Apple to launch 24 bit lossless downloads
Discussion
I know a number of regular posters will be interested in this:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/02/22/24.bit....
In short, Apple seem to be negotiating with record labels to supply them with not just lossless audio for downloads, but 24 bit audio.
Is this the tide turning for the technology to lend itself back to the quality of reproduction again...?
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/02/22/24.bit....
In short, Apple seem to be negotiating with record labels to supply them with not just lossless audio for downloads, but 24 bit audio.
Is this the tide turning for the technology to lend itself back to the quality of reproduction again...?
Jobbo said:
I am intrigued - while I welcome 24 bit because it will (hopefully) mean an end to overly compressed music, I can't understand why Apple are planning to miss out lossless 16-bit stuff and go straight for 24-bit. Will they be doing 24/192?
I think it is entirely to get the 'older generation' - by that I mean 25 and above who are used to buying physical media for quality to change their buying habits.I have hundreds of CDs and have downloaded a sum of 4 songs through iTunes. However, if I had the choice of spending £7 on a CD or £7 on a download of 24 bit files, I would take the latter.
I would severely doubt that they would be supplied at 192kHz. The upgrade to 24 bit would make a real difference, at a 50% (or a lot less through a lossless format) file size increase. 192kHz would increase that by a factor of 4.
Without getting too technical, there are practical reasons too, those being that it is actually debated that 192 is any better due to the errors induced by handling in recording, replaying, and crucially timing that amount of data. As such, music mastered at that rate is pretty rare.
IMHO, my money would be on 24bit 48 kHz (or 44.1) as the format going forward. That would give a genuine benefit in reproduction without the associated downsides with the larger file formats.
Jobbo said:
Considering the data rate for CDs is trivial now, increasing it by 8-9x by going for 24/192 isn't going to be terribly difficult, other than for storage as you suggest. I'm certainly not concerned about errors being introduced 
I wonder how much space a losslessly compressed 24/192 track would take up?
About 300MB a song. I wonder how much space a losslessly compressed 24/192 track would take up?
The issue with timing and errors comes into play when you want to use data streams like that. I've read a lot of agreeing papers which have well argued that increasing the sample resolution past 96k is of no practical benefit, and the stress put on the media (even if that's a HDD), hardware, cabling etc to supply data without jitter 192,000 times a second in practical terms does more damage than benefit. That is of course before you consider the recording facility needed to potentially record 32 or more simultaneous streams that size...
I certainly never record at anything higher than 96k. The benefits just don't stack up.
I'd be happy with 24/48, but 24/96 would be awesome, and would realistically mean that with well recorded music, in almost every situation the resolution of the source material will always be more than a match than the playback system it is played on.
Jobbo said:
robsa said:
the trouble is, it's not just the compression being removed; it's the way modern music is mixed - bloody awfully.
I realise my earlier post was ambiguous - it's the dynamic compression which I am hoping will be removed with 24-bit music. I assume that's introduced when it's mastered and converted to 16-bit but we'll see.Justin, 300MB per track sounds like the uncompressed PCM size; even if it compresses to about half that size per track it would still be irritatingly large, slow to download, etc so I suspect 24/192 probably isn't workable. Cheers.
You are exactly right with the compression aspect. That is not due to mixing, that is controlled mainly in mastering.
To understand why 'modern music' sounds overcompressed means looking at the way the art, and the technology and culture of consumption has related to itself over time.
Throughout all previous time the industry strived to produce the highest fidelity playback possible. Then in the 90's there became a change whereby the sale of singles became more and more important almost as a 'loss leader' to sell more profitable albums.
The industry changed so that the whole marketing focus was around the build up to a single release to get a song as high as possible in the charts in the first week. You get that right, you sell albums, you don't, then you don't. The only way of getting in the charts in the first week was to get heavy radio play in the run up to release, and catch people's attention in a very short period of time and/or a single listening.
In short, you need a song to sound 'huge' and 'jump out' over the radio - because that is what now defines the success of your artist. So you master it and make it as 'loud' as possible. You just have to. The downside is that there is no dynamic range left. And the more discerning listener, at home, on CD, loses out.
What is exciting about this announcement is not the '24 bit' aspect. It is what it means. It is the understanding that due to the way that the music industry has changed again, first week CD single sales no longer define the market - and therefore radio is less of a player.
What this means is a subtle change to get record labels to now consider the financial implications of actually recording things to be listened to again. For example, it would take relatively little extra work for say Coldplay to produce a 'radio mix' for their three singles, but master their album with full dynamic range to take advantage of a financially successful 24 bit format.
- That* is where this bit of news is interesting - the patterns of consumption actually changing the art for the good again.
TheInternet said:
The compressed nature of many modern releases is nothing to do with the technical limitations of the medium and entirely down to the manner in which the recordings are mastered. What makes you think that going to a 24bit medium would change that?
My post in full does explain that.Through history, the art, the technology of production, the culture of distribution, and the technology of consumption are all interlinked.
If you alter one, the rest changes too.
The further and further compressed masters were not a result of engineers thinking that was 'better' but simply the result of a specific way that the music industry was at the time and the financial rewards in doing so.
A huge emphasis was put on the first single from an album to hit high in the chart. That was done through radio play and getting people to go out and buy a CD single in order to get free publicity through a chart position gained through providing them as a loss leader to make money by selling their album.
An artist was made or disappeared on the basis of how 'loud' their song sounded on the radio and how many people got on the bus to HMV to buy their single in a few days.
Over the last 10 years the industry has changed totally from that in almost every way and the reasons why the trend to compress have taken a back seat. If buyers vote with their pockets and demand is created for 24 bit masters, then of course is clearly is worthwhile mastering music so that 24 bit audio is worthwhile - that would be a much less compressed way.
TheInternet said:
JustinP1 said:
My post in full does explain that.
Through history, the art, the technology of production, the culture of distribution, and the technology of consumption are all interlinked.
If you alter one, the rest changes too.
The further and further compressed masters were not a result of engineers thinking that was 'better' but simply the result of a specific way that the music industry was at the time and the financial rewards in doing so.
A huge emphasis was put on the first single from an album to hit high in the chart. That was done through radio play and getting people to go out and buy a CD single in order to get free publicity through a chart position gained through providing them as a loss leader to make money by selling their album.
An artist was made or disappeared on the basis of how 'loud' their song sounded on the radio and how many people got on the bus to HMV to buy their single in a few days.
Over the last 10 years the industry has changed totally from that in almost every way and the reasons why the trend to compress have taken a back seat. If buyers vote with their pockets and demand is created for 24 bit masters, then of course is clearly is worthwhile mastering music so that 24 bit audio is worthwhile - that would be a much less compressed way.
I pretty much agree with all that, and wasn't disagreeing before just could foresee that the quest for loudness could easily continue with any new technical standard. If the new format were seen as a premium product for the discerning listener, as vinyl has become, and was produced as such, it might just work.Through history, the art, the technology of production, the culture of distribution, and the technology of consumption are all interlinked.
If you alter one, the rest changes too.
The further and further compressed masters were not a result of engineers thinking that was 'better' but simply the result of a specific way that the music industry was at the time and the financial rewards in doing so.
A huge emphasis was put on the first single from an album to hit high in the chart. That was done through radio play and getting people to go out and buy a CD single in order to get free publicity through a chart position gained through providing them as a loss leader to make money by selling their album.
An artist was made or disappeared on the basis of how 'loud' their song sounded on the radio and how many people got on the bus to HMV to buy their single in a few days.
Over the last 10 years the industry has changed totally from that in almost every way and the reasons why the trend to compress have taken a back seat. If buyers vote with their pockets and demand is created for 24 bit masters, then of course is clearly is worthwhile mastering music so that 24 bit audio is worthwhile - that would be a much less compressed way.
If you play out the scenario where Apple are promoting the benefits of 24 bit iPods for example, the selling point of those *is* the greater dynamic range, which will be naturally demanded from the source material.
Anyone with an A/V amp can play 24/96.
Considering the exponential numbers of people now owning those, I would say that was the target.
Such a format doesn't work if only audiophiles buy it. The market is too small. DVD-Audio and SACD showed that.
However, if you can get the 'middle ground' to adopt it, then you have a winner.
Considering the exponential numbers of people now owning those, I would say that was the target.
Such a format doesn't work if only audiophiles buy it. The market is too small. DVD-Audio and SACD showed that.
However, if you can get the 'middle ground' to adopt it, then you have a winner.
Sonic said:
Dibblington said:
Thing is the ipod is capable of playing flac but the Apple walled garden prevents us from doing it. You have to hack the firmware which invalidates any warranty.
Don't know if it's a licensing issue with the codec or they just assumed nobody would understand or want to play flac and dumbed down the firmware to prevent us from playing flac files.
FLAC is open source (FLAC = Free Lossless Audio Codec), Apple wouldn't just count it out assuming nobody would understand it, more likely a calculated decision on their part.Don't know if it's a licensing issue with the codec or they just assumed nobody would understand or want to play flac and dumbed down the firmware to prevent us from playing flac files.
Maybe the step to get customers to convert to FLAC isn't worth the 30% space saving?
Certainly for me, I've never bothered using anything but WAV.
k-ink said:
Still not appealing. My computers die every two years it seems. Plus portable backup hard drives are easily stolen. So in the worst case scenario what are you going to do? Buy all your music again. Even if I have all my music on a server I still want to know I have the hard copy stored somewhere else safe.
I take it you currently have copies of all of your CDs at an alternative location at the moment, in case they get stolen?
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