Slashdot Mirror
Are iTMS's 128kbps Songs Worth Collecting?
pinchhazard writes "Randall Stross of the New York Times offers his opinion on iTunes Music Store's decision to offer downloads at only 128 kbps, and that decision's potential to affect collectibility of the songs. The article says that Apple makes the claim on its web site that "you'll get the full quality of uncompressed CD audio using about half the storage space."
Rhapsody, which offers encoding at 192 kbps, is compared."
Quick someone post linkage to a non registered version of the article so I can give you karma.
say it ain't so!
The "Half the size" bit is about Apple Lossless
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
for $.99 a song, you should get the best quality and 128k is just OK...it's cheaper to buy the cd and rip it yourself @ 192kbps
I'd expect them to be roughly equal to 160 bit MP3s, but I'd expect 192 bit MP3s to be superior. That's just opinion, though.
... Except that Apple isn't using MP3, but AAC - which provides significantly higher quality at 128kb/s.
;-)
Sounds a bit like the Megahertz Myth, all over again.
(although I'm unsure what Rhapsody uses, maybe it uses MP3Pro which is pretty good).
I think that 128kbps is a little shortsighted from Apple, there will be losses in the audio at that rate. 192 kbps AAC would be preferable of course.
Then again, most people listen to music on cheap headphones, speakers, etc, or just want music in the background. In that respect 128 kbps AAC is way more than necessary, and beats a cheap FM radio totally (if only in that you don't have a retard DJ wittering on between tracks).
Music is just part of life these days.
Can you really tell between the two bit rates? I'm perfectly fine with 128.
I've ran a number of informal listening tests, and many of the people I tested cannot tell the difference between a 128kbps MP3 (LAME) and a 256kbps MP3 (LAME) consistently, even on good equipment. (Too much loud music as a teenager, perhaps)?
However, there most definatly are people who can tell the difference, and I am one of them. Personally, I like 200+ mpc (MusePack) files - MusePack seems to do a good job preserving the crispness, and "body" (don't know a better term for it) of the audio.
Well, curse my non-article reading hide. I deserve to be modded to death. Huzzah.
Except Apple doesn't use MP3s at the iTMS.
It seems to me that any MP3 encoded at 128K seems hollow and thin in the middle ranges (vocals, guitar, ETC.) and the bass is too heavy. They might be OK for listening to that 15,000 watt sub you have in the trunk of your car, but for the home stereo, they just don't sound good enough.
A witty saying proves nothing. Voltaire (1694-1778)
I allways encode my stuff in 320kbps variable bitrate, since HD space is cheap, and if I lose a CD, I can be sure that I have a nice quality copy of the song. Recently, I've tried using FLAC too. Even better (lossless), but takes 2.5 times more space or so...
I would only buy 128 kpbs songs from itunes if they had some kind of system where I could download FLAC versions later, when I have more HD space. You've paid for 'mechanical rights', just like with full quality CS's, so why not?
Apple's site uses the "you'll get the full quality of uncompressed CD audio using about half the storage space" in reference to the Apple Lossless codec, not the 128 kbps compression in iTMS songs.
I know that I personally don't like my MP3's under 128kbps, that's where I draw the line, but if I was paying for Apple's service, I'd expect better than 128kbps for my money.
I do, however, listen to 128kbps streaming mp3s. But, those are free streams.
Setec Astronomy
This article is full of so many distortions, it's mind-bending. First, they are revealing the secret -- which they assume none of us gullible rubes ever realized before -- that most digital music we get from the internet is stored with lossy compression. The article goes on to explain that all music with lossy compression sounds crummy (comparing it with 8-track tapes), and the only measure of digital sound quality that matters is the bit-rate.
Music from the iTunes Store, they say, sounds extra-crummy since it's compressed to only 128 kbps. (The distinction between AAC and MP3 is never even mentioned.) The implication is that consumers will rebel someday when they discover they've bought a bunch of music that isn't "true CD quality". Clutching torches and pitchforks, they'll storm the ramparts at Cupertino.
Maybe I'm just a tin-eared old goat, but the difference between a CD and a 128 kbps MP3 track doesn't leap out at me in casual listening. When it comes to 128 kbps AAC or 192 kbps MP3 tracks, they sound like CDs to me -- even when I listen closely, with headphones. Maybe if I had audiophile speakers or better headphones (or younger ears) it would make more difference, but honestly. . . This is not a distinction that keeps me up laying awake at night, wondering if my music collection is subtly flawed.
At the other extreme, the true golden-eared stereophiles of our world have complained since CDs first appeared about *their* low sampling rate. What, only 44,000 samples per second? You can't capture sonic detail at the high frequencies that way! But given the difference in sales between iPods on the one hand, and SACD or DVD-Audio players on the other hand, I think anyone can see which way the wind is blowing.
I'm doubting the majority's ability to discern or even care about the quality differences. However, anyone into serious collecting will definitely very much be concerned with this. Probably won't hurt Apple's business significantly though, and I'm sure they know it.
Just check out CDs from the Library and rip them with abcde to flac and archive the .flacs on DVD-R (you can fit about 11 "CDs" per DVD), then make .ogg copies or whatever for your devices.
Hopefully you won't be, but for some reasons Apple stories are always heavily moderated...
The only people who will notice the "poor quality" are the audiophiles who are using expensive headphones and speakers. To the average iTMS user, the files sound fine. On top of that, it is unfair to compare them to 128k MP3, the quality is more equivalent to 192k MP3.
I assume this is why apple is making their music players have so much storage. The smallest 'pod available right now holds about 2 weeks of lowish bitrate vbr mp3s. Then again, our cable modems haven't gotten 5x faster in the intervening years, so I guess you'll still have to wait longer for the stuff that costs money. That and installing Gentoo/Debian/Slackware/FreeBSD on my home box.
Didn't we have a similiar discussion when the world went from vinyl records to the CD disk?
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
In my experience, LAME applies a lowpass towards the ceiling of the frequency spectrum the MP3 is able to produce. If a casual listener doesn't notice, it's probably because they can't hear the swishy crap that occurs in those very high frequencies that another encoder, such as Xing, might produce if encoded at 128kbps. Even I have to compare the 128 and 192kbps MP3s to see if the 128kbps one has lost quality if it's encoded with LAME.
Although, I've heard plenty of shitty KaZaA burned CDs where the person who burned it can't tell the difference.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
amen! when it comes to actually "collecting" music, one should go with something like the flac format. with reducing costs of storage space, why settle for anything less than perfect quality?
MilkMiruku
That was the promise way back when the first CD's came out. You'd then buy your the complete discography of your favorite band, thinking that even though you were shelling out $15 a disk, you were getting top quality recordings that were on indestructable media.
Then, five years later, guess what? The record companies remastered and re-released those same tracks. It doesn't matter if your favorite artist is Rush or Cat Stevens or Miles Davis, it all got re-mastered. Doesn't it ever strike you as odd, and perhaps intentional, that the first release of every popular CD was mastered so poorly it needed to be redone just five years later?
So along comes the iTunes store, and we're seeing the same damned thing. Once again, there's promises of how great the music sounds. But instead of crappy mastering, they are using crappy bit rates. And you know exactly where this is leading. Five years from now, they'll bump up their sampling rates to 192 kps or something. And even though you've already bought and paid for all your favorite songs, you're going to be asked to buy them all again if you want the best sound. And in another five years they'll probably jump to uncompressed SACD quality downloads, and you'll feel this big incentive to buy the same songs yet again.
Not that I care. I stopped buying CDs a long time ago. The entire business is run by dishonorable people, and now it looks like that mentality is dragging down one of the computer industry's more principled companies.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Wow, someone who actually realizes that the gigantic sub doesn't increase the quality of the sound? I must have your autograph, sir.
That is exactly why I won't put a sub in my car. I'd rather listen to better sounding music than rattle my car apart.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
In a few years, when everyone is on broad band and storage costs half of what it does now, they will upgrade to "premium" 256 kbps songs. Lots of people will buy their collection again, just like they did with their record collection.
You don't collect iTMS files, you LISTEN to them. We're not talking about trading card or comic books here, we're talking about legally purchased and licensed music files that are designed to only play on a limited number of computers. It's not like you can swap these files between lots of other people.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Allofmp3 suppots on-the-fly encoding to let you have 192 kbps Ogg's or whatever. Even FLAC or raw CD Audio is available, but only for some songs.
:-P
I have no idea how legal the site is where I live, but it's definitely legal in Russia.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
In my experience in using my iPod, I'm more than happy with 128kbps AAC encoded rips of my CDs and am very happy with the audio quality of the stuff I've bought off iTunes.
Line eater? What lin
Nearly 100 million people seem to think so.
I think I deserve it, although this has given a few potential audiophiles the chance to vent, so hooray!
Then he quotes a bunch of people talking about 128KBS MP3s as not sounding good, and assumes that that's all he needs to know and AAC and MP3 at 128 are the same.
finally he praises rhasphody for using 192 bits per second and says they use the same compression software. Again not understanding the difference between AAC and MP3 or that even these names are not descriptive enough. AAC after all can hide several possible codec's under its skirts and MP3 comes in many flavors too.
what a rube.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Rock music requires a lot of detail in the high frequencies and in stereo separation, both mainly due to heavy cymbals and other percussive instruments. At lower bitrates, these are usually the first to go.
As for bass, it should be able to reproduce that with no problems, since it's low frequency and has no intention of stereo separation during the mastering process.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
I say boycott any format that is any worse than the modern 192k (preferably better). If they can really do 128k without sounding any worse, that's fine. But based on the reviews I've seen, they haven't, so it's not.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
128kbps AAC is NOT the same as a 128kbps MP3. Look at the codecs and you'll understand...
My
hahaha gnaa rox yuo sux zomg lol wtf
I'm just curious. Do you have perfect pitch? Are you familiar with the literature on JND of auditory perception?
I only ask (and sincerely, not sarcastically!) because I'm a student doing research on auditory perception in birds, and audio compression might be extremely interesting to test them with.
Do you live in a country where taxes on hard drives are 500% or something?
...
Hell, hard drives are so damned cheap these days
Now for portable usage, 128kbps is sensible, especially for lower capacity players.
If it is so obvious then why the hell are you telling it to us again? Seems like everytime there's an article regarding MP3 vs ACC, etc, someone has to comment about how 128kbps MP3s are poor enough quality that blah blah blah... you get the point.
Maybe it's been done before, but I'm really getting tired of that poll that's up there now, the 'Take Over the World' thing. And yes I've seen all of those (mostly lame) cartoons. At What Bit Rate Do You Rip Music? 320-256 320-256 VBR 192-160 192-160 VBR 128 or lower 128 or lower VBR I use OGG, you insensitive clod. I only buy AAC, you insensitive clod. (I even put 8 options so /. editors would not freak)
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
I agree that 128kbps is not ideal. Therefore, I use iTMS to buy those random one hit wonder songs for which I'd never buy the album, but for my favorite music, I buy the album.
1) It might be available on SACD, which I think sounds _much_ better than CD.
2) Even if it isn't, I get cover art, liner notes, and the ability to rip at any bit rate I want
3) no DRM
4) I get that warm fuzzy feeling of actually owning something physical for my money.
I get all that for all of a few dollars in price difference, which is well worth it to me. The music store is a 3 minute walk away, so convenience isn't an issue.
Call me crazy, but I was listening to this one song over and over again. I kept switching between 128 mp3, 192 mp3, 320 mp3, and I'd listen to 128 AAC sometimes too.
I cannot tell the difference between CD and 320 mp3. There is a very subtle difference between CD and 192. 128 is a joke.
For AAC, I've found that importing the song at 192 is about the same as 320 mp3.
Give it a shot. Take some song that has some subtle sounds, like accoustic guitar, and listen to it. Import it from the original CD and listen to all the formats. It's surprising. I used the song "Battery" from Metallica because it has a mix of sounds. Specifically at the beginning where they're using 1 or 2 accoustic guitars.
Let's Look at the benefits of purchasing compressed online music:
... uh, that's it.
1. Immediate gratification.
Now, let's look at the disadavatages of purchasing compressed online music:
1. Lower sound quality. Everyone I have compared them for has asked "What's wrong with it?" after listening to the CD and then the AAC verison.
2. Codecs are changing very rapidly. You are investing a a fleeting software phenomenon that depends on the current and rapidily changing technology and the marketing whims of the computer and music industries. Soon there could be much better quality or with increased bandwidth CD quality. SOme sights now sell 24 bit flacs which you can burn using you regualr old DVDs and burner into DVD-A for BETTER THAN CD QUALITY.
3. Commercial CDs are inherently more stable than CD-Rs.
4. It is extremely difficult and time concuming to archive digital files for very long periods of time.
5. In most cases you get no liner notes or cover art.
6. You invite DRM.
7. For all the above, at a lot of stores, particularly iTMS, you PAY MORE for all these problems than a fine sounding CD, or a much better sounding DVD-A or SACD.
It only took till the second modded-up post for me to find someone defending Apple's infinite wisdom and being rewarded by the moderators for doing so.
I would like you to challenge yourself by doing a little thought experiment. Not just the original poster but everyone who read the post and said, right on, you tell those Windoze fools. Please try to wipe your pre-formed opinion from your mind and look at this story objectively, and then come up with several reasons why Apple *should* offer downloads in a lossless format or at least at a better bitrate. Can you even do it? Or are your preconceptions that everyone who criticises Apple is wrong and an ill-informed idiot so overpowering that you can't even conceive of a valid argument that goes against your programmed response?
What it comes down to is that Apple is charging 99c per song for a crappy bitrate. Most serious music listeners that I know do not rip below 192kbps MP3 and far more often above 256kbps. Myself I go for 320kbps as a baseline. On a decent stereo with a subwoofer there is absolutely no question that you can tell the difference between a 128kbps AAC and an uncompressed CD audio track for all but the simplest, slowest music.
As for the megahertz myth... whatever else you want to say about it, until recently Intel and AMD have been so insanely far ahead of Apple that even if you want to take a 2:1 'myth factor' into account you still come out ahead on a (real) PC. And let's not even THINK about dollars per unit of non biased performance (tm).
Now I prepare myself to be sacrificed to the gods of Apple and modded into oblivion... let the cleansing of the thought crimes begin (Mod -1: Failure to Think Different (tm)).
Read Pynchon.
the NYT article quotes the idiots at Stereophile. When your magazine recommends that people buy 200$ power cords for their reciever to "filter" out the bad power that your outlet gets, thats trouble.
Stereophile is also well known for shunning proper ABX sound listening tests because with such a test they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a $5000 amp and a $200 amp. link
The fact that the article doesn't even go into how AAC compression works, makes it pretty obvious that its a sham. This article seems to be written from a elitist, anti-logical stance. Sigh.
Recently, they released an EP by one of my favorite artists, Iron & Wine, that had at least one song that I had never heard from him before. I snapped it up quickly.
I wish iTunes would move closer to VBR, as I'm an --aps junkie, but I have a feeling they will eventually. There are times I will occasionally buy songs on the service because I could find them there more easily than using something else.
Side note: Getting Hymn to work on a Mac is a bitch. :(
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
"Do you have perfect pitch?"
- I used to be play "name that pitch", and be dead on (8 or so years). I have, however, lost it to some degree, I suspect due to nonuse.
"Are you familiar with the literature on JND of auditory perception?"
Nope - like I said, these were informal tests.
As for me, I recently had my hearing tested. The machine indicated I could hear to 0db (the limit of it's ability to test), for most of the frequencies it could test. The other ones were to 5db, and I can hear both above and below the limits of that machine in terms of frequency.
Pet peeve: People who leave televisions on which aren't showing any picture. Man, those high pitched noises are annoying!
$.99 per song at 128 kbps?! allofmp3.com offers much sweeter deal plus the choice of encoders (MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, Windows Media, etc) and bit rate.
You two arn't the only ones, MOST people think that subwoofers make music quality worse. Those dumbasses who think the rest of the block wants to listen to their bass-line are idiots.
/192kbs or higher!
I added a woofer to my car, (1 12in, not 2 12s), but at the same time I replaced the door/rear speakers with high quality midrange speakers, added tweeters in the dash, added a sound-stager, and a decent cross-over panel. Thats a pimped ride.
...well maybe it already is. I'm surprised that an article like this can get published in the New York Times.
Either the author is above his head when it comes to compression technology- or he owed a favor to one of Apple's competitors...
The article is just a bit of fud-- and it's so half-assed I don't think any intelligent person would fall for his vague argument that 160 is higher than 128 which therefore means it is better.
I hope this isn't a sign of things to come as Microsoft prepares it's own music download business.
Just make sure you don't criticize the iTMS's quality before you've actually listened to songs from it. To me, they're easily CD-quality; I wouldn't be able to tell the differences. I don't know much about the technical differences between AAC and MP3, aside from that MP3 comes from MPEG-1 and AAC comes from MPEG-4, but I suppose AAC just allows for an inherently higher quality at a similar bitrate.
Signature.
Like
1. Driving to the CD store (gas)
2. Taxes
3. How much is your "time" of getting to the store worth?
Honestly? The cheapest way to buy music is to go to Amazon (or some other re-seller) and buy it used after a couple of months. It's dirt cheap. The only danger is of course getting a scratched CD.
You clearly don't understand. Apple, super-genius founder of the MPEG standards group, has created the AAC format just for you! It not only has virtually zero cross platform adoption, making your choice of computer and music player uncomplicated and simple, it also selectively chooses which bits and bytes in the music are actually functional and useful in your hectic iLife and discards the rest, leaving you with the pure functional essence of music, with none of those useless extra bits that slow down users of Clunky Alternative Systems.
Don't think of it as 'lossy', this of it as 'simplified!'
Read Pynchon.
It's good to see that as dumbed down as this article was, they got the Rhapsody definitions correct.
ITMS uses 128kbps AAC, wrapped with Apple DRM
Real Music Store uses 192kbps AAC, wrapped with Helix/Real DRM
As of a year ago, Rhapsody used 128kbps WMA, which is only streamed to you in a protected format, so that it is only cached and not in a saveable format. I doubt this has changed much.
The underlying idea behind Rhapsody is kinda cool. Think of the entire ITMS minus the exclusives, and then think of that being streamed to you at $10/month. That's basically what you have. It's an awesome service for discovering new music (just like any CD store, who's going to put down a lot of money on music that sucks? Just use the subscription service to give it a try before buying the CD-quality, well, CD).
Of course, the giant and huge drawback of Rhapsody is that you don't to keep any of the music if you cancel your subscription. In this respect, it's a bit like cable TV or the premium movie channels.
Maybe for older folks whose hearing has degraded somewhat. People usually cite an upper limit of around 20kHz. I can certainly hear a tone at 20kHz, from a good tone generator (not a cheap one with harmonic interference.) That alone puts the Nyquist rate at 40kHz.
What's more, although people may not consciously perceive higher frequencies, work has shown that people do subconsciously perceive them.
To quote (from the article I'm linking):
The author also notes such facts as that 40% of a set of cymbal's audio energy is above 20kHz. So a 96kHz audio recording (range=48kHz) is not unreasonable. But good luck finding equipment to really play it back on correctly
Article: There's Life Above 20kHz!
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
Artistic Support personnel (e.g. technicians, clip directors...) are not compensated for their work when you are buying on legal download services.
;p
At least according to this story on French Apple enthusiast website macbidouille.com (French. English translation here)
Record labels claim support personnel's contracts tie royalties to the sales of physical media, which of course is non-existing (and irrelevant) for iTunes.
Can you say "double standards"?
By using legal music download services, you are doing yourself (DRM + low bitrate) AND the little technicians a huge disservice. Help artistic support personnel, get your music off eMule and Usenet NOW.
Actually, I just sent off a nasty email to the article author: He never mentioned the difference either! So your mistake was totally understandable.
Apple uses the quote referenced in the Slash summary to refer to the Apple Lossless codec. It is, as I understand it, like running audio through Zip or Stuffit, where the type of data will affect the compressability. The audio quality will be the same, but the size will vary between music types. This is unlike a CBR codec where more complex audio will sound like ass at a given bit rate and simpler audio will sound better at the same bit rate (since less vital data is being discarded.)
:(
The New York Times writer seems to be blatantly misleading the reader (like so many NYT articles of a political persuasion) but the way the author quotes buzzwords and others who know little about what they are truly talking about, it makes me wonder if he has the intellectual capacity to explicitly mislead others.
What disappoints me is that many folks will read this in the print version of the Times, believe what they read, and make a decision based on bad information. But isn't this the hallmark of the NYT anyways?
The author of this article shows no understanding of signal processing or how music data is compressed, so his conclusions are silly. Comparing lossy music compression to 8-track tapes is silly.
He complains about lossy compression, but saving signal data (like photos or music) is always a lossy process, because there no exact digital representation of them. You decide to save a certain amount of data, let's say, 3 megabytes (or 30 megabytes) for 3 minutes of music, and then you decide what to put in those megabytes. You will always be able to get more/better data into the same space if you use signal processing compressors than if you just use uncompressed samples saved at some sampling rate and width per sample.
People who don't understand signal processing have a problem with the concept of "lossy." Signal processing engineers are not idiots. They don't design algorithms saying "I want to lose information and make a lower quality signal." They're just saying, "I want to save the data in this much space, which part of the data do I want to lose?" If you're saving recorded music, you are always losing data. The goal is to lose the least important part. The idea is slightly subtle, and it is apparently confusing to some people.
Perfect pitch isn't measured by the ability to name isolated pitches - as is commonly thought - rather, from what I understand, it's the ability to discriminate isolated pitches in a range. It sounds like you definately have it.
I wonder whether or not this has something to do with your ability to tell the difference between the audio compression, as certain pitches present in the original are lost in compression.
If it isn't 16 bit 44k1 KHz stereo, it isn't worth whatever ANY of these online stores charge.
Whatever your opinions on AAC vs. MP3 vs. Ogg and so on, anybody reading this article should know that Randall Stross has an extreme bias against Steve Jobs. Stross is the author of "Steve Jobs and the Next Big Thing", a historical piece on NeXT Computer. You can't go two pages in that book without running across Stross editorializing (negatively) about Jobs' personality or intelligence. Not very professional for somebody calling himself a "historian".
So, aside from the fact that Stross is a completely non-technical writer, take his views on Apple strategy and products with a grain of salt the size of Gibraltar.
For .99, I'd rather be able to download the album in their shiny new lossless format. Then when I burn CDs with the files, I know I'm getting actual CD quality.
128k AACs may sound adequate, but they are NOT the equivalent of a 256k MP3, no matter what Apple claims. Though this is a subjective assessment, of course, there have been enough complaints about the quality of the files to let me know that I'm not the only one who notices the lack of quality.
With a lossless file the problem can't exist because there's no difference between the original and the compressed file.
Until Apple starts either selling lossless files or sending me the actual CD when I buy an album on the iTMS, I won't be giving them any of my cash.
Also the reviewer must be confused the iTunes can encode in many formats, including Apples lossless format that takes about half the drive space but the iTMS is 128khz AAC files only.
I have recorded the same tracks at varying rates and it is very hard to tell the 128khz ACC files from the uncompressed songs. Listening to them on most car stereos and on iPods in places that have even modest noise and you can't tell the difference.
If I really cared about the music I would buy the CD but having so many CD's in my collection I might not ever listen to again the iTMS is simple, fast and easy. What I like this month I might not like next month and who wants a large file on an iPod when you don't listen to it.
Unless some online store offers tracks over 192khz then they really don't compare with 128khz AAC tracks. Slashdot readers should check out the results of the online listening test.
http://www.rjamorim.com/test/index.html
There is no British law prohibiting the import of intellectual property legally purchased abroad.
I doubt there is a law like this in any other European countries either.
It's been posted over and over again, but people keeps forgetting. Apple's AAC is not the same AAC that you get when you buy a CD and rip it to AAC. Apple's AAC is encoded from master tapes, therefore, eliminating the master tapes -> PCM (CD) -> CCA process. The result is better than what you get at the same bitrate. However, it is debatable at which point the bitrate defeats the source.
Since the last update the Apple AAC encoder pulled way ahead of the others. just google for it.
I'd say 128 AAC WAS like 160 mp3, which is FINE for me, I can't tell on most music; HOWEVER, since the update, I'd say 128 AAC is more like 192 mp3. I can no longer hear the stuff I used to be able to hear at 128. Not that I have perfect hearing, but there was a very noticable change when the updated the encoder...
More importantly, would be to ask if Apple re-encodes their music store music when they get encoder upgrades...
All that said, I now encode at 160 for good measure; because my audio freak friends can't tell between 160 and uncompressed.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
People here are saying its like a 192kb/s mp3. AAC is about 1/3 better (see http://www.mp3-tech.org/aac.html) than mp3 (imho) which brings it closer to 160kb/s mp3. you've also got to remember that this isn't a lame vbr comparrison but a fraunhoffer cbr comparrison which has not had the massive open souce development efforts over many many years.
So yes, very adequete on iPod (especailly with those relatively average headphones that come with it), but for playing through any mid to high level hi-fi (depending on music type) it could be better.
ALLOFMP3 has the best model going. YOU decide the quality of the rip (on demand). When a more "legit" company starts offering this same model, this industry will explode.
The quote lifted from Apple's website is about Apple's lossless codec, not (as anyone would know) MP3's.
Have you ever tried to describe highly technical concepts to highly non-technical people? As you go on and you realize that they don't understand basic required concepts...you find yourself simplifying things so much such that anyone in the know who overheard you would think you're a blittering idiot. If this savy eavesdropper only arrived to hear your final version of the explaination, he would probably think you have no clue what you're talking about. I'm not saying that's what's happening here, but it's harder then it looks you know.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
It depends on which format you're talking about, honestly. If we're just talking MP3 vs. MP3 here, then yes - I can *usually* tell the difference between a 128 bit and a 192 bit encoded song.
Granted, there are exceptions to this rule, but they're usually only when the original source material isn't that great to begin with. (For example, I have MP3s made from a James Brown hits collection CD - and frankly, the original CD has a muddy, low-fi sound to it. There's just not enough detail there to warrant encoding at a higher bitrate than 128. I mean, what do you want? Perfect reproductions of background hiss?)
I've downloaded a few iTunes songs in 128-bit AAC, and my informal "off the cuff" listening experiences with them make me consider them roughly equal to encoding MP3s at 160 bits or so. They sound pretty darn good, but probably not quite "CD quality". I suspect, again, though - some of this depends on the quality of the original source material.
Unless you like modern (90's and beyond) music, you often have to deal with limitations in the original recordings. For example, I'm a big Rush fan - but I find most of their music sounds a tad "muddy" or "muffled". Their "Show of Hands" live CD was a notable exception (recorded and mixed in full digital), and I don't hear any sound quality issues on any of their more recent releases ("Test for Echo", for example). But every time I listen to Hemispheres, Signals, or the like - I think "Great music, but I bet this would sound much better if this was recorded on today's equipment."
The author of the NYT article certainly has a way with words.
If, in fact, the file were permanently compressed, there would be no way to play it. The file is decompressed to play it, so it can't be "permanently compressed". Along with other examples of the authors 10 million mile view, this article isn't worth much.
In its fight for Dolby Digital, Dolby freqently maintains that the number of bits have little to do with the quality of the file. It's the quality of the algorithm that makes the difference. I'm not much of a fan of DD (I find DTS much better), but if Dolby can make that argument stick, so can Apple.
-David
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
Well, let's see. I used to listen to albums, that were apparently far superior in sound quality than anything else in the world. They would get scratches that would cause them to make popping sounds and would add fuzz to the music. What the hell, it still sounds fine.
Next, I bought cassettes. Cassettes had an always present hiss in the background and after several plays, the music on the cheaply made cassettes would start to fade. What's worse, the tapes would eventually stretch and snap after overuse. That was fine too. I could listen to my music.
Then I bought CDs. These were okay too. They were bulkier than cassettes--sort of. They were also prone to scratches, but far less so than records. The problem was that they were digital and not analog, which meant that I wasn't getting to hear all the sound that was being played by the artists (as we obviously were with LPs and cassettes since they had infinite information storage capabilities). Oh dear. Where's my tape hiss? Where's the fullness of my phonograph? Well, whatever. I can still hear the music.
Now I have lossless MP3s and AACs. The horror. They don't scratch. They don't add tape hiss. They don't wear out at all and are incredibly portable. However, they don't store all the information that our CDs do. They even distort some of that sound. Oh no! Oh, wait, I can still hear the music. That's okay.
So, my point is, what the hell does it matter? There's no perfect recording medium. If there were no choices we'd be happy with whatever we had. Now that the common consumer has a choice, she frets day and night over how many bits she's losing. Talk about a waste of time. Freedom of choice isn't always a blessing. It can distract you from those other freedoms that are slipping away.
What do you mean by "consistently"? My experience is that some kinds of music sound really bad at 128k and other music sounds decent. If people can consistently tell the difference with some pieces of music (but maybe not with others), I'd say that's still reason enough to go higher on everything.
Generally I've found that noisier stuff benefits more from higher bitrates. My friend did this REALLY noisy song (crunchy guitar etc.) recorded on a crappy jambox, and I had to bump it up to 256K before the compression noise wasn't completely obvious.
-paul
Buying an OK-quality iTMS audio file for 99 is much cheaper and easier than buying the song on CD-ROM (as opposed to a CD-DA disc), incriminating myself (the DMCA) bypassing the copy protection, and ripping the one track I want at a higher quality.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Being the skeptical type, when iTMS was launched, and having not been impressed w/ 128k mp3s I did my own quick A/B test of 128k AAC / AIFF from the CD. First, Rip a song (preferably one w/ a significant dynamic range to 128k AAC in itunes. Then select the song and choose "Show song file" from the file menu. Right/Control click (thats either right -or- control, yes, you _can_ use a multi-button mouse w/ a mac.) and choose "Open With" then select Quicktime Player from the submenu that appears. Open the song track from the CD in a similar manner. Now you have the original and your 128k AAC both open in QT Player. Then select "Play all Movies" from the Movie menu. both will start simultaneously. Now you can option-tab to switch between which as focus (and thus which is heard) and do a real-time AB test. It put me at ease. Once you have your hand in place you can close your eyes and randomly switch back and forth a bit to loose track, then try to guess which you're listening to.
MSRP - Tax, Title & Licence Extra Your Milage May Vary
Lets be real people. 128kbit is just fine, period. Yes, a musician with a good stereo hooked up to a decent soundcard with proper wiring and all will be able to dicern between the 128kbit song and true CD quality. Some people will be able to hear thast theres differences between the songs. Most people wont really notice the difference unless its pointed out to them. ;-)
And thats with decent Equipment
Now looking at my 2 Roomates (non geek Masters of Education Candidates) one doesent even bother to hook up his laptop to the stereo half the time and just plays the builtin speakers (quote "sounds okay enough when you dont wanna turn it up and anyways the stereo is 15 years old") and the oether never bothered replacing his stereo and has 50$ creative speakers hooked up to his 'walmart desktop'. Most People (i would say at least 80%) dont care enough about music to actually be bother by 128kbit.
yes, maybe they should, but they never will despite whatever we say
As for me, after reading some reviews i have a Logitech 5.1 System hooking up my Desktop, PS2 and Cyberhome DVD Player. This is about the best non audiophiles will normally have, and even i have a problem discerning between 'true' CD quality and 128kbit.
My Dad is happily running my crappy old PII 400, because he doesent care enough to get something better. Same probably goes for most Dads. Most people are happy with crappy 128kbit because they dont care enough to get something better. This probably also works to explain modern day pop music
80% of a random group of people will be morons, idiots or fuckwits. This is true from the point of view of any given member of the group
-- never underestimate someone who overestimates himself
Apple, Microsoft and Thompson each claim that their codecs are more efficient than the old standby, 128 kbs MP3. Thompson proposes 64 kbs MP3Pro; Microsoft, 96 kbs WMA.
Apple, realizing that disk space is cheap, that bandwidth should be cheap, and that "128" is so entrenched in the minds of the consumer, has wisely decided not to offer smaller downloads. Perhaps 128 kbs AAC is equivalent 160 kbs MP3. Perhaps not. It's all dependent on the ears of the listener, the audio hardware, the quality of the original recording, and the subtlety of the original piece.
It has long been observed that much popular music has been "compressed" in the studio, as cynical producers believe that any attempt to utilize the entire dynamic range of CDDA will simply result in tinny sounding music, when reproduced on cheap hardware. As a result, such music is amenable to further compression with low rate lossy codecs.
But some other labels, recognizing that their customers have access to high end systems, release recordings lauded for dyanmic range and subtlety. These tracks are less resilient to lossy compression techniques.
Keith Jarrett's "The Melody at Night With You", a selection of solo piano pieces, is a rather subtle piece, known for, inter alia, the sustained piano notes. It sounds rather undistinguished on cheap computer speakers. When compressed to, say 192 kbs AAC, many more of the notes are distorted. It is therefore stored losslessly on my hard disk. Other CDs in my collection are less subtle, and don't require that much space.
Ideally, a consumer would match individual codecs to his ears, his equipment, and his choice of music. But this is a time consuming process-- it's much easier to pick a (high) bit rate, rip at 15-20x and be done with it, returning later to rerip when one notices that the elided subtleties were sonically and artistically important.
As for the quality of downloadable tracks, it's not enough to buy the CD, and encode using various consumer level codecs. One must purchase the tracks from the online site, and compare, preferably using a blind test, as the various music stores might encode using 24 bit masters, professional level codecs, artist participation and other resources not available to the average consumer.
If one reencodes a DVD using Apple's quicktime, the resulting output is quite poor, at least in comparison to other codecs designed around the DVD rip scene. But the Quicktime trailers that Apple distributes are exquisite, indicating, in a rather broad sense, that when Apple encodes a piece of media, its results can be superior to those of its customers.
I've come to a stunning conclusion. I think most people compare the quality of the headphones and the amplifier in the device instead of comparing the codec.
I recently bought a MZ-NH600D minidisc. Then I bought an iRiver. The MD unit claims a 5mW per channel amplifier, the iRiver claims 20mW. The MD has a user definable equalizer with 10dB bass boost, the iRiver has 24dB claimed.
Guess which one is louder and has more bass into the same headphones? (Koss Portapro)
The MD unit hands down. There's so much bass that my ears hurt, I turned it down. The iRiver can barely play adequately.
Yes, the same tunes. From my own CD. Ripped either with Sony's crapalicious SonicStage through either ATRAC3, or 320kbps MP3, and some Vorbis too.
As usual, I say that Sony has at least two decades worth of experience driving headphones on portable equipment. That is 50% of the job right there. The other 40% is the headphones. There's no way the iPod's or iRiver's included ear buds come even close to the Portapros. Period.
My friend with the iPod is concerned first and foremost about the LOOK of the headphones, like it's a club. It's style over substance.
The other 10% is the codec. Sorry, but ATRAC equipment has been used in studios. I'm willing to bet that the people who think ATRAC sounds like garbage are actually listening to ATRAC sound compressed into MP3, but MP3 sounds so much better?
IME, when both units are in flat sound (no EQ), there's not much difference between ATRAC3plus at 64k or MP3 at 128k. In terms of distortion.
Then the real problem is that people don't have the original source to listen to. They download 128k MP3 and say ATRAC sounds like ass.
I noticed that there are a lot of problems in music if you listen carefully.
Then you pop in the CD and realize the problems are at the source. Most pop is mastered so hot it's distorted right from the start.
Bottom line, it's what you are comfortable with. I've used MD for 10 years. I have lots of CDs. I didn't get involved in ripping my own CDs into anything else than MD. I simply listen to the music rather than get involved in arcane discussions. For a walkman, MD does the job, and headphones are the key.
Carrying around a conspicuous expensive item like a iRiver makes the experience unenjoyable. There's so much music, you stop walking, you frown, you think, you choose, you work to decide what you want to listen to.
I use my MD for taking the bus to work. I pop in an MD and put it on shuffle. There's enough music on a 1GB disc but not so much that you get antsy. that's all a walkman should be.
>Once freeze-dried, there is no way to reconstitute the music into CD quality for playing through a good stereo.
Most people forget the Beatles, Beach Boys, Motown , Phil Spector, etc. recorded music for *transister radios* In most cases, high fidelity is a red herring argument concocted by the music industry to sell more music.
The not-good-enough-for-home-stereo argument is nonsense. I play MP3s and AACs through my home stereo all the time--the sound quality is indistinguishable between CDs. And that is using only the sound card's line-out jack and a cheap connector.
Admittedly I listen to mostly rock. Classical music is more difficult to encode, given its more dynamic nature.
joab
1. Nyquist theorem also assumes that the samples are real numbers, not 16 bit ints.
2. Phase is not important IF you have a perfect band limiting filter when doing ADC conversion and perfect sinc(x) filter on the output. Of course building a perfect noncausal filter (sinc(x)) is physically impossible, thus the higher sampling frequency. Only dogs can hear imperfections near 20KHz anyway.
The biggest problem with CDs right now is not their sampling frequency (although raising it to 96KHz would allow engineers to not pay so much attention to band-limiting - the aliasing would be well above 20KHz anyway which you can't hear, and sinc(x) filter could be simply omitted on the DAC end).
The biggest problem is that the samples themselves are 16 bit, so any kind of digital processing in your stereo that goes before DAC can screw up things pretty dramatically. The problem becomes especially bad for low-level signals.
First of all IANAE (Iamnotanengineer) but a former audiophile that used to do quite a bit of signal processing while in grad school.
I see what you are saying about introduction of artifacts going from a 48 kHz digital copy to a 44 khz digital copy and then compressing. What some posters don't seem to get is that processing digital is not the same as working with analog - you get essentially digitization artifacts of digitization artifacts if you are not careful.
However, I have a problem with your test about cutting off frequencies above 16kHz. Seems to me that this would be very hard to do without affecting the other frequencies in the waveform. Again this is because we are dealing with digital copies and thus can only adjust the signal by a single bit at single time point. So we have to worry about introducing more quantization noise. Furthermore the distortion would only be in a subset of higher (not important) and lower frequencies and not across the entire spectrum. This might be the the variance that you hear when you do this especially in quiet passages.
From what I remember, vinyl has a practical limitation of somewhere around 16kHz especially as you get near the end of the record where the grooves are more tightly spaced. However, vinyl still sounds better A/B (to my ears) at least compared to early CD's made from analog masters probably because of the lack of digitization artifacts. (Also, the early sound engineers probably didn't know what they were doing yet and there might not have been much signal above 16K in the masters anyway since the orignal engineers knew it was going to be for vinyl so there was not much benefit for digital to start with but that is another issue..)
Oh to get back on topic, I was listening to a friend's high end system and we both noticed the distortion in the digital MP3 streams that we got from his cable radio stations. Don't know what the bitrate was but I wouldn't want to buy it either...
NYT Describing Real's service: "With a subscription service like RealRhapsody, one saves personal tastes in the form of playlists that replace actual music collections, providing access to favorites no matter what storage format comes out "
I'm really surprised the New York Times allows this blantant advertising within its editorial content, done through the guise of one interviewee's quote. I know the NYT is trying to appeal to a younger hipper audience, but damn! if this is the best they can probe the problems with music distribution, they should stick to covering opera.
Could the reporter not do a few back-of-the-envelope calculations? How much would it cost pay a small subscription fee the rest of your life, starting at $10 a month and working upwards over the years.
My parents bought 4 Simon & Garfunkel albums in the late 60s. Cost? Maybe $16 for the whole lot. They then enjoyed them for the 30 years. Then I transferred them to CD. That $16 has lasted them the better part of a century. They, like most people, do not own a *lot* of music, maybe 70 albums total (most of which I listen to now, actually). The cost of that collection is *far* cheaper than what they would have had to pay in subscription fees, would such a subscription service been in place in the 1970s. Now they enjoy the msuic they bought years ago without paying anybody anything!
joab
I think that it's perfectly reasonable to collect flac versions of stuff. A 20 Gig hard drive, for instance will give you approximately 75 hours of music, if you use flac. Make a copy of the flac files to a DVD-R, and import them as necessary into your ipod. It's not that bad.
With 128, you are almost literally carrying what would have been an individual's entire record collection around with you on a small device, so yes, that is a huge jump in terms of how much stuff you are carrying around with you - so with flac, you can carry 40-50 "CDs" with you (on a 20 gig drive, that is) - that's a lot, isn't it? It's better than almost any other way of hauling 50 compact disks with you in some kind of zippered thing, isn't it?
I think flac is way more realistic (if you have broadband, that is). If you don't have broadband, forget it. It should, at least, be an option, I think.
There is a difference in sound quality, no doubt about it. And with flac, for instance, you are chopping the size of the files in half, so with lots of "legacy" stuff - in other words.. stuff that is originally from vinyl, where a "CD" may only be 40-45 mins, you can usually fit three CD's in flac format onto a 700mb data CD-R.
Collecting low bit-rate stuff is kind of a last resort, for instance, if there were no other way to get a particular album, and you really wanted that album, settling for a 128 version would be OK most of the time. But if the CD is available for purchase, and you are paying $10 for a 128 bitrate version, the extra few bucks for the CD are more or less worth it.
I think flac is the way to go.
Remember this listening test:8 /result s.html
http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat12
128k Itunes is not significantly better than mp3.
To my ears (and I am nearly 40) 128k just doesn't cut it for anything but very casual listening. FM radio sounds better than 128k. FM has less high end, but also less annoying artifacts.
allofmp3.com songs are *not* legal under European or American terms, just under Russian terms.
I notice that corporations are now able to outsource their labour costs to effectively captive populations trapped in low-wage countries. Corporations also take advantage of manufacturing within countries with laxer environmental and social welfare laws.
What's the point of all this hoopla about "global free trade" if consumers are not equally able to outsource their media purchases to arbitrage price differentials and different national IP laws and regimes? People in the expensive, walled-garden West using legal encoding and distribution services are just being good global citizens, spreading their wealth...
Da Blog
From your own link, it seems that Vorbis and MPC now offer the best quality, while AAC and Lame are effectively tied.
Da Blog
You are aware, are you not, that in blind listening tests AAC 128Kbps now lags behind Vorbis and MPC?
Da Blog
Please describe these artifacts. Please rip from a CD that you have, tell me which one, then tell me at so and so seconds you hear this or that, then compare to the CD.
I only collect music in FLAC, SHN, and WAV; you insensitive clod!
I'm more than happy with 128kbps AAC encoded rips of my CDs
You are aware, are you not, that in blind listening tests AAC 128Kbps now lags behind Vorbis and MPC?
Da Blog
128kbps AAC is NOT the same as a 128kbps MP3. Look at the codecs and you'll understand...
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. You should be aware that in the most current blind mass listening tests, AAC 128Kbps now lags behind Vorbis and MPC, and is effectively tied with Lame for third place (or joint second, depending on how you look at it).
Da Blog
128k Itunes is not significantly better than mp3.
To my ears (and I am nearly 40) 128k just doesn't cut it for anything but very casual listening.
Unless you actually participated in the test, and rated the 128 kbit/s mp3's low, I think you reached the wrong conclusion. Yes, lame mp3 was tied with iTunes AAC. But that doesn't mean that either mp3 or AAC sounded crappy! In fact, they were both rated very high. The correct conclusion is that lame mp3 using VBR has made great quality strides, essentially catching up with AAC for now.
ff123
This is clearly mentioned on Real's website and in their press releases, and I've personally found it to be the case. Once again the majority of Slashdot posters are ill informed, but in this case, it is understandable: Rhapsody did use Windows Media until recently, and it may still use it for streamed (not downloaded) content, as well as for content which is "downloaded" as part of Rhapsody's all-you-can-eat subscription option and not "purchased" outright.
when they offer an uncompressed .aiff option, (at a higher price of course) until then, forget it.
I love the iTunes model but this is a deal breaker for me, and I suspect, many others.
~hylas
Maybe stores like iTMS that provide lossless compression options are the last way to obtain real Red Book audio CDs, if all the CDs are now not Red Book compliant.
Actually the poster should have said some form of codec in the post, just saying the bitrates is misleading and incomplete
>That said, no matter how it's sampled, my 256Kbit MP3s
>(Fraunhofer "Pro" codec) from my own CDs will blow away any
>AAC at 128, not matter if they came straight from the master
>or not.
Such would be better, yes, but comes at about twice the file size.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Could the reporter not do a few back-of-the-envelope calculations?
I'm pretty sure that the "reporter" did not want to do any back-of-the-envelope calculations. The column gives the reader a strong impression that there's something wrong with the iPod and iTMS. Stross gives a flawed explanation of music compression, and then proceeds to single out Apple as though they're the only ones that distribute compressed music. He never bothers to explain that all the online music distributors sell music compressed to about the same degree with lossy techniques. He doesn't mention that iTMS sells tracks compressed with AAC as opposed to the WMA tracks everyone else sells, and that AAC arguably gives better fidelity than WMA.
After reading Stross' column last night, I did a little test. I listened several times to Cowboy Junkies' "Mining for Gold" on my copy of the "The Trinity Sessions" CD. The track is just Margo Timmins singing a capella for a minute and a half in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto, and was recorded with a single microphone. Listening to the CD version with a good pair of headphones you can hear subtle echoes, lots of detail in Timmins' voice, and occasional soft ambient noises. I then ripped the track onto my PowerBook at 128 kbits/sec and listened to that. With a good pair of headphones, you could hear subtle echoes, lots of detail in Timmins' voice, and occasional soft ambient noises. I'm sure that an editor of Stereophile magazine would know better what to look for to discern the difference between the CD track and the compressed version, but for practical purposes the two versions are indistiguishable.
It's clear that Stross has some sort of bone to pick with Apple, or else is completely unqualified to write about these things. Either way, this is one column that certainly never should have been printed in the NY Times.
I think the thing that bothers me most about this piece is that the NY Times published it without making it clear whether it's news or opinion or what. It's published under the heading "Digital Domain," but that alone is not enough to tell me what the nature of the writing is.
We're in a very strange place with regards to sound quality in the audio-world, right now. Ever since the advent of digital sound technology, there has been a simmering debate over the quality of Analog (records, tube amplifiers...) sound as opposed to Digital (CDs, solid state amplifiers...) sound.
Now, there's a subset of this debate over bitrates of audio formats that are on the lower end of the digital quality spectrum. The reality of the situation is that the digital vs. analog issues still have not been resolved. Recently, higher quality digital sound equipment has been entering the consumer market. HDCDs seem to be recognition of the notion that digital CD audio might not have been all that it was cracked up to be.
Do we really want the music industry to settle on a standard that takes us further away from the warmth of analog that serious audiophiles long for?
Interestingly, and I haven't seen this discussed below, Randall Stross seems to have a negative attitude towards Apple and has previously been chastised for biased and inaccurate editorializing. See http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~peer/writingsBigThing.h tml
DJChemistry, a Law student who has written a thesis on the US' efforts to establish a minimum set of international intellectual property standards concludes that:
* You are completely home free by downloading from this website right now. In the future, I cannot guarantee so. However, any changes that will affect the legal status of these downloads will be conspicuous and more than likely featured in the NY Times many times over.
Take a look at this intersting Allofmp3 FAQ by www.museekster.com
FYI, allofmp3 (and others) offer tracks much cheaper and in higher quality than itms. Quality at allofmp3 (due to great backend) varies from 24k mp3 -> .ogg -> .flac -> .wav. One pays by the bits dl'd, not by the track.
Sorry, in most cases Apple is encoding from 44.1. Example: all the submissions from CD-Baby (big independent music distributor) are encoded from CD-masters, which are 44.1. Even if Apple re-processes the audio to an intermediate 48KHz state before AAC encoding, there is no potential audio improvement - in fact there might be a very small loss of quality if the sample rate conversion is done wrong.
In practical terms, audio pros work at 44.1 KHz or 96Khz, but rarely 48KHz - it's a pain in the ass to move to the 44.1 'standard' and the theoretical quality improvement is rarely worth it in real life.
AND - there are plenty of examples of well recorded music done at 16 bit / 44.1KHz with GOOD A/D converters sounding much better than higher bit-rate stuff done with shitty converters.
So don't get too hung up about 44.1 vs 48. It's a bit of canard.
The problem is where they are placed, linear. If they were logarithmically (like human hearing is) it would be much better, especialy resolution at lower levels would be much improved.
Remember how good the 32KHz non-linear "long play" mode on DAT sounds?
I believe I can reply to this without getting into the # kbps discussion. Because as many have said, you can't directly compare kbps between mp3 aac and whatever.
... well... it sucks. It simply isn't enough. It if was JPEG I'd say it's way too blocky.
On the other hand, I recently purchased an IPod. I then started converting some of my original CDs into 128k AAC. And to my dismay, I found out that
I made some comparisons with the same tracks converted to full AIFF encoding and 128k, and (sounds are very hard to describe) but I really could tell the difference.
I tried with things like Gould playing Bach, and some moments of the goldberg variation (for example), when there are "many notes" at the same time, sound like soup. And the piano sounds like a bad synthesizer.
Same with some opera pieces I compared.
So, after digitizing like 50 songs, I had to start over with a higher bandwidth.
I, personnaly won't buy anything from itms because of this, until they raise the quality.
I'm not a musician, but I have some good headphones (the kind that give you a (hum) "full" spectrum), and I just can't listen to that quality. (I mean having spent so much for the IPod, and having the original CDs in the first place...)
So now, I'm going for lossless compression.
The source isn't too reliable, but 44.1 was chosen basicaly because is was higher than 40, and a time base that they had lying around. The other version I heard was that it fitted well in PAL video for recording digital to video tape for testing. And Sony chose 48KHz for DAT because it fitted well in NTSC. Again, no idea if this is actualy true.
Anyway. If you had a 22.05Khz sinus, if it were not in phase with the two (yes, only two, think about it!) sampling points you would have at 44.1, it would either be recorded at a too low level or maybe not even at all! (180 degrees out of phase)
To overcome this, you sample at a much higher frequency, 4, 16, even 64 or 128 times. This gives you many more sampling points and you can make sure higher frequencies are properly picked up. After applying some magic, it's resampled down to 44.1.
A similar proces is done in reverse during playback, to ensure signals are actualy sinoid again and not a block wave form.
Never listened to them, but Rush recordings were picked out as an example of badly recorded music by this guy
When I first started listening to compressed music I didn't know what to listen for, but after successive types of music were listened to I found that there is a definite difference. To me the difference shot out at me when I noticed that music with a lot of reverb, phasing, and flanging in it was missing those elements completely. Many 70's tracks and some modern N.I.N. stuff just totally lose their "power" and "drive" when listened to from compressed. Some N.I.N music that is extremely complex in noise character with flanging like "Just like you imagined" from "The Fragile" lose the element that make it so powerfull. At first you might not notice, and if you listen to compressed audio all the time, you won't know what you have missed. But, go back some time and listen to the real track off CD, you might be amazed to find that it is a more enjoyable experience.
Basically I'm making the statement that most music is fine compressed, but there's definitely some music that you should "never" compress, or more precisely music that can't be compressed without losing it's character.
+1
When I first started listening to compressed music I didn't know what to listen for, but after successive types of music were listened to I found that there is a definite difference. To me the difference shot out at me when I noticed that music with a lot of reverb, phasing, and flanging in it was missing those elements completely. Many 70's tracks and some modern N.I.N. stuff just totally lose their "power" and "drive" when listened to from compressed. Some N.I.N music that is extremely complex in noise character with flanging like "Just like you imagined" from "The Fragile" lose the element that make it so powerfull. At first you might not notice, and if you listen to compressed audio all the time, you won't know what you have missed. But, go back some time and listen to the real track off CD, you might be amazed to find that it is a more enjoyable experience.
Basically I'm making the statement that most music is fine compressed, but there's definitely some music that you should "never" compress, or more precisely music that can't be compressed without losing it's character.
+1
anything under 320 suck dick big time
I assume iTunes are distributed using Apple QuitTime AAC Encoding (rather than MP3). THere are some threads on hydrogenaudio.org which discuss QT quality. Briefly, with iPod, it is very difficult to distinguish QT128 vs QT192. However on a good quality stereo, you *can* hear the difference. OTOH, QT192 is VERY HIGH quality, apparently, under normal circumstances it is very hard (if not possible at all) to detect the difference between the QT192 and the original source, so the opinion is that anything above 192KBps (with Apple AAC) is overkill.
So the bottom line: if Apple claims that QT128 is as good as the original source without qualifying 'on iPod and similar portable device, but *not* on high quality stereo', it's just a marketing BS.
No one pretends downloads are as good as a cd.
The days of the "128kbps = CD Quality" proclamation are over (they were only used by pretty lame companies anyway).
Photos.
For a number of reasons.
1) it is usually not more expensive, and often cheaper, to buy the CD used on Amazon than to download it.
2) the physical CD provides a backup.
3) And while I find that, given the current cost of HD space, I am willing to accept what is, to my ears, a slight loss in quality from compression to fit more music on my HD, I imagine that someday I'll want to re-rip those CDs at a higher bit rate.
The difference is how is sounds when it doesn't sound transparent. MP3 can and will annoy you unless you pump up the bitrate. AAC, the bits in an iTMS m4p or iTunes-creates m4a, won't. Try it. MP3 is history. Saying 192 is a better option isn't quite good enough since most iTMS tunes wind up on portables, and you don't want to lose all that space just so "maybe I won't never-ever hear anything that annoys me". In conclusion, vote with your OWN ears.
With the current contest going on with iTMS, I almost psyched myself out to buy some of Natacha Atlas' music. That is, until I realized I could buy the CDs used for less than $10. from Amazon and eBay anyway. So I have a CD coming from eBay (so far at least; please don't outbid me, haha). I then tried to pick up Hiphopkhasene from Solomon & Socalled since it's almost impossible to find, and sure enough it wasn't on iTMS either. So I actually paid $22 or so for it including shipping, the first new CD I've purchased in, well, a long time.
When iTMS offers me sound quality as good as, or better than, a CD, and downloadable album art and liner notes in some sort of cool proprietary Apple iTunes format, then I'll start buying. Until then, having the source material that I can compress as much (or as little) as I want is a better solution for me.
www.clarke.ca
Both those were actually 150 kbps, not 128. The test was rigged. It was even admitted that "easy" sample files were added to make the average bitrate of those encoders using VBR to get closer to 128 over all the files. However, those samples where the ogg/mpc files were rated "better" than iTunes/AAC were all in the 150+ kbps bitrate range, while iTunes was still at 128 kbps. Several "easy" samples were in the low-90s bitrate, while the non-VBR iTunes was still doing 128 (where it could have easily been done at 96 kbps !!). It's a rigged test done by an guy that admits he doesn't even have a good stereo, has lousy speakers and cheap headphones. Of course it matters !!
If you can't HEAR the difference there is no difference, there is no difference, except you have half the song space (256 kbps is double the space of 128 kbps by definition). Also, AAC is a little simpler to decode.
Tell you what folks. Compromise. You want high quality music your ears can't distinguish (even on high-end audio systems) and yet still hold it all on a 30 gig iPod for portability to parties, etc? -- Go with AAC at 256kbps. I don't care how good your ears are.
What's the rest of the compromise? Collect CDs. You worry about price? Go to a good music store (Newburry Comics etc.) and buy used CDs. You'd be amazed. Virtually all CDs nowdays are without a scratch or fingerprint, for half the price or less.
Do yourselves a favor.
informative and insightful.
BTW, it's not a skill that's necessarily of much use. (I don't have it, for example; I do have rather good relative pitch, with which I can recognise intervals, and pitch notes relative to others.) Although it can be useful for getting starting notes when singing unaccompanied, it severely hinders your ability to transpose music, e.g. singing something in a different key.
Anyway, I can't see how either relative or absolute pitch have much to do with hearing audio compression artefacts. IME, musos are generally pretty bad at hearing things like that -- I think it's because we're so used to listening to the music -- the texture, harmonies, rhythms, timbre, melodies, structure, arrangement, &c, that we're simply not listening for the same sorts of things that audiophiles do; maybe we even mentally 'fill in' any imperfections!
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
No the only conclusion I was reaching is that AAC and MP3 are not that different.
In my past experience with 128k lame I found it less than wonderfull. That was over a year ago. What are the recomended 128k settings for good results with lame. Perhaps it is better now.
I'm somewhat familiar with the way mp3 works. It won't artifact on pure tones with not-too-much harmonics, or on several pure tones with not-too-much harmonics. What kills it is noise.
Also, listening on anything approaching decent equipment, the artifacts are nothing like subtle. They sound like raindrops and are spatially separated from the music itself - i.e. if what you use to listen can do anywhere near decent stereo imaging and reproduce half-decent highs, you'll hear them in a nasty, in-your-face way.
--
I refuse to use
At first - realise that Stereofile gets money from advertising, thats it.
;)
At second - 'difference between a $5000 amp and a $200 amp' is easely distinguishible. For example, attach speakers and NO INPUT, take amp on, set loudness to MAX and take your ear near speaker. Be sure, you'll hear the difference. Keep in mind - it's only one of many differences between them.
At third - ANY not hearing impaired person can hear difference between ANY lossy compression and original. Go to local 'audiofilic' store, get a listening room with audiosystem like over 10000-15000 (cd, amp & speakers) and compare original CD and compressed sound at comfortable sound level.
That compression aimed at 'medium customer audiosystem' and 'medium listening conditions', so if you are going out of target you easily will hear difference.
By the way, having some clue and soldering skills you can build your own 5000$ amp for 200$. Like me
And hear the difference.
And compare different cd transports, cables, speakers, etc.
And yes, they sounds different - you have no need in 'golden ear' to hear that.
But of coarse, cables like 2000$/meter are for people, who are bying only the most expensive things. Like speakers for 140000$ each
Almost perfect on this:
& th reshold=0&commentsort=1&tid=141&mode=thread&cid=84 30289
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=98809
It's been demonstrated that at frequencies around 26-28KHz some of the tiny ear bones vibrate sympathetically, which transmit additional 'information' to the eardrum. I'm not sure what this sounds like, I'm recalling from a paper in a psychoacoustic music seminar about 10 years ago.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
They give you a choice between mp3/mp4/wma/mpc/ogg with a choice of bitrates and codecs, or even lossless (wav/flac/ape etc).
...it can saturate a connection. I get transfers between 125-200Kb/s on a 2Mbit connection. It's slower for the 'free' downloads. When you sign up you can also listen to full song streaming previews; I've never had a problem with these.