (you never own the song, you only own the copy on your medium), it's unlikely to change.

Which is why Apple and other download stores are best placed to do so. I personally doubt that it will happen, but it most definitely should. If it doesn't, just how ironic is Jobs' oft repeated "people want to own their music, not rent it" going to be

[chris v]

Well, "They" say that a 128 AAC file is comperable to a 192 MP3 file. Whoever they are. I've done some taste-testing over studio reference monitors, and I think for the average Joe, they really sound pretty good. I'm happy with the sound quality of what I've bought so far, though I haven't exactly compared an ITMS file to the identical song on an original CD.

The closest I've gotten are two songs from the same recording session. I have the un-remastered orig. CD release of Bruce Springsteen's "Wild, Innocent, E-street Shuffle" album, and I compared on of the songs from it to a re-mastered version of "The Fever" that I bought offa ITMS. (remixed, as well, I think) and frankly, the ITMS version sounds a good bit better than the CD in that instance.

There are so many variables, like the digitization process, the ears of whoever does the remastering, where you plan on listening, (car or headphones on an iPod 128 AAC should be more than suficient) the stereo, etc. It's not unfathomable that a well-masterd 128 bit AAC file could sound better than a poorly-mastered CD.

CV

[eyadams]

Yes, it is unquestionably true that there are songs on iTunes that don't sound as good as the same song played directly from the CD. But so what?

As Microsoft has shown, there's "good" and there's "good enough". The songs on iTunes will sound fine played on a iPod, or burned to a CD and played in a car, and so on. They actually also generally sound OK when played on headphones straight off the computer.

This is an old issue. Vinyl is arguably higher fidelity than CDROMs, but the convenience of CDROM trumps quality. The same is try of AAC or MP3 files versus CDROM.

[dreilly1]

I think it's only fair that you know about this article's one glaring flaw: it doesn't address the fact that the AAC codec is, by all reasonable accounts, a better compression algorithm than MP3. It's universally acknowledged that AAC has better sound quality as MP3 at the same bitrate. So when it compares Apple's offerings at "only 128" with other services, keep in mind that they're not... umm... comparing Apples to apples.

As to what constitutes "CD-Quality", well, that is a matter of perspective. To me, 128k AAC = 192k MP3 = good enough for me, even on my hi-fi system. I haven't bought that much on iTunes, but I'm satisfied with what I have bought.

If Apple upgrades the store to Apple Lossless, I would certainly take advantage of a "redownloading" offer for all the music I bought. But even if they never offered it, I still wouldn't feel cheated -- I knew exactly what I was buying when I bought it.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by JKT:
Which is why Apple and other download stores are best placed to do so. I personally doubt that it will happen, but it most definitely should. If it doesn't, just how ironic is Jobs' oft repeated "people want to own their music, not rent it" going to be

Not at all ironic.

You own the version of the song you've bought. Always been that way, always will.

you buy the sheet music, it doesn't entitle you to a free CD of the studio recording.

You buy the CD, it doesn't entitle you to a Standard MIDI version, or a free copy on vinyl.

You buy a digital download, it doesn't entitle you to a free CD (though it DOES entitle you to a number of self-burnt CDs, but you're making those yourself, not buying them) or a free download in different format.

-s*

[OB1]

Originally posted by dreilly1:
when it compares Apple's offerings at "only 128" with other services, keep in mind that they're not... umm... comparing Apples to apples.

Apple suffers from number comparisons, again

[OB1]

Originally posted by cpac:
look at Sony's new service you get a mere 40k bitrate, which will sound slightly better than your 20 year old am radio playing in a bomb shelter.

I've got some old 128k mp3 files ripped years ago with who-knows-what encoder. They sound terrible.

Sony are such greedy bastards, they're always trying to tie the user into their proprietary standards; and now they expect people to pay for 40k bitrate...

[itai195]

Wow, it took this journalist 6 years (when I started collecting mp3s, naturally) to realize that 128kb compressed music is lower quality than uncompressed CDs? Well, I guess he does work for the New York Times... maybe someone should break out the timeline.

Personally the only place I still listen to CDs is in my car, and then only if I haven't brought along my iPod... iTMS music is definitely good enough for me. That's not to say I wouldn't mind any improvements in sound quality, but I think 128kb AAC is good enough for my 'needs' and that's essentially what it comes down to.

Subscription services -- I wish there was a model through which they made sense. But the idea of being latched onto a subscription service for the rest of my life doesn't sound tempting.

[Gee4orce]

All I can tell you is my own experience, which is that music downloaded from the iTunes music store easily sounds as good as stuff I've encoded myself, and for all but the most demanding listener is as good as CD. I use my iPod in my car, and with a home stereo, as well as with headphones, and in all cases the iTMS music is crisp and clear, well defined and with rich bass. I don't know what more to say. It sounds great to me.

In fact, the limiting factor is more likely to be the source material. I bought some Deep Purple and Pink Floyd, and you can clearly heard the difference in the quality of the original recording compared to recent music.

My suggestion is to pick a reference track that you already own on CD and that's available on iTMS. Pick a track that will highlight the quality differences - bass, treble and stereo separation especially. Rip is as MP3, AAC, and AIFF (or Apple lossless), download the track from the iTMS for $0.99, burn all three or four versions to a audio CD and then see if you can hear a difference on your kit.

I've been really impressed with the quality of iTMS tracks. It's certainly far, far better than any of the crap I ever downloaded from filesharing networks.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
In fact, the limiting factor is more likely to be the source material. I bought some Deep Purple and Pink Floyd, and you can clearly heard the difference in the quality of the original recording compared to recent music.

Yeah. It's vastly superior.

None of the fake stereo-enhancing-through-phase-distortion, easy compression where you can still hear individual instruments as opposed to the constant pumping of zero-dynamic dead music...it's not as loud, but vastly better.

Funny you should mention Pink Floyd specifically:
Just found this today: http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/851/

This typographical analogy was used by Rip Rowan, editor of www.ProRec.com, in his essay on the subject, which I read just before I listened to this issue's "Recording of the Month," the 30th Anniversary rerelease of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. As Jon Iverson describes in his review (p.131), the multichannel SACD remix has been done with care and taste, and the two-channel SACD version is a straight digital transfer from the analog master tape. But the CD layer...?

JI describes it as sounding "less detailed and more congested...more forward than the SACD layer, and much louder than my original Harvest/EMI (Japan) CD," though he did find that it substantially cleaned up the haze of the earlier CD release and added LF impact.

I'm not quite as charitable. Looking at the waveforms of the CD and SACD layers of "Money," you can see both that compression has been used and peak limiting applied to chop off the tops of spiky transients during the CD-layer mastering. Both processes allow the signal's average level, hence its apparent loudness, to be increased. This is not to the extreme degree of the Santana album: the average RMS power of the SACD RotM (calculated with Cool Edit Pro) is -17.7dB, that of the CD version -14.2dB. Spectral analysis of the two versions indicates no significant differences in EQ (though the LP has more HF energy). But the L/R balance has been shifted by almost a dB, a small DC offset has appeared, there are now 362 clipped samples, compared with none for the SACD, and there is evidence of clipping below 0dBFS.

Yes, it sounds congested. More important, "Money" is an exercise in graded dynamics. The relatively quiet opening cash-register riff is followed by declamatory verses that, while loud, leave room for the saxophone and guitar solos that follow to grow, with then a release before the final verse. This is what you hear on the original LP, the original CD, and the two-channel SACD layer. But the mastering of the new CD version makes the initial verses as loud as the solos, leaving the music nowhere to go. Yes, it's punchier. Yes, it's louder. But it's also less interesting, less subtle. Why do they do that?

Another great article about how this disastrous trend has developed over the years:
http://www.prorec.com/prorec/article...256C2E005DAF1C

We return you now to your regularly scheduled thread.

-s*

[bmedina]

The guys at hydrogenaudio had a good laugh at this article. Throughout the article, the author demonstrates his lack of knowledge in the area of audio compression. It's too bad such a poorly-researched article was published in such a highly-visible newpaper.

Many people who train themselves to spot encoding artifacts through double-blind tests have a very difficult time finding them in Apple's AAC at 128kbps. Yes, there are samples that will be noticeable. But comparing it to 8-track audio, as the article did, is laughable.

Edit: BTW, here's the thread at hydrogenaudio: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=22984

[Spheric Harlot]

just to clarify: the previous post was referring to the original NYT article, not the prorec article posted by me.