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Master Engineer: Apple's "Mastered For iTunes" No Better Than AAC-Encoded Music
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.'"
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.
Summary is incorrect. Article says that there was a significant difference between the Mastered for iTunes and CD version, while there was no difference between Mastered for iTunes and a standard AAC track.
Here is the actual relevant part of the article:
From the /. summary:
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.
That'd be a good thing if there were no differences between the CD version and the audio versions. However, what the article actually says is
After his comparison of the three digital music files, Shepherd says there was a sonic difference between the Mastered for iTunes waveform and the CD waveform. He says the Mastered for iTunes and AAC-encoded files didn't reveal any differences, adding that this proves to him Apple's Mastered for iTunes isn't any different than a standard AAC file from Apple's iTunes store.
In other words, the Mastered for iTunes version is basically identical to the standard AAC version, and both are different from the CD version.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Those wonderful color screens people could put on their TV's to impreove the picture -- you can't get more out of something than you put into it. If the lossy music process has lost data you can't put it back (but you can always convince the gullible that you can!)
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The problem with computing the digital difference between two files is that sound, and especially music, is an inherently analog experience. All the digital douchery in the world won't change the fact that your ears are not made of robot.
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.
The summary link just goes to a (slow loading) blog post, the actual article being discussed is at:
http://productionadvice.co.uk/mastered-for-itunes-cd-comparison/
And more specifically, the 11 minute youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGlQs9xM_zI
I know many friends who have used higher compression on their FLAC files and, with my gear, I can clearly hear the artifacts. I realize most people won't but I've got mostly high end stuff, and I always burn in both my audio and network cables before using them and mark them with directional arrows (only with pvc-free tape and audio-grade markers) so that the don't get installed backwards after they've been burned in.
I'm amazed at how many people can't seem to grasp the fine points of lossless compression for audio work. I find most non-audiophiles expect that lossless means that what you put in exactly matches what you put out. I can tell you first hand, though, that when you spend as much money on gear as I have, you recognize that perfection comes from not just the bits, but the purity in which the bits are delivered. They may be the same ones and zeros, but a discerning ear can always tell the difference in the various lossless formats when listening to the color and soundstage of the reproduced performance.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
That's exactly how one is supposed to determine if a signal is identical (flip the phase on one and add them).
This is coming from an amateur producer/mixer and a radio guy... for what it's worth.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
CD quality is probably good enough for the final mix. You should always use 24-bit during tracking, of course, and if you plan on doing any vocoder work (Auto-Tune, Melodyne, etc.), you should generally track at a higher sample rate as well.
Even if you don't plan on doing pitch correction, it would be nice to have a bit higher sampling rate (say 60 kHz) to ensure that the upper limit of human hearing is completely below the point at which the bandpass filter starts rolling off. Software bandpass limiting during sample rate conversion can generally achieve a much tighter filter with less distortion than analog hardware on the input to an ADC.
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Not in a meaningful way. You'd need a bit rate a few orders of magnitude above 2e43 bps (based on the Planck time) to fully represent a real world signal. We call that "analog". Only after compressing that from 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 kpbs down to 1000 kbps do we call it "digital". If you call them both digital, then the term loses all meaning.
Of course, our brains can't pick up the difference between the two, but that's not because "the universe is digital". It's because by the time you get to the trillionth decimal point, the noise has long since swamped out the signal.
Apple's "Mastered for iTunes" is a set of guidelines about how to turn a master recording into an iTunes-optimized digital file. The author of TFA, however, is talking about taking a CD track and making a compressed version that's as close as possible to the CD track. A CD track is NOT a master file. (We don't want a track that's merely a CD representation - we've heard plenty on
So of course if you make an iTunes track from a CD track via the "Mastered for iTunes" process, you'll get a 256 kbps VBR AAC that's identical to ripping a CD track to a 256 kbps VBR AAC. However, if you follow Apple's recommendations, quoted here:
To take best advantage of our latest encoders send us the highest resolution master file possible, appropriate to the medium and the project.
An ideal master will have 24-bit 96kHz resolution. These files contain more detail from which our encoders can create more accurate encodes. However, any resolution above 16-bit 44.1kHz, including sample rates of 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, and 192kHz, will benefit from our encoding process.
you'll probably get something different, perhaps better, than a CD track ripped to AAC.
Apple is providing the tools they use to convert to AAC so that sound engineers can preview the product before it goes on sale, but they appear to be the same tools they've been using all along. As I said before, "Mastered for iTunes" isn't a new encoding tool - it's a process workflow. Other recommendations:
- Apple recommends listening to your masters on the devices your audience will be using
- Be Aware of Dynamic Range and Clipping
- Master for Sound Check and Other Volume Controlling Technology
- Remaster for iTunes [That is, they suggest starting over from the original recordings, rather than send in a file that was mastered with CDs in mind.]
Total bullshit.
"Digital douchery" (otherwise known as "analysis") is accurate, where as your ears are imperfect perceptions interpreted by your imperfect brain. If you want to deliver useful information to people, you do it digitally and present the results.
So take your hipster nonsense and piss off. Any real audiophile would care about what's accurate and useful.
On of my favourite experiments one of the high-end HiFi magazines did a very long time ago, when CD was new, was to let a group of 'golden ears' audiophiles double blind test CD vs LP. And most of them could reliably distinguish between and prefer LP sound over CD in double blind test (which is good, a lot of people who are hellbent sure they know a difference will fail double blind testing). So far so good. Then they tested with CD-Rs recorded with LP as source.. Now they could no longer tell the difference, and thought the CD-Rs sounded just as good as LP. All that "warm, rich, musical, analogue" sound carried over to the CD-Rs, as they are distortion characteristics of LP playback. It is ok to prefer the sound, but it has nothing to do with CD vs LP or analogue vs digital (and digital is fully capable of reproducing it too if you want).