Mastered for iTunes

Hi James,

Yes, seen that too. There's an interesting article at Ars Technica with the point of view and experience of a couple of mastering engineers.

Kind of mixed feelings on this. Mastering specifically to compensate for the loss of AAC files can be good if it is only a temporary milestone on the road to true lossless downloads. There's a hint at that in the white paper when they suggest that the format sold in iTunes may evolve in the future.

Giving them the 24/96 master ? Hmm... Better read carefully the T&C. It's Apple after all: they most certainly know where they want to go, but you don't.

Maurice

crap crap crap.

You are listening to the ones who told us low sample-rate, lossy crap is every bit as good as CD, then sold everyone players with weak ass ear plugs so they couldn't discern this, then sold everyone billions of dollars worth of the crap music.

This is the biggest spin Ive seen from them in a long time.  They KNOW they cant open the can of worms that is real lossless audio, let alone hi-res audio.  They cant support the demand for bandwidth.  They would never be able to keep the same model and sell the real deal.

They will want to move to an all-streaming method soon and there is no way they could do this on the scale they operate on with 24/96 files.  No way.

No doubt they will do the same thing with BluRay or hires video.

I hate Apple sometimes. 

-patrick

Patrick, we may have  different approaches on the hardware front, but I am with you 100% on this one.

+1 for expecting nothing but bad things to come here from the fruit-related Satan.

Patrick, I am also with you 100% on this one. 

Simon

+1 more - how can people love a company that tells downright lies?

One argument made here is Apple won't ever sell hi-res because they can't support the demand for the required bandwidth. 

What if they could?

I can see the day when Apple will sell hi-res. At a premium of course.

Whether I'll be buying is another thing...

My first reading of the day and I spilled my ristretto all over !

Patrick, I love your direct way sometimes ! Well, let's say this argument is a lot less shy than mine, and much easier to understand.

I was just playing with the theoretical idea that, given some restrictions on bandwith and storage, why not try to have the best sounding medium within these constraints ? They have a track record about quality, so why wouldn't they do that in audio as well ? They know how to bring quality to the masses, be it if, when, and how they decide to. That their marketing argument can turn 180 degrees when they need it to is a known fact. If, thanks to them, the average quality of downloadable or streaming audio is going up, than the more the better I guess.

Specialized shops have done it the right way for years now, with real lossless audio downloads, then master quality downloads, but they're nothing like Apple in terms of market share.

The problem with Apple is, when they do something, there's always something really good in it. But now that they're this giant behemoth immensely powerful, it's more and more difficult to see what real goodness there is in what they do. You know there always is a hidden agenda. They're shutting their walled garden doors, and I'm more and more feeling like living in The Village. Except that I already know who the Nr. 1 is. That's why I have mixed feelings: this announcement could be a good thing, but I'm afraid I'm not able to believe them anymore. Growing cynical (or loosing innocence, at last).

I don't know what they'll do in the future, but I'm sure it's not in the direction of less captive customers. All the opposite, I'm ready to bet.

So, basically, +1.

Maurice

The essence of this new way of mastering that they try to minimize clipping, which can occur lots of times, if you compress dynamically overprocessed modern recordings. So they have a tool which show those intersample peaks, and try to limit the mximum level at -1 dB, not 0 dB, to prevent clipping. Using the high-res master ( if it exists at all) is just about to maximize dynamics. Apple have an AU (Audio Unit) plug-in for mastering suites which can show the effects of the compression real-time while the track is being remastered for iTunes. At least as I understood it.

I don't know. It all started with iPods being believed to be superior to any other mp3 player for hi-res duties, the coolness of the thing imposed itself over sensibility, and now everyone is using Apples for PC-based systems, on the grounds of what evidence I don't know.

An iPod is a small juke-box, all HD-based systems are juke-boxes. Apple wants to sell billions of elegant gadgets and at the same time enter as masters in the hi-res business, i.e. in the future audiophile business.

This, in Italy, is called wanting to have the full barrel and the drunk wife (although I have never quite understood what it means).

I'm with Patrick, in spite of the two MacBooks we have at home, none of which is used for music.

M.

Nice film. Why doesn't Night Shyamalan make more good films? I even liked Signs.

Max

Oh, Massimo, I was thinking about the village in The Prisoner, but the other village does it as well !

Yes, very good indeed, it's the one I prefer from Shyamalan. Signs could have been sooo much stronger had he never shown the aliens IMO.

Maurice

I hope you didn't ruin your keyboard

I think we (here) are all in the same boat with this one.

Cheers!

-p

Now I just sprayed beer all over my keyboard!

Too funny.  I am FULLY stealing that if you dont mind.  Full credit to you of course.

I am a song not a number!

Apple can only sell what the record companies allow them to.

So you see a lot of 24/96 lossless from the majors in other online stores? 

People seem to have a flawed view of mastering. Mastering is preparing the recording so it transfers well through the channels you are using. So you often produce several masters. One for radio, one for MP3 and so on. That Apple produce guidelines is very good. Most manufactures does this especially if it involves lossy audio (compression or just low quality).

If you watch the internet closely you will find it is reorganising into walled gardens (ecosystems). Apple and Facebook just realised this before others. Google are the ones pushing this change. The others are forced to close-up to protect their business models from Google.

I think you'll find online culture has always fostered communities ever since the early days of pre internet bullet in boards, Compuserve, AOL, CIX etc...Nothing has changed with the Internet, other than it has become more mainstream and therefore there is more corporate interest. The culture of communities is interesting as generational or inter generational waves challenge the communities before it, so once something becomes mainstream, it becomes less desirable to those looking for a new community.

Hence why Facebook is desperately trying to reinvent itself, and Google is now snapping at the heels of the Apple now corporate walled garden.

There is much energy in the new wave media circles of trying to predictt the next big mass adoption community that will  undoubtedly replace the now rather corporate Facebook, and to some extent Twitter.

Simon

TBH, I think of Apple as two companies.   First there is the evil Apple that ruined music with iPods and compression and the iTunes store, etc..   No argument here.   Hate them.

But, there is also the Apple that makes the Pro and the Air and iPad.   All truly wonderful devices!   How hard is it to go back to a ThinkPad or a Pavillion after using an Apple laptop for a while?   And I use my iPad all the time...gosh, I guess I really like this Apple!

Then there's the Apple that uses Chinese slave labor to make these products I like so much......

Oooops.

The only thing that stops me from really hating them on this last point is that every other personal computer and mobile device manufacturer is equally guilty.   So perhaps it is more accurate to say that my hatred for Apple on this last score is diluted by being spread across an entire industry.

Hook

I like my iPod.

I can see Apple offering two distinct forms of music.  One that can exist in a cloud and that they can stream to where ever you are (lower quality 256 or 320) which does not require you have it stored at all on your computer or a higher cost option which would be 24/96, downloadable and not able to exist in the cloud (possibly a low res version would be in cloud too) but on your computer, NAS, at home.  Then they could easily justify a cost up charge on the higher res downloads without it seeming like they are gouging anyone.  I would imagine they will drop the costs on the lower res "cloud" based music you buy to make room for the higher costing higher res stuff.

I'm betting it happens this year along with an overhaul of iTunes.

Hope you're right realhifi 

It would be great if the current iTunes catalogue was available in 24 bit download format.

Or perhaps those Amazonian fellows would oblige

This models what the iTunes cloud service already does -- it scans your iTunes library and mirrors it in the cloud, albeit with lower res versions.  The lower res versions are then downloadable/playable on all of your registered devices

Someone will do it . . . if they think there is a market.  Us folks who are interested in lossless music files are what -- 1/10th of 1 percent of the market?

Well hello Naim's streaming devices.

I can't help wondering if "high-definition" has the same meaning here for Apple and for us...

Following on from that comment:

"Apple is expected to introduce the iPad 3 at a media event rumored for March 7, while we have believed for some time that the upgraded iPad 3 would pave the way for an update to the Apple TV and higher-resolution iTunes Store content."

Source: macrumors.com