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."

Comments

Apple Lossless

[Oculus Habent]

The "Half the size" bit is about Apple Lossless

Re:Apple Lossless

[Oculus Habent]

Sorry, Hit submit too soon. Between the author and the submitter, there's some miscommunication.

THe "Half the size" bit is about Apple Lossless, not about AAC, and is in the fanciful segment wherein the author envisions his own version of iTMS offerings. He has no understanding of the expensive nightmare that housing and providing CD-sized tracks over the Internet presents. I believe he twists Derick Mains words in the last paragraph of the first page; paraphrasing his "reasoning". He doesn't seem to realize that offered lossless compression would need to be more expensive.

The author of the article makes no mention of the different codecs used for the iTMS and Rhapsody, leaving the comparison to a linear scale of bit-rate between the two services and CD-quality, but neglects his own findings later. If the bit-rate were the only difference to him, the article would have been much shorter.

He refers to comments from Sterophile twice to bash Apple - but never Rhapsody - and refers to 128kbps as "the low end of the bit rate range", clearly unaware that smaller MP3 players compress music down to 96 or 64kbps. He refers to an "apples to Apple" comparison of 192 to 128kbps, saying, "the companies use the same software standard for compression" when, in fact, they don't.

He muses, "we should have the option to collect with true CD quality". Well, sir, you do. It's called a CD. If you don't wish to make use of the online music stores, don't. No one is forcing you to type in your credit card number.

Re:Apple Lossless

[kalidasa]

Exactly. I buy CDs when I want high quality. I buy iTMS when I just want a few songs for the iPod.

Are iTMS's 128kbps Songs Worth Collecting?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Are iTMS's 128kbps Songs Worth Collecting?

[b-baggins]

Good grief. This is the MHz myth redux. Bit rate does not equal quality. It's the codec. Otherwise we'd all be saying that 2500 bps mpeg-2 is far superior to 1500 bps DIVX. You'd get laughed off any forum for preaching that, yet everyone goes around proclaiming it as gospel truth for audio.

Here's the real reason this nonsense keeps coming up: Competitors to iTMS are so far behind in terms of downloads it's laughable. So, what do they do? Smear the competition.

That's all this is, plain and simple. It's nothing more than competing download services spreading FUD to try and knock down the market leader, and folks here just drink it right down and think they're intelligent and discerning consumers for doing so.

Re:Are iTMS's 128kbps Songs Worth Collecting?

[kannibal_klown]

Sure, if you want a whole CD.

I have bought about 30 songs since iTunes started. They were all singles.

I usually only like 1-3 songs per CD. So, in reality, I'm spending .99 - 2.97 USD for the 1-3 songs I want, instead of 12 - 17 USD for the privelege of ripping those same 3 songs from a CD (assuming they're on the same CD).

Personally, I find the codec and bit rate fine, except for oldies. Some of those songs sound rather tinny. But more modern songs are good enough to warrant the .99 USD price tag.

Re:Are iTMS's 128kbps Songs Worth Collecting?

[BishopBerkeley]

This IS the case. What the article and few people on /. have failed to mention is that the problem is more a matter of the output quality of the iPod than the bit rate of the compression.

When I got my iPod, I was hoping to replace my CD player by hooking it up to my receiver. This was trivial to do technically, but the sound quality was always poor. I experimented with many, many different sampling schemes (i.e., AAC and mp3 at various bit rates). I finally settled on AAC at 224 kbps, but the output from my iPod was still inferior to what I got from CDs. Then, one day I plugged in my Powerbook to my receiver via the exact same cables that I use to connect my iPod to my receiver. Low and behold, the sounds coming out were PERFECT. (FWIW, I have a Harmon/Kardan receiver with JBL speakers. Good shit.) That's when I realized that the iPod was not designed to be connected to high fidelity equipment. It's output was designed for earphones.

So, I complained and complained to Apple, and sure enough, one of the improvements in the last iPod update was "improved playback." And, I heard the difference as soon as I installed the update. It's still not quite hi-fi, but it makes my trips in my car much more pleasant. At home, I still use either CDs or my Powerbook, but I think complaining some more will get more results from Apple.

I have complained to Apple about the bitrate, also, but for $0.99, one does get a good bargain.

Re:Are iTMS's 128kbps Songs Worth Collecting?

[Squozen]

You don't want to be hooking the headphone socket of your iPod to your stereo. Use the dock instead, which has a real line-level output.

Re:128kbps MP3s

[Trillan]

p>Apple does not use 128 bit MP3s, but 128 bit AACs. That's fact.

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.

Re:128kbps MP3s

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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. ;-)

AAC encodes better than MP3

[hattig]

(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.

Re:AAC encodes better than MP3

[Raindance]

It's also important to note that Apple's AAC files are encoded at 48khz (from the original DAT tapes, in many cases) instead of the normal 44.1khz cd-mix, which potentially significantly improves the quality. In some rare cases it might even produce something that's "better" than cd-quality.

Yes, it's still a tradeoff, but going from the original DATs means no frequency aliasing, which is a Good Thing.

RD

Re:AAC encodes better than MP3

[hattig]

From www.listen.com: "Rhapsody currently delivers audio encoded with Windows Media 8 using a proprietary streaming mechanism."

So the article is incorrect. They are comparing 128kbps AAC to 196kbps WMA. WMA isn't that bad quality wise, but it certainly isn't "the same software standard for compression".

I was also looking at the FAQ for Rhapsody. You can't burn lots of tracks, you can only burn if you pay extra per track and you are subscribing to their service. It is a DRM nightmare compared to Apple's reasonable DRM.

Re:AAC encodes better than MP3

[Raindance]

A few points:

1. The Nyquist Theorem states the maximum possible encoded frequency in a digitized waveform. It says nothing about how the waveform may or may not suffer aliasing as the frequency approaches half the sample rate. I.e. a rate of 44.1khz is necessary (but may not be sufficient) to encode a 22.05khz tone. I'm not sure this was clear in your reply.

2. "Human ears listen up to about 16kHz." Leaving aside the variance between ears (which is huge- some can hear above 20khz), nigh-subconscious overtones depend on these frequencies. Even if you can't hear these high frequencies alone very well, they do (measurably, and meaningfully) add something to music. Just crop everything above 16khz on a song and listen critically.

3. "A CD delivers audio at 1411.2kbps. The CD audio format was created to conform to what is the best that human ears need." Yes, based on 1980s research. We've come a long way in audio theory, though. Also, all bits are not created equal- I guarantee you that a DVD-A stream compressed into 1411.2kbps would sound better than a CD.

I think my points still stand.
Best,
RD

Re:AAC encodes better than MP3

[Scott Ransom]

1. The Nyquist Theorem states the maximum possible encoded frequency in a digitized waveform. It says nothing about how the waveform may or may not suffer aliasing as the frequency approaches half the sample rate. I.e. a rate of 44.1khz is necessary (but may not be sufficient) to encode a 22.05khz tone. I'm not sure this was clear in your reply.

Sorry, this is simply not true. The Nyquist theorem states that you can completely reproduce a band-limited signal if you evenly sample at twice the bandwidth of the signal. If the signal is not band-limited, the content at frequencies above the half-Nyquist rate will be aliased back into the lower frequency spectrum.

A tone, by definition, is a sinusoid and has no higher harmonic content. Therefore, by your example, a 22.05kHz tone (i.e. a sinusoid) can be reproduced with no aliasing by a 44.1kHz sampling rate. However, when your signal is very near the half-Nyquist rate, the phase of the signal becomes important. In practical terms, that is why you usually slightly over-sample your band-limited signal if phase information (i.e. exact reproduction of the signal) is important. For CD audio, the goal was to accurately reproduce 20kHz signals, therefore, the slight oversampling to 44.1kHz (Note: low-pass filter responses also contributed to the need to slightly oversample).

Bottom line, the aliasing in your example comes about because you are not talking about a band-limited signal since you have a non-sinusoidal waveform with its fundamental at 22.05kHz but higher harmonic content at integer multiples of 22.05kHz.

Re:AAC encodes better than MP3

[daBass]

Mastering to DAT is done at 44.1KHz. Yes, DATs can be recorded at 44.1 and this is desirable because ecoding once at 44.1 gives a vastly superior sound than downsampling to 44.1 to fit it on a CD.

If you find iTunes store tracks at 48KHz, my bet is that it was from a master much higher than 48, like 96/24 or even higher, which is not uncommon these days. Because of the vastly higher bitrates, downsampling to 44.1 for CD is possilble without degradation but 48 could arguably even be better.

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.

For many people, they cannot tell the difference.

[karmatic]

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.

Re:Quick...

[N3koFever]

Bookmark BugMeNot or get the BugMeNot Firefox plugin. Use it. Love it.

Meh..

[kunudo]

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?

Reference not to 128 kbps

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Bad article!

[Zobeid]

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.

Re:Bad article!

[bware]

I agree with your earlier points, but:

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.

It does to me. It doesn't matter most of the time because I'm listening to the iPod over not great earphones in the gym, or on the bike, or running, or through the cassette adapter in the car (why don't car audio manufacturers put an input jack on the front panel?). But when I listen through my good headphones at work, or through Klipsch speakers at home, it definitely makes a difference. There are a lot of songs I just can't listen to because the distortion is so pronounced.

In a word, yes

[Plaeroma]

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.

Flac

[Saint Stephen]

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.

sound quality

[loid_void]

Didn't we have a similiar discussion when the world went from vinyl records to the CD disk?

Re:whoa, MP3s use... lossy compression!?

[Fuzzle]

I only pay 10 bucks for the CD's on iTMS. Not 17 bucks like in stores. The download is actually about 40% off the retail price. Now if that discount is worth sacrificing the art, quality, etc, thats your choice.

Re:Can you?

[base_chakra]

Yes, unquestionably. Actually, the poor overall quality of low-bitrate lossy encoding is what deters me from iTunes et al.

It should be noted that the defects of inferior recordings become increasingly apparent with better playback hardware. Limitations of consumer-grade hardware is a key limiting factor to the widespread adoption of higher quality audio recording formats (both physical media and encoding schemes).

the art or repeat selling

[Schlemphfer]

If there's one thing we should have learned by now from the music business, it's that they've built an industry by trotting out a new and improved product every 3-5 years, each time with the promise that if you buy it, you're done for life.

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.

Re:the art or repeat selling

[Maddog2030]

Why would you buy the same songs on CDs you already have when you can just rip them yourself with iTunes, at a higher bitrate than 128kbs? I don't think they're trying to push people to buy songs on CDs they already own. Please support your assertion.

Re:the art or repeat selling

[dasmegabyte]

I'd say it's really more an issue of quality versus bandwidth. Apple's close to 100 millions songs downloaded. If they had used 192 kbit instead of 128 kbit, it would have taken an additional 100 terrabytes of transfer and another 22 terrabytes of storage for their 700,000 song collection. Maybe not that big a deal, but it surely would have cut into their already slim margins for an almost imperceptible quality different. 128 kbit AAC is not "crappy," it doesn't cause cymbal shudder like 128k MP3 nor does it destroy the overall dynamics in complex passages. It's less like 8-tracks to CD then it is like digital casette to CD. It's not ideal...but is it worth an additional $.10? I don't think it is...especially when the marketing for their music player relies on the "128 kbit is good enough for everyone" paradigm.

Maybe if rhapsody starts really competing, they'll ramp up their bitrates. Until then, I think it's unlikely.

Apple is smart

[mst76]

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.

Allofmp3... :)

[Jugalator]

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.

I have no idea how legal the site is where I live, but it's definitely legal in Russia. :-P

MP3 != AAC

[foobybletch]

So that article is basically saying that as the iTunes files are encoded at 128 kbps, they are intrinsically worse than files encoded at 192 kpbs. However, he's comparing an AAC coded file with an MP3 encoded file!

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.

Let's not go down this path

[pedantic bore]

Let's not permit the music download stores to get into a pissing match over who's downloads are smaller/faster. They should compete on quality. Otherwise, today it's 128k, tomorrow it's 96k, and before we know it the stuff we download will sound like it's being played over a cell phone.

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.

320 mp3 is what it takes

[kazem]

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.

No! No compressed music is worth purchasing...

[DrRobert]

Let's Look at the benefits of purchasing compressed online music:

1. Immediate gratification. ... uh, that's it.

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.

oh no

[DougMackensie]

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.

Frequency Myths!

[Venner]

Human ears listen up to about 16kHz.

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):

Oohashi and his colleagues recorded gamelan to a bandwidth of 60 kHz, and played back the recording to listeners through a speaker system with an extra tweeter for the range above 26 kHz. This tweeter was driven by its own amplifier, and the 26 kHz electronic crossover before the amplifier used steep filters. The experimenters found that the listeners' EEGs and their subjective ratings of the sound quality were affected by whether this "ultra-tweeter" was on or off, even though the listeners explicitly denied that the reproduced sound was affected by the ultra-tweeter, and also denied, when presented with the ultrasonics alone, that any sound at all was being played.

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!

Re:Frequency Myths!

[Venner]

Re-read that again. Although the listeners didn't hear the extra frequencies by themselves, they basically rated the reproduced sound higher when those frequencies were included.

The conlcusions I read in another paper were that the ear isn't the only receptor of sonic energy. Did you read the article a few months back regarding how extremely low frequencies (inaudible) produced a sense of paranoia and was pointed at as a possible explanation for people experiencing paranormal phenomena? It's the same sort of deal. We can't hear those higher frequencies, but we 'sense' them, most likely through the skin or some other as-yet-unknown process.

Re:Frequency Myths!

[hankwang]

I have never seen any specs for a studio mic rated at 20 kHz. [...] you'll see it's at least 10 dB down at that frequqncy.

Expensive studio mics reproduce the full range 20-20,000 Hz and leave it to the sound engineer to filter out high frequencies if necessary. Here's a real studio mic, a Neumann U89, -4 dB at 20 kHz (see PDFs under "Documents"). Good for about $3000. Or, an order of magnitude cheaper, Audio-Technica AT853a.

I sometimes use the latter type for making live recordings of chorus performances on minidisc and apparently, the white-noise background also extends to 20 kHz. It seems that the Atrac-compression (350 kbit/sec) has a hard time with the noise because you don't need golden ears to hear the compression artifacts.

buy a vowel

[trb]

From the NYT article:

Before saving a digital song to the hard drive, software can shrink it in size by 50 percent or so just by using a shorthand notation that takes up a little less space for any repetitive patterns in the 0's and 1's.

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.

Re:Just to clarify...

[mst76]

> 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.

You can view them as complementary services. Use Rhapsody to discover new stuff, iTMS to buy what you want to keep.

Consider the source: Randall Stross

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Apple encodes from the master tapes

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Have you ever tried AAC at 128?

[bussdriver]

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.

High Tech For Non Tech

[shoemakc]

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

Records, Tapes, and MP3s, Oh My!

[An El Haqq]

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.

DIY AB Test

[ka-klick]

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.

Two inaccuracies here as well

[melted]

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.

Real FUD

[joabj]

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

That was a "column," not an "article."

[YouHaveSnail]

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.

iTunes compression issues, NYT editorial

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Apple Lossless (/. contibutor misleads again)

[YouHaveSnail]

It's not a /. contributor that really misleads, but the column (and Stross, it's author) itself.

Re:Quick...

[0111 1110]

The scary thing is that to the uninitiated you will sound like you know what you are talking about even though you haven't the slightest clue.

First you say that 320 kbps is lossless because the waveform is "pretty much the same". Then you demonstrate your extreme ignorance of the very process you try to sound knowledgeable about by implying that all 256 kbps compression does is filter frequencies above 20Khz. This is wrong. Completely wrong. Not even close to how it works.

Your assertions about what people can hear or not hear are just that: assertions. It's totally meaningless. Just because audiophiles have not bothered to produce some kind of test to your satisfaction that proves beyond any doubt whatsoever that they can hear the difference does not mean that they cannot hear the difference.

I have done so called abx testing of my own using the software from hydrogenaudio, and I was not only able to correctly distinguish which tracks were compressed, but also which tracks were encoded with which codec (although not as accurately).

I am confident that I could personally pass any legitimate test you could come up with comparing 256 kbps material with the CDs. I will admit that 320 kbps would be more difficult, but given a sufficient amount of time and high enough quality source material, I could blindly identify those as well. So much for your 320 kbps is lossless theory.

There is one codec that I am not completely confident I can identify though: MPC. At a high vbr this codec tends to sound really good, even to me. The author of that proggy really did his homework when it came to psycho-acoustic compression. I haven't done a lot of testing with it. Maybe it really is transparent. I don't know.

I am poor and I can assure you that I do not buy CDs out of the goodness of my heart or because I feel sorry for the rich record company executives and "artists". I buy CDs because I can hear a very significant (varies based on source quality and bitrate) difference.