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Master Engineer: Apple's "Mastered For iTunes" No Better Than AAC-Encoded Music

Posted by timothy on from the ask-the-master dept.

New submitter Stowie101 writes "British master engineer Ian Shepherd is ripping Apple's Mastered for iTunes service, saying it is pure marketing hype and isn't different than a standard AAC file in iTunes. Shepherd compared three digital music files, including a Red Hot Chili Peppers song downloaded in the Mastered for iTunes format with a CD version of the same song, and said there were no differences. Apple or someone else needs to step it up here and offer some true 'CD quality downloads.'"

17 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. Hey, the pirates can help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You want CD quality downloads? Yeah, magic keyword "FLAC".

    Piracy: giving you for free what the market won't since the first bestiality video was filmed.

    1. Re:Hey, the pirates can help by MightyYar · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Um, all "Mastered for iTunes" does is allow producers to preview how the final file will sound when placed on iTunes, so that they can make changes to the master file. Not sure what the point of the story is, and it definitely has nothing to do with CDs or FLAC.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    2. Re:Hey, the pirates can help by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Um, all "Mastered for iTunes" does is allow producers to preview how the final file will sound when placed on iTunes, so that they can make changes to the master file. Not sure what the point of the story is, and it definitely has nothing to do with CDs or FLAC.

      If you are selling it as "Mastered" for a purpose and the quality is identical than it is only "Mastered" for hype and profit.

      I've got some LP singles, which were intended for radio play, back in the day, which are of an improvement over the usually horrible 45 RPM mass productions, possibly better than mass produced LP versions as well. But consider Apple's source is unlikely in most cases to be original mastering materials (who in their right mind would turn over digital originals to Apple?) for them to manipulate for their product (iTunes). Odds are, 95% of their market can't tell anyway because they're hardly audiophiles and are listening through headphones with absurdly limited range and reproduction quality.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    3. Re:Hey, the pirates can help by 1u3hr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      but just because something has a FLAC extension does not mean it was created from a lossless source.

      The whole idea is to use an uncompressed source. If you're an asshole, you can use a crappy 96kB MP3 and blow it up into a FLAC file. Same as people upload cam videos as DVD rips. In both case, it gets noticed fairly quickly.

    4. Re:Hey, the pirates can help by smcdow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you want to put those FLAC downloads on your iOS device, keep in mind that FLAC to ALAC is easy-peasy using ffmpeg. It even preserves the tags.

      --
      In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
    5. Re:Hey, the pirates can help by vought · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But consider Apple's source is unlikely in most cases to be original mastering materials (who in their right mind would turn over digital originals to Apple?)

      Your values are not the same as those looking to make money by reselling audio content. I can assure you that various music distributors would have no problem at all working in the studio with their own or third-party engineers to produce "Mastered for iTunes" versions of a catalog if that's what they think will lure more buyers. Whether or not "Mastered for iTunes" involves a substantively changed version (for example, engineered toward smaller drivers with more bass cutover, increasingly popular these days).

      Regardless of your opinion about how something should work, this kind of collaboration is an every day occurrence in the industry and never relies on "turning over" anything to Apple.

    6. Re:Hey, the pirates can help by petermgreen · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Inherently FLACs dont have to be CD quality* but in most cases they probbablly are.

      Music is usually realeased by artists in CD quality. The MP3 and AAC files sold on digital distirbution services and distributed on pirate networks are a result of applying lossy compression to the "CD quality" files the artists release..

      I would expect the FLAC files released by any self respecting release group (whether legit or pirate) to be a lossless encoding of what the artist released.

      Of course it is possible to produce a flac file from a downsampled version of the original audio and it is also possible to produce a FLAC from a file that has already been through lossy compression and then decoded but frankly i'd expect such files to be pretty rare even on open sharing services. Those who know about and use FLAC are mostly those who care about audio quality AFAOCT.

      You can also have FLAC files in better than CD quality but only if the artist has released the music in such a form which afaict most don't.

      * That is 44.1 kHz, 16 bit no lossy compression.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    7. Re:Hey, the pirates can help by rinoid · · Score: 5, Insightful

      CD quality is not at all high audio quality ... if you ask audiophiles.

    8. Re:Hey, the pirates can help by LordLimecat · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Has anyone in this thread claimed that FLAC was magic?

    9. Re:Hey, the pirates can help by Golden_Rider · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As others point out, it's as good as the source, but only as good as the source. A FLAC file encoded from the original CD track will indeed be 100% CD quality. If you instead encode it from, say, a 96kbps MP3, then it can only be as good as the MP3 was.

      FLAC is very good. It is, however, not magic.

      Yes, but it is generally kind of expected to use CD quality (or better) source material when you use FLAC to encode. What would be the point of encoding a 96kps mp3 with FLAC - you'd end up with the same audio quality, but a larger file...

      So while "FLAC" technically does not necessarily mean "CD quality", in general everyday use, it does.

    10. Re:Hey, the pirates can help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How about Inna Gadda da Vida? :)

      (captcha: virtuous)

    11. Re:Hey, the pirates can help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The claim in the article is that there is "no difference". This claim can be validated quite easily by simply taking the two sources, with normalized amplitude, inverting the phase of one signal and then summing. What remains of the signal is the difference, or the lack thereof, between the two sources. With digital sources, anything other than a null result is considered "coloration" and we are into subjective territory. The questions then begin with "is the color within the potential threshold of human perception?" And if the answer is "yes", then you cannot rely on a single person's opinion to make a determination about the character of the coloration.

    12. Re:Hey, the pirates can help by cayenne8 · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I guess.

      It is sad when I grew up....all of my peers strove to get as good of stereo as they could.

      I find somewhere along the way...young people stopped even KNOWING about good sound reproduction.

      I have friends over that are younger, and friends kids over...they hear me fire up my stereo and I see their mouths drop open, in that none of them were even aware these days...that you could even have quality sound reproduction.

      I find that when people hear a decent stereo, they do 'care' about it...it is just we've lost a generation or two that even knows it is possible?

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  2. No difference or no discernible difference? by Kenja · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While I agree that its all bunk, I would be interested in knowing if the two files where bit for bit the same or just sound the same to the listener?

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    1. Re:No difference or no discernible difference? by phayes · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The sample size is ridiculous: One song was compared between CD/AAC/AAC (Mastered for iTunes), not even one album just one song!

      This may be just another tempest in a teacup because somebody uploaded the wrong file to AAC (M4iT) & people are making wildly erroneous extrapolations from it.

      --
      Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
  3. Loudness War Makes It All Irrelevant by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This "mastered for itunes" stuff is pointless crap as long as we are still fighting the Loudness War.

    The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a particularly bad test case because all of their albums have massive loudness-compression. And the same guy responsible for that travesty has started to do the mastering on recent Metallica albums so their stuff is going to be all suck too.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  4. Optimized for iTunes by Pf0tzenpfritz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Mastered for iTunes" is indeed optimized for iTunes: it's optimized for separating the gullible from their money.

    --
    Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!