Apple introduces higher resolution audio encoding process - Mastered for iTunes

[haraldo]

For me this is shocking /or interesting, trying to figure out what to decide for....

EE Daily News: Apple introduces higher resolution audio enocoding process - Mastered for iTunes

http://images.apple.com/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/docs/mastered_for_itunes.pdf

Is it a way of making Apple trying to force consumers away from open standards and into something proprietary that will benefit their own product sales?

Is it a way of making it easier to control consumers? (read better DRM)

There is no lack of standards that will work on any player, if H/W and S/W vendor wants to support... for instance FLAC, trouble for music industry is that FLAC does not support DRM and so the industry cannot control the end user usage pattern...

So FLAC supports as far as I can see everything that this new Apple standard does except for DRM, so is the combination of DRM and high resolution lossless what they're targeting?

• FLAC supports from 1 to 8 channels per stream. Channels are only grouped in FLAC to take advantage of interchannel correlation and to define common channel assignments (like stereo L/R, 5.1 surround, et cetera). When encoding a large number of independent channels it is expected that they are coded separately and if required, multiplexed together in a suitable container like Ogg or Matroska.
• FLAC supports linear PCM samples with a resolution between 4 and 32 bits per sample. FLAC does not support floating point samples. In some cases it is possible to losslessly transform samples from an incompatible range to a FLAC-compatible range before encoding.
• FLAC supports linear sample rates from 1Hz - 655350Hz in 1Hz increments.

When all this is said and in between all my criticism Apple deserves credit in the effort of their focus on lossless compression and trying to actually improve sound quality in some of their devices by offering better solutions than crappy-crappy mp3

 

[3db]

For me this is shocking /or interesting, trying to figure out what to decide for....

EE Daily News: Apple introduces higher resolution audio enocoding process - Mastered for iTunes

http://images.apple.com/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/docs/mastered_for_itunes.pdf

Is it a way of making Apple trying to force consumers away from open standards and into something proprietary that will benefit their own product sales?

Is it a way of making it easier to control consumers? (read better DRM)

There is no lack of standards that will work on any player, if H/W and S/W vendor wants to support... for instance FLAC, trouble for music industry is that FLAC does not support DRM and so the industry cannot control the end user usage pattern...

So FLAC supports as far as I can see everything that this new Apple standard does except for DRM, so is the combination of DRM and high resolution lossless what they're targeting?

• FLAC supports from 1 to 8 channels per stream. Channels are only grouped in FLAC to take advantage of interchannel correlation and to define common channel assignments (like stereo L/R, 5.1 surround, et cetera). When encoding a large number of independent channels it is expected that they are coded separately and if required, multiplexed together in a suitable container like Ogg or Matroska.
• FLAC supports linear PCM samples with a resolution between 4 and 32 bits per sample. FLAC does not support floating point samples. In some cases it is possible to losslessly transform samples from an incompatible range to a FLAC-compatible range before encoding.
• FLAC supports linear sample rates from 1Hz - 655350Hz in 1Hz increments.

When all this is said and in between all my criticism Apple deserves credit in the effort of their focus on lossless compression and trying to actually improve sound quality in some of their devices by offering better solutions than crappy-crappy mp3

Only if you buy into Apple which thank god I didn't.

 

[Lordhumungus]

The most interesting thing to me is that "Mastered for iTunes" still uses AAC, which is a lossy format. I guess they are trying to get the best possible sound out of it, but I am really hoping that we can start moving on to lossless formats as the rule and not the exception.

On a side note, I'd sell a kidney for a decent portable player that supported FLAC and had large (160GB+) storage. I tried the Cowon X7, but it was absolute garbage and bricked itself after about 3 months.

 

[haraldo]

On a side note, I'd sell a kidney for a decent portable player that supported FLAC and had large (160GB+) storage. I tried the Cowon X7, but it was absolute garbage and bricked itself after about 3 months.

I really agree to this, really painful to stick to MP3 on the portable player......

 

[DS-21]

For me this is shocking /or interesting, trying to figure out what to decide for....

Meh. Not too interested in higher bit count. Give me more discrete channels instead.

There is no lack of standards that will work on any player, if H/W and S/W vendor wants to support... for instance FLAC, trouble for music industry is that FLAC does not support DRM and so the industry cannot control the end user usage pattern...

Apple Lossless is DRM free, too...

On a side note, I'd sell a kidney for a decent portable player that supported FLAC and had large (160GB+) storage. I tried the Cowon X7, but it was absolute garbage and bricked itself after about 3 months.

iPod Classic taken to a hacker?

 

[Lordhumungus]

What I really want is the sound quality. battery life, and file compatibility of the Cowon X7, in a form factor more similar to an iPod touch (I'd settle for classic). The resistive touch screen on the Cowon was infuriatingly awful as was the UI. The SQ and battery life was almost enough to make me deal with it, then it bricked itself because I didn't charge it for a few weeks.

 

[bikemig]

There is a reason why the ipod sells so well. It works without a hitch and holds up really well over time. It doesn't do flac but I burn all my music to my player as 320 kbps MP3 files. I travel with mine all the time and the sound is great through my audio technica ath m50 headphones.

 

[3db]

There is a reason why the ipod sells so well. It works without a hitch and holds up really well over time. It doesn't do flac but I burn all my music to my player as 320 kbps MP3 files. I travel with mine all the time and the sound is great through my audio technica ath m50 headphones.

Gee, my lowly old Sansa is going on 4 years now and works without a hitch. I've had to replace my daughter's ipods everytime they bought into the next generation.

Don't mind me... I just loathe apple from the days back when they controlled the music library to the point where one coulnd't even burn a CD to put into the car. I don't trust them.

 

[haraldo]

There is a reason why the ipod sells so well. It works without a hitch and holds up really well over time. It doesn't do flac but I burn all my music to my player as 320 kbps MP3 files. I travel with mine all the time and the sound is great through my audio technica ath m50 headphones.

mp3 is crap, no matter what you do, even in highest possible resolution

Apple's license policies is like legislation in North Korea.....

 

[its phillip]

Rockbox firmware on an old ipod classic will support flac. Eats up battery though. Too bad you had bad luck with your Cowon...I've always liked their players

 

[3db]

mp3 is crap, no matter what you do, even in highest possible resolution

Apple's license policies is like legislation in North Korea.....

I agree with you on Apple's license policy but disagree with you about mp3. At 320Mbs, you would not be able to tell the difference between it and a CD sighted or non sighted.

 

[bikemig]

mp3 is crap, no matter what you do, even in highest possible resolution

Apple's license policies is like legislation in North Korea.....

I'm not sure what Apple license policies have to do with mp3 files. In any case, mp3 is not crap and I'll bet you'd have real difficulty in telling the difference between a 320 kbps file and one ripped in a lossless format. Heck it would almost be worth going to the wilds of Norway to test that out. I'll bring the aquavit. That will really help us test the sound quality of the files,

 

[haraldo]

I agree with you on Apple's license policy but disagree with you about mp3. At 320Mbs, you would not be able to tell the difference between it and a CD sighted or non sighted.

You must be joking... or are you practicing for 1st April

I could hear difference between flac ripped by winamp and flac ripped by eac unsighted.... and would be able to repeat that
Perhaps the combo of Benchmark DAC1, Krell kav 400xi and Duntech speakers is extra revealing, but these differences are clearly audible.....

If you can't hear the difference you need better equipment

 

[3db]

You must be joking... or are you practicing for 1st April

I could hear difference between flac ripped by winamp and flac ripped by eac unsighted.... and would be able to repeat that
Perhaps the combo of Benchmark DAC1, Krell kav 400xi and Duntech speakers is extra revealing, but these differences are clearly audible.....

If you can't hear the difference you need better equipment

You are out of the norm than. Nothing wrong with my equipment so all my friends tell me.

 

[haraldo]

You are out of the norm than. Nothing wrong with my equipment so all my friends tell me.

I think mostly any/everyone can hear this difference

 

[Lordhumungus]

You must be joking... or are you practicing for 1st April

I could hear difference between flac ripped by winamp and flac ripped by eac unsighted.... and would be able to repeat that
Perhaps the combo of Benchmark DAC1, Krell kav 400xi and Duntech speakers is extra revealing, but these differences are clearly audible.....

If you can't hear the difference you need better equipment

In theory, using the same playback chain (i.e. same software player, PC, speakers etc.) that's not possible. FLAC is designed to be bit-for-bit identical to whatever WAV file it came from and you should be able to convert back and forth between the two formats infinitely and see no actual change in the data that is output. If this is not true for you, I would think there might be something wrong with something in the chain, be it the encoder, the player etc.

Some arguments can be made that the CPU overhead required to decompress FLAC might introduce some jitter to the equation, but most tests that I've seen peg this number at less than .2% of a modern CPU, while this number is actually often higher for WAV. Other than that, you might be able to make an argument for bit rot on magnetic storage, but that's about it.

All-in-all I'd be incredibly surprised if you could tell a difference between FLAC and WAV with consistency/reliability under blind listening conditions. and I would be absolutely mind blown if you could tell a difference between two FLAC files encoded with a different encoder.

I must admit that all the conversation on this board about hearing differences does make me wonder just how damaged my hearing is

 

[haraldo]

In theory, using the same playback chain (i.e. same software player, PC, speakers etc.) that's not possible. FLAC is designed to be bit-for-bit identical to whatever WAV file it came from and you should be able to convert back and forth between the two formats infinitely and see no actual change in the data that is output. If this is not true for you, I would think there might be something wrong with something in the chain, be it the encoder, the player etc.

Some arguments can be made that the CPU overhead required to decompress FLAC might introduce some jitter to the equation, but most tests that I've seen peg this number at less than .2% of a modern CPU, while this number is actually often higher for WAV. Other than that, you might be able to make an argument for bit rot on magnetic storage, but that's about it.

All-in-all I'd be incredibly surprised if you could tell a difference between FLAC and WAV with consistency/reliability under blind listening conditions. and I would be absolutely mind blown if you could tell a difference between two FLAC files encoded with a different encoder.

I must admit that all the conversation on this board about hearing differences does make me wonder just how damaged my hearing is

I agree with you in theory..... it's how it should work

And, You can bring in all the theory you want, but there is a difference.... which means that winamp does not rip bitperfect copies and there is a very very strange distortion, perhaps there was something wrong with the cd player on the PC that I used, perhaps something else, but clear audible differences....

It was said once that sound from CD would bet perfect, but some of the first CD players sounded horrible, but we believed the rubbish that Philips and Sony told us, a Brick wall filter at 21KHz makes incredible harm and phase distortions even into the midrange.... so we need to listen too......

 

[Lordhumungus]

Rockbox firmware on an old ipod classic will support flac. Eats up battery though. Too bad you had bad luck with your Cowon...I've always liked their players

No one was more disappointed than me that I didn't like the Cowon. I would easily pay $500-$600 dollars or more for a player that met all of my requirements, but for some reason there is a huge gaping hole in the market that no one seems willing or able to fill. It's like the old "pick any two" adage with speakers, but instead there is a pool of 6 things of which to pick about 3: UI, battery life, file support, storage capacity, form factor, sound quality. Despite Rockbox seeming like a cool idea, it's been around for years and hasn't really made enough progress to impress me into making it my daily driver.

Most likely I'm going to just throw in the towel and get an iPod Classic later this year after the inevitable iPod refresh and the inevitable disappointment of still not having a Touch that is 128GB+. I really, really hate iTunes, but it's currently the best solution (sadly) for what I am trying to do. I'm still rocking a Creative Zen Xtra that I replaced the HDD in, but it's getting extremely long in the tooth. Still murders the iPod from a SQ perspective though.

 

[Alex2507]

I've had my eye on this review for a while but don't know sh!t about these players. I was just wondering how it stacked up against it's competition.

All this talk of iTunes and SQ has me wondering about Apple Lossless. I just recently learned how to play with iTunes enough to rip and burn music with that. Mostly everything I know about it is that Jeff the former mod absolutely loves it and that's basically good enough for me. Now I'm wondering if I am somehow degrade the SQ by doing that.

 

[3db]

I agree with you in theory..... it's how it should work

It was said once that sound from CD would bet perfect, but some of the first CD players sounded horrible, but we believed the rubbish that Philips and Sony told us, a Brick wall filter at 21KHz makes incredible harm and phase distortions even into the midrange.... so we need to listen too......

to another tangeable medium like ...ohhh I dunno........ VINYL