Speculation On a Lossless iTunes Store

DrJenny writes "C|net UK has up an interesting blog post predicting that within 12 months Apple's iTunes Store will include a download center for lossless audio. This would be a massively positive move for people who spend thousands of dollars on hi-fi gear, but refuse to give money to stores that only offer compressed music — they could finally take advantage of legal digital downloads. The article goes into details on how Apple's home-grown ALAC lossless encoding relates to FLAC, DRM, and the iPod ecosystem."

they make money on the razors

[User 956]

Speculation On a Lossless iTunes Store

Lossless? I thought the iTunes store was a loss leader?

Re:

[davidsyes]

Then there will be "gainful silence"???

I'm sure I'll be modulated for saying this, but

[User 956]

As much as it hertz, their loss results in your gain.

Re:they make money on the razors

[flyingsquid]

Lossless? I thought the iTunes store was a loss leader?

No clue. I refused to read the linked article, because I'm a graphics snob, and they used JPEG graphics instead of lossless TIF files.

"Lossless"? Such BS

[timster]

Forget "lossless" when you've already lost so much of the original wave by mixing it down to 16-bit 44khz stereo in the first place. I'd rather have something that started out with a higher sampling rate/etc, but with good lossy compression to pull it down to something that doesn't require DVD-type storage for a single album.

Re:

[croddy]

My kingdom for a mod point.

Re:"Lossless"? Such BS

[Hatta]

Sorry, Nyquist's theorem states that you can accurately represent frequencies up to 1/2 the sampling rate. Assuming you are a human and not a dog [lib.unb.ca], you can not hear frequencies above 22khz. As for 16 bit, nobody uses all that dynamic range anyway. So 16bit/44.1khz is entirely good enough for listening.

Now 24/96 has its uses if you're mastering something, so that any errors introduced in the mixing process are below the quantization error in the final 16/44.1 product.

Re:

[Applekid]

Said much better than I could have hoped to. I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:

[Trailer Trash]

Sorry, Nyquist's theorem states that you can accurately represent frequencies up to 1/2 the sampling rate.

Really? I have a square wave, a sine wave, and a sawtooth wave, all at 22KHz. Now, you tell me how they'll be quantized such that all are accurately represented.

Either Nyquist is wrong, or you're misrepresenting his "theorem".

Re:

[evanbd]

Your 22kHz square and sawtooth waves have higher frequency harmonic content. If you don't believe me, go work the fourier transform -- it's not actually that hard if you replace the sawtooth wave with a triangle wave. Regardless, what that means is if you took your 22kHz waves, and ideally low-pass filtered them at frequency f, 22kHz

If you don't believe me, you can (sortof) do the experiment yourself. Generate the waves at 1kHz and at 10kHz and play them back. With the 10kHz waves, they'll sound diff

Re:

[Hatta]

Easy, a square wave(or any wave) can be represented (through fourier transforms) as a sum of sine waves of increasing frequency. If you have a 22khz square wave, what you really have is a 22khz sine wave, and a bunch of sine waves with frequencies greater than 22khz. Those higher harmonics cannot be accurately represented with a 44.1 khz sampling rate, but since you can't hear anything above 22khz anyway it doesn't matter.

Re:

[Trailer Trash]

Those higher harmonics cannot be accurately represented

Now, go read the grandparent and find out that you're actually supporting my argument...

Re:

[Grishnakh]

You might as well give it up. You're arguing with trailer trash, after all... You can't actually expect someone like that to have an education.

Re:

[marcello_dl]

> Those higher harmonics cannot be accurately represented with a 44.1 khz sampling rate, but since you can't hear anything above 22khz anyway it doesn't matter.

"The ear can't pick fundamental sounds at more than around 20 khz" != "the ear does a fourier transform and discard all harmonics above 22khz." The signal processing that a ear does to localize and identify sounds is a little more sophisticated.

I didn't do a double blind test, but even a seemingly small difference between a DAT recording at 44.1 a

Re:

[evanbd]

You're missing 2 things. First, to get response to 22kHz or more, you need 44kHz or more sample rates -- remember, you can only represent frequencies out to half the sample rate. Second, there are lots of potential artifacts introduced by sampling. This includes aliasing artifacts both in the original sampling, and in any later sample rate conversions. Aliasing artifacts in the original sampling are (ideally) removed by an analog filter before the ADC; that filter may very well not actually be adjustabl

Re:

[rasputin465]

I think you're the only poster who's got it right in the specifics. The OP didn't exactly state Nyquist's theorem correctly [wikipedia.org]... it is, if there is a BAND-LIMITED signal, I can exactly reproduce it by sampling at >= twice the band-limiting frequency.

Band limiting the signal ("anti-aliasing"... or your "analog filter before the ADC") is the key, because without this, there will be artifacts like you describe. And those ARE audible to our ears below 22 kHz.

Re:

[jabuzz]

Except you are presuming that the human ear perceives a 20kHz sine wave, and a 20kHz sine wave plus a whole series of harmonics identically.

The problem with that notion is that the standard test for hearing perception is to play pure sine waves of varying frequencies and ask the listener if they can hear them. However over the millions of years of human evolution, it was not until the invention of the tuning fork in 1711 that any human ear had heared a pure sine wave. Up until that point it had evolved to d

Re:"Lossless"? Such BS

[ChrisA90278]

Nyquist's theorem states that you can accurately represent frequencies up to 1/2 the sampling rate. That is 100% true. But in the real world, if you are sampling a digital recorder at 44Khz how do you ensure that NOTHING above 22Khz gets to the analog to digital converter? You need a strong analog filter but there are no filters that have an exactly square cut off Maybe let's say you have a 24db per octave filter. This mens you will have only attenuated the higher frequencies, not eliminated them. Same on playback. You need a theoretically perfect analog filter to playback. Such analog filers do not exist. The way they get around all this is to sample at 96 or 128Khz. If you do this then real-world analog filters can be used.

Re:

[Grishnakh]

Personally, I'm beginning to wonder if the real reason for dynamic range compression is so that customers aren't surprised by how crappy some manufactured idol bands and singers sound in person without heavy studio voice processing.

What are you talking about? These manufactured idol bands sound exactly the same in person as they do with studio processing. After all, in their concerts, they're just lip-syncing to their recorded music.

Re:

[rtechie]

You do know that most studios record on 16bit 48khz equipment, right? That 4khz doesn't make much of a difference. In fact, most studio masters are slap-dash affairs. Bad mikes, bad recording equipment, inadequate space, etc. All that crap puts all but the very best masters far below what CD Audio is capable of. In this real-world context, there is no point at all to formats like SACD and DVD-Audio. What people actually WANT is pretty clear. People want CDs with a 5.1 Dolby Digital mix, or an equivalent sur

24/96?

[corsec67]

What about 24bits/sample, 96K samples/second?
That is also a very popular standard for audio, and is better than CD quality, by quite a bit.

What would be nice is a losslessly compresses 24/96 5.1/7.1 channel audio format to be their choice.

Re:24/96?

[Applekid]

24 bits per sample, cool. With you all the way.

But, 96 KHz sampling? You do know the Nyquist theorem [wikipedia.org], don't you? You are aware that top human frequency tops off around 20 KHz, right? That 48 KHz, even with 24-bit precision, should take care of all sounds possible for the human to hear?

I've had audiophiles* just snub their noses at mathematical proof and regrettably inform me that I do not have "the golden ear." I wonder if there have ever been any research on whether self proclaimed audiophiles REALLY have magical hearing.

(* You didn't say you were, don't take it personally. When I see super-high sampling rates bandied about I get a little red.)

Re:24/96?

[Anonymous Coward]

That 48 KHz, even with 24-bit precision, should take care of all sounds possible for the human to hear?

Human being the key thing here. What makes you think that parent is human?
On the internet nobody knows you're a dog...

Re:

[Hes Nikke]

i've gotten it the other way around... I've been told that i have 'the golden ear' when i told someone that they left there CRT tv on. i can hear the picture tube wine when it is displaying all black and no sound. maybe i do have an audiophiles ears, but i am certainly not a snob about it (those apple ear buds sure suck!)

i have trained eyes too. i see all sorts of compression artifacts on digital TVs that nobody else notices. i wish i could turn that ability off! or just bring back the analauge signal!

Re:

[krog]

You're hearing the horizontal scan [wikipedia.org], which is usually around 15kHz -- quite high, within an octave of our upper limit.

Re:

[Grishnakh]

I can hear that too, as can most younger people who haven't ruined their hearing yet. I'm 33 now and I can still hear it, but high-frequency hearing is supposed to diminish with age so eventually I suppose I won't be able to hear it any more.

However, audiophiles are loons. I can hear CRTs, but I can't tell the difference between 320k MP3s and CDs, and other such comparisons. Heck, I can't even tell the difference between 320k MP3s and 192k MP3s.

But audiophiles are loons for more than just that; they actu

let's take a tour of the Nyquist sampling theorem

[krog]

Nyquist's theorem states that a wave of frequency f must be sampled at the rate of at least 2f in order for information not to be lost. So, yes, a 44.1kHz sampling rate can accurately reproduce signals up to 22kHz without loss of information, and since that's all we can hear, we should be fine. Right?

Well, not entirely. You see, if the source material contains frequencies above 22.05kHz, they will end up "aliased" onto another part of the frequency spectrum. In short, the extra high-end becomes noise. Information is lost.

Here is the important part, in practical terms. In order to prevent aliasing, the source material must be low-passed to remove the unrepresentable high frequencies. Low-pass filters are not perfect; in order to toss out the frequencies we don't want, we end up attenuating some of the frequencies we do want. Thus it is not uncommon for high-frequency rolloff to begin in the mid-teens of kilohertz, even though we're aiming for 22kHz as the corner frequency.

This causes a real, human-audible difference in the finished product, and it is practically impossible to avoid.

Now, with a 96kHz sample rate, we aim to squash all frequencies above 48kHz, and our non-ideal low-pass filter starts to work in the 30kHz range. The imperfections in the low-pass filter are only apparent at frequencies humans can't hear. The finished audio ends up sounding like the source material, with no human-detectable loss in fidelity.

This is why 96kHz is a good idea.

Re:let's take a tour of the Nyquist sampling theor

[evanbd]

Very well put. It's one of the things that makes the delta-sigma modulation at very high sample rates used in eg SACD interesting. Of course, it would help if the data stream were easier to work with, which is why I think 24/96 or even 24/192 is superior overall.

The problem gets even more obnoxious if you care about the flatness and phase response of your filter. The one time I've done data acquisition work that cared about such things at 20kHz, we ended up using a 250kHz sample rate in order to give t

Re:let's take a tour of the Nyquist sampling theor

[Goalie_Ca]

Does the source material contain those high frequencies? And secondly.. we can sample it at 98KHz and using the magic of DSP we can make a damned near ideal low-pass if we really needed one.

For a studio

[pavon]

That is a good argument for why a studio should sample at a rate that accommodates the roll-off in their analog low-pass filters. However, once that is done you can use a can use a digital lo-pass filter / downsampler which can easily be designed to have very sharp cut-off rates. There is no reason at all for a consumer format to be more than 48kHz.

Re:

[dgatwood]

Exactly. I always record at 96 khz (though I'd rather use 60 kHz if equipment supported something in that range) and downsample to 44.1 after processing.

There's another reason to use a higher sampling rate in studios: IIRC, plug-ins that do heavy duty DSP stuff like pitch correction tend to produce less artifacting at higher sampling rates because they have more intermediate points to work with. I don't remember the details, but I think it makes pitch detection more precise as well.

Re:

[pavon]

Like bentcd said, that is a completely adequate waveform. If you output that using a perfect zero-order hold and a perfect anti-imaging filter, you will get a perfect 24kHz sine wave. Of course, you can't build a perfect hardware, and having more points than the Nyquist limit will relax the requirements on your D/A circuit. However, if you filtered and sampled the data correctly to begin with (ie no aliasing occurred), then upsampling will give you a waveform that is identical to what you would get by overs

Re:let's take a tour of the Nyquist sampling theor

[dokebi]

Most professional recording equipment now days records and mixes at 24bits, with final CD master downsampled to 16 bits. When used with proper dithering, the delivered 16bit, 44.1KHz CD will sound just as good as the master recording just before downsampling. You *do* know about dithering, right?

Re:let's take a tour of the Nyquist sampling theor

[Nazlfrag]

You seem to have a good grasp, I was also under the impression that harmonics outside our audible range can still interfere with lower frequencies to produce a subtle but noticeable difference. Is there a grain of truth to this or is it just audiophile wishful thinking?

Re:

[iluvcapra]

I wish I could find the link, but there's reasonable evidence from blind listening tests that people, though they would not necessarily report any quality difference, were able to report things about the recording like "I can tell the cello is sitting in front of the viola" and other things that are very subtle and spatial. This of course depends on headphones and careful binaural recording, so on most end products it wouldn't make much of a difference.

In my line of work, most sound designers are recordin

Re:

[jfengel]

I'm certainly not going to defend the audiophiles and their gold foil aftermarket eardrums, but there are reasons to get the music in higher-than-audible resolutions. If you're going to do any further processing on it (converting to MP3, remove the vocals for karaoke, add your own effects in a mix) those non-audible data bits will have an effect on the result that might well be audible.

Re:

[Sponge Bath]

96 KHz sampling?

Yes, it's overkill for what you hear. But my understanding is the higher sampling rate helps the final product when processing the audio further. So maybe when a DSP in a receiver adds some effects it will sound subtly better?

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Grishnakh]

I still don't see the point of this. Humans can only hear 20kHz sounds. So if blowing some dog whistles while other sounds are being made produces some audible noises, a microphone recording this performance will record this resultant noise, no? Then, when played back, the noises will be heard, even if the dog whistles are not.

Am I missing something?

Of course, this isn't exactly the same as recording the dog whistle itself, because there may be some directionality component caused by the interference, a

Re:

[ChrisA90278]

But, 96 KHz sampling? You do know the Nyquist theorem What happens if you digitize and open mic at 44Khz. All the sound below 22Khz gets recored just fine but what hapens to the sounds in the room that are at 33Khz?. They are there, no one but the dog can hear them but they are there and the mic picks them up not well but it picks up 33Khz. If this high frequency sound is able to make it's way to the digital converyer it will alias to an 11Khz signal and fall right into the band of human hearing. This

Re:24/96?

[Brett Buck]

There is an advantage to higher sampling rates, but it has nothing to do with the frequency content of the recorded material or Nyquist's theory . If you sample at 44.1 khz (CD standard) you get 44.1 khz noise in the output. That has to be filtered out somehow, without affecting the in-band audio signal. Rolling off many DB in a short frequency span (factor of ~2) takes quite a filter, which depending on how it's done, introduces phase shifts of the in-band signal. The sound quality from CD players it largely determined by how, and how well, the D-A conversion (which has a frequency response all it's own determined by the guts of the converter)and analog filtering are done.

      Sampling at higher frequencies makes it easier to build a good output filter. That's a very secondary or tertiary level effect, so it doesn't really make much difference, but it theoretically could.

      Note that this is assuming the standard PCM encoding. "Single Bit"/streaming encoding (like SACD runs at fantastically higher sample frequencies, but the frequencies aren't really comparable (and it's not a good way to go because you introduce other issues (like tons of quantization noise).

        The only identified issue with the standard red-book CD format is the dynamic range, but there are so few sources that need more than 16 bits and certainly very few playback systems/environments that will let you take advantage of it, it's essentially a non-issue. HDCD (which is a 20-bit PCM format) addresses this but hasn't and probably won't become common.

    Bottom line - the guys who came up with the audio CD sampling format pretty well knew what they were doing and there aren't any practical limitations in the recording format. Everything else in the system (from microphone to engineering to speaker) is the limiting factor.

        Brett

Re:24/96?

[Divebus]

I know two audiophiles - professional audio mixers, to be exact, who absolutely have golden ears. They listened to a CD of an album master and frowned like something was wrong. The "image" wasn't right; "smeared" somehow. Turned out they could hear the difference between a master CD and a copy of the CD. The difference? Clock jitter. Yes, they could hear the effects of clock jitter. Both of these guys are legally blind which apparently sharpens other senses.

Re:

[Grishnakh]

No, it comes out as a sinewave, just as it went in. A triangle wave at 22.05 kHz is composed of sine waves at 22.05 kHz and then many higher harmonic frequencies. Only the fundamental will be reproduced of course.

Go read about Nyquist's Theorem before spouting falsehoods.

Re:24/96?

[Reverberant]

What about 24bits/sample, 96K samples/second?

Enough with the 24/96 wet dreams. Yes, 24/96 does offer real advantages for mixing houses in terms of being able to normalize levels generated by different sources and reducing the complexity of filters. But 16/44.4 is perfectly fine for home audio playback.

What does >16 bits get you? More dynamic range. BFD. 16 bits gets you (realistically) 90+ dB of dynamic range. Unless your listening room has a background noise level of 20 dB or less (trust me, it doesn't), you're not even enjoying the true benefit of the 16-bits you have now.

What does > 44.1kHz sampling give you? Wider frequency response. BFD. Let's assume that most people have good hearing beyond 20 kHz (very few do). Let's assume that most music/movie content has lots of information above 20 kHz (some do, most don't). Let's assume that your speakers can reproduce signals above 20 kHz (some can, most can't). There is still the issue of how you get that > 20kHz info on your recording on the first place. You see, most microphones don't record signals out that high, and of those that do, they only do so over a very narrow angle. When we have tech that can produce mics that are omni-directional above 20 kHz for reasonable costs then maybe you'll have an argument.

Let's deal with the loudness wars before we start worrying about 24/96.

sampling frequency and signal frequency !mix-up

[Animaether]

I'm completely with you on the "nobody but the freakier people are going to notice", and they'll probably have gold-plated, gold-cable, etc. SACD players. Or, if they're really serious, they do away with the gold plating and have a goldsmith permanently goldsolder the wires right onto the board.

That said... the sampling frequency shouldn't be mixed with the signal frequency in the way you mention; e.g. 44.1KHz, divide by 2 (yay Nyquist), ~22KHz is the maximum frequency you can sample. ergo: 96KHz allows y

Re:

[Grishnakh]

That said... the sampling frequency shouldn't be mixed with the signal frequency in the way you mention; e.g. 44.1KHz, divide by 2 (yay Nyquist), ~22KHz is the maximum frequency you can sample. ergo: 96KHz allows you to sample 48KHz signals and nobody can hear 48KHz anyway so what's the point.
Ah, true, but...
A 400Hz sine wave is now -also- sampled at the 96KHz level. Suddenly, that sine wave is looking twice as smooth.

No, it's not. If a 400 Hz sine wave is sampled at a mere 800 Hz, it can be reproduced per

Re:

[Grishnakh]

Actually, gold has pretty good electrical properties. Not the greatest, but not "crappy" by any stretch. Steel, OTOH, has crappy electrical properties as far as metals go.

But back to gold, it's a good conductor. It's not as good as copper or platinum, however, and costs a lot. But it doesn't corrode, unlike copper, and it's cheaper than platinum. This is why it's frequently used for contacts in high-reliability applications.

Unfortunately, most people incorrectly assume that because it's expensive and p

Re:24/96?

[krog]

Once, when my band was recording to a digital medium (a RADAR 24-track hard disk recorder, for those keeping score), we captured some tracks at 16bit, and some at 24bit. All other parameters in the signal chain were held constant.

I did not expect to hear as big a difference as I did. 24b absolutely crushed 16b in the oh-so-unscientific terms of listening enjoyment. Everything, especially the cymbals, sounded clearer, less harsh and brittle, more defined. We had to throw away some good 16b takes because they sounded so much worse than the 24b recordings.

Don't be so quick to discount the difference that a little extra dynamic range can make. Sure, you might not notice when you're listening to your iPod in your 89 Chevy Cavalier with the burned out left rear speaker, but it's not as hard to tell as you might think.

Re:

[soleblaze]

Meh, since when does the post -90s (or post 80s for that matter) music industry care about something as silly as dynamic range? You need to hear our music without having to turn up your radio! 3dB of dynamic range should be enough for anyone.

Re:

[dokebi]

You missed the part where the parent said "home playback". There are *many* reasons to use 24bits in studio recording, with all the intermixing and volume adjustments introducing aliasing artifacts. But when you are done, you can down sample to 16-bits and with proper dithering, it'll sound just as good.

Re:

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Many people here don't understand standing waves or beat frequencies either. You can have inaudible waves come out of each side(stereo) and create an audible result.

Re:

[Skapare]

Every time your audio level goes down by 6 db, you lose a bit. Once you are down by 48 db, you only have 8 bits to resolve the waveform. With 24 bits, you'd still have 16 bits left working for you at -48db.

A higher sampling rate also gives you are more accurate sound, especially when the waveform is complex. Sure, a sampling rate of X can give you a frequency response to X/2. But when you have many frequencies in the range X/F where F is less than 10, they can easily get jumbled together and result in

Re:

[QRDeNameland]

What would be nice is a losslessly compresses 24/96 5.1/7.1 channel audio format to be their choice.

I can't speak for Apple's ALAC, but FLAC [wikipedia.org] "can handle any PCM bit resolution from 4 to 32 bits per sample, any sampling rate from 1 Hz to 1,048,570 Hz in 1 Hz increments, and any number of channels from 1 to 8. Channels can be grouped in cases like stereo and 5.1 channel surround to take advantage of interchannel correlations to increase compression."

Re:

[zippthorne]

There is so much overmodulation and distortion in concert venues that one could argue that seeing the band play live is not like listening to the CD. Unless you're listening to an acoustic band in a small setting. You can't get much "more real" than that.

Finally...an archive format

[TimSee]

Hope this happens. After transcoding my CD collection to FLAC to arhive it, I now regularly batch re-encode to smaller and smaller bit rates using new releases of lossy encoders. AAC has gotten much better (esp AAC-HE) over the years to the point for a portable player, 48kbs is perfectly acceptable to my ears. With a 16GB iPod Touch, I could see buying music from the iTMS in some lossless format and transcoding to get my entire collection all on a small, flash memory player.

Re:

[cayenne8]

"Hope this happens. After transcoding my CD collection to FLAC to arhive it..."

Same here. I've been bitching for quite some time that there was no way to purchase songs online that weren't less than CD quality...if they will offer lossless formats, with no DRM, I'll pay a fair fee. I want to use what I purchase in lossless format on my home system, and be able to rip it to mp3 or whatever for poorer listening environments like the car or the portable for the gym.

Bravo!

Re:

[cayenne8]

"I too would buy more music online if they offer it lossless and at a reasonable rate. Unfortunately I feel like even if apple ends up selling lossless music, it'd still be more worthwhile to buy it on CD instead and rip it. They can only get me on price or better quality, and I can already buy the used CD for less than the mp3s on iTunes. It's the same deal with the tv shows. Sure, I might buy one or two in case I missed them. But when I can own the DVD set for $10 more (or in some cases $10-20 less) why w

Re:Finally...an archive format

[Mr.Ned]

If you're converting to mp3, and have an operating system that supports FUSE (GNU/Linux and FreeBSD are the ones I know about), take a look at mp3fs - it's a virtual filesystem that will encode from lossless to lossy on the fly. It's great for putting stuff on a small flash memory player.

Re:

[qortra]

A sibling post already mentioned it briefly, but it really should be mentioned more specifically; iTunes-ALAC isn't going be archive-ideal until the DRM is gone. Since at least one record label has talked about removing DRM, this might actually happen. However, I wouldn't count on it.

First off, I haven't heard anything about the other major labels switching any time soon. Maybe they will and maybe they won't.

Moreover, I think that businessmen who are otherwise satisfied with removing DRM on AACs will b

Re:

[lucas teh geek]

I found that out when I made recorded a cd for a friend off an old tape he had (I think it was something by the eagles). I was shocked when i put it in my pc and cddb detected it as the correct album and grabbed all the track names. I dont know if I fluked getting all the track gaps in the exact right spots or if there's a far bit of leniency but I thought it was pretty cool

Any chance of better-than-CD?

[neuro.slug]

Linn Records [linnrecords.com] offers downloads of 24-bit 96kHz songs. It would also be great to see DSD [wikipedia.org] files available sometime. Those formats would really bring interest.

It's good to see the possibility of lossless music nevertheless. :)

Let me translate...

[Anita Coney]

From the blog:

"And now I have an inkling Apple will add lossless music downloads to the iTunes Store within the next 12 months."

Translation:

I have no fricken clue that this will ever happen, but because I think it'd be cool if it did, I'll go ahead and blog about it.

The reasons I'll never adopt DRM lossless audio...

[garcia]

Other than selection, which is arguably a non-issue these days, why would I bother downloading something as large as lossless audio when there's no real benefit to doing so? I could just as easily go to the store and pickup the original CD for only a small bit more than or, more than likely, the same price as the download. I get the physical media and it doesn't cost much more, this is a no brainer for me.

The ease of access argument is null, in my mind, because it has DRM and any ease is negated right the

Re:The reasons I'll never adopt DRM lossless audio

[Grishnakh]

Personally, I'm beginning to wonder if the real reason for dynamic range compression is so that customers aren't surprised by how crappy some manufactured idol bands and singers sound in person without heavy studio voice processing.

Watch out, you're about to start an argument with all the people who think that it's normal for good bands to make albums with only one good song.

Re:

[tenton]

I'd buy the downloads only if they're DRM free, and lossless

Honestly, I'd buy them if they are lossless and I can burn at least one audio CD. Because it's lossless, converting it to a CD and re-ripping it back as a DRM-less lossless audio file will not result in any artifacts. It works for me.

So...

[Seakip18]

This would be a massively positive move for people who spend thousands of dollars on hi-fi gear, but refuse to give money to stores that only offer compressed music

So....this is for all 17 of them? I figured since they have that much money for equipment, most would just get the CD's and rip them via those means. If you can afford a $20k speaker, you can afford a a few TB Hard drives to keep your music.

Re:

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Maybe because CDs suck? Hate storing them, hate ripping them. And I don't like music stores.

Re:

[Grishnakh]

And I don't like music stores.

May I suggest this thing called the "Internet"? There's websites such as amazon.com which will sell you CDs for less than your local store, without you having to leave your couch.

Complain about storing and ripping all you want, but not liking music stores is a silly reason to avoid CDs in this day and age. Heck, most of the stand-alone music stores are going out of business because of iTunes and Amazon, as well as Wal-Mart and Target.

Or they could just stick with CDs

[the_humeister]

Most CDs have about 10-19 songs and range in price from $10-$15 (at least the mainstream ones). That works out to usually $0.99 a song. The last album I bought was Timbaland: Shock Value. 17 good songs for $12.

Re:Or they could just stick with CDs

[Vegeta99]

You might like all the songs. Since I listen mostly to rock/alternative genres, I probably only want his singles. Can I buy them cheaply, like my dad could in the 70's? He's got a stack of 45's that probably reaches the ceiling of my apartment.

I do realize they still sell them, but are they $0.99 per song cheap?

Re:

[michaelmalak]

I do realize they still sell them, but are they $0.99 per song cheap?

I assume you're referring to 45's. Adjusting for inflation, $0.99 in 1979 (the year I bought the 45 of the song "Funkytown" at Woolco) would be, according the the BLS calculator [bls.gov], $2.87 today.

Around 1990, there were CD singles. Granted, they were intended to be replacements for 12" maxi-singles and not 45s, but they were $5. And the record companies killed them because they thought CD singles were "too cheap" -- that they were canibalizi

Finally! DRM free, lossless, digital music!

[Lord Byron II]

Isn't it amazing that 25 years after the release of the CD, we're excited to finally have a way to buy DRM free, lossless, digital music? If this happens, we'll be back inline with 1982 technology.

Re:

[Traa]

Who says that the lossless offer will be DRM free? (Didn't RTFA)

Also, it will be digital, so any self respecting audiophile should instantly dismiss this format because the quantum fluctuations that are part of the original audio are not represented to a high enough precision turning the recorded audio into near white noise useless garbage (aka pop). ;-)

Lossless iTunes store?

[gringer]

I thought the whole point of having a music store online was so that they could make a tidy profit with minimal expenditure. Wouldn't that mean they've been lossless already?

iTunes won't get any more sales from me...

[BUL2294]

Forget Apple... I updated my iPod's firmware to Rockbox (which natively offers several lossless formats, and a slew of other features) and haven't looked back.

I did this for 3 reasons... 1) iTunes stopped supporting Windows 2000. (Yes, I know it's old, but I don't have to deal with the stupid BS Microsoft has built into XP, like WGA). 2) The 1.2.1 Apple firmware for iPod Videos gave me trouble with a bunch of my MP3s--cutting off the song at the 75% marker and refusing to seek within the track. (Of course, the catch-22 is that I can't get a newer iPod firmware from Apple since they refuse to support W2K). 3) I never liked the way iTunes worked in the first place...

I don't hold out much hope that a lossless format sold thru iTunes will truly be lossless. After all, converting an LP to 16-bit 44.1KHz WAV is, by definition, lossy (but outside of the perceptions of 95+% of the people out there)... To add, part of the reason that iTunes even sells DRM-free music is because the record companies can say "if you want higher quality, buy the CD or, better yet, vinyl!" So, I doubt many record companies will be selling uber-high-quality lossless tracks through iTunes...

Rockbox

[illegalcortex]

I did, too. But then I switched back. Unfortunately, they didn't have support for realizing that the charger stopped sending juice to my ipod mini. So when I turned my car off, my ipod didn't automatically pause. This is a major feature for me with audiobooks.

Re:

[DancesWithBlowTorch]

I don't hold out much hope that a lossless format sold thru iTunes will truly be lossless. After all, converting an LP to 16-bit 44.1KHz WAV is, by definition, lossy (but outside of the perceptions of 95+% of the people out there)... To add, part of the reason that iTunes even sells DRM-free music is because the record companies can say "if you want higher quality, buy the CD or, better yet, vinyl!"

So, just to get this straight: You think of Vinyl records as a lossless format and believe they have a hi

DRM silliness

[spiritraveller]

So they lock down these files with DRM. Then DVD-Jon (or someone else) comes up with a DRM-stripping program for the files.

Then people can re-encode the files to their format of choice. But by then, most consumers have said "fuck it" and decided to just download their format of choice directly from p2p or usenet because it's easier and simpler than paying Apple and still violating the DMCA just so the music they paid for will work on the audio player they own.

Oh wait, that's already the status quo... Never mind.

If you wish they'd just adopt FLAC...

[Josh Coalson]

...make some noise; here's one place to start: http://flac.sourceforge.net/itunes.html [sourceforge.net]

almost everyone else distributing lossless (except musicgiants) is using FLAC [sourceforge.net] and/or WAV. it's supported by almost all s/w except itunes, hell you can even get wmp to play FLAC with some work.

re:TFA, lossless is not directly about quality, mp3 and aac both can be perceptually transparent for the most part, it's about (depending on your personality) perceived quality or format independence -- i.e. being able to transcode to the format you need without quality loss.

Re:

[Llywelyn]

Why would they adopt FLAC?

They support WAV, they support ALAC. Transcoding between these doesn't result in a loss of quality. So why would they support FLAC unless it was just to decode from FLAC into something else?

Re:

[Josh Coalson]

for almost the exact same reasons they support mp3. FLAC is used much more than ALAC. FLAC is used for lossless distribution more than ALAC (zero for ALAC afaik). transcoding is not user friendly for their target audience.

Re:

[Josh Coalson]

My understanding is Apple Lossless was created because it could be implemented efficiently on an iPod using only integer math, which FLAC couldn't at the time.

that's incorrect, the FLAC decoder has always used only integer math and from the beginning was lower complexity that ALAC.

iTunes can certainly play FLAC (or Ogg or whatever else you want) by installing a QuickTime component that handles the format.

I think that has since broken but when working it basically "imports" into itunes (loading the whole file before playing, causing delay) via quicktime and does not support metadata.

Cool if/when it happens

[Strange Ranger]

Sure I might buy something in Apple's lossless format from iTunes, but

A - If I'm going to pay extra for DRM'd lossless, I better get the cheap lossy version for free (for my phone, wife's iPod, whatever) because paying them to compress a song for me is ridiculous,and
B - It will be a moot point if the player won't play all the FLAC I already have, because I won't own the player. It's why I don't own one now.

Lossless piracy?

[MMC Monster]

Am I out of the loop? I was under the impression that most piracy was of the low quality mp3s that suck on any high end audio gear.

Lossless is a great idea and may open up a new market to the iTMS, but I can't image it's going to offset piracy. I'd think it will offset physical CD sales.

Re:

[Hatta]

Lossless torrents are very common these days. Especially on private trackers where quality is of the highest importance. They're a great way to get your ratio up too.

why it's not about FLAC+DRM

[Josh Coalson]

the article claims that apple won't go with FLAC because we're against DRM. I don't think so; if we're to believe Steve then he's against it too. and there's nothing stopping apple from sticking FLAC in an mp4 container with fairplay, we can't prevent that anyway. aside from the principle of it, another reasone we're against it in FLAC is that DRM is doesn't belong in the codec layer, it's a layer on top.

apple's got nothing to fear from FLAC, it can actually be used to their advantage to get a leg up on the competition, since for lossless electronic distribution FLAC is becoming the de facto standard.

Re:

[burris]

Maybe Apple thought FLAC was infringing on patents and didn't want to risk being the only user of it with deep pockets.

I dunno...

[Cleon]

Lossless audio is going to involve some large file sizes, and with that, comes increased costs--bandwidth ain't free, and storage/delivery of these files is not going to be cheap or easy. This all translates into fairly expensive downloads.

So for Apple to seriously consider this, they're going to have to figure out if there are enough audiophiles out there willing to pay that kind of money for downloads.

Personally, I kinda doubt it.

tag: rumorsrumorsrumors

[Nimey]

Again, if Microsoft is about "Developers Developers Developers" then Apple's meat and drink is "Rumors Rumors Rumors".

Contradiction

[moosesocks]

This would be a massively positive move for people who spend thousands of dollars on hi-fi gear, but refuse to give money to stores that only offer compressed music -- they could finally take advantage of legal digital downloads.

For serious?

If you've got thousands of dollars to toss around on audio equipment, you're seriously going to be stingy enough to illegally download music on the principle that you don't want to pay the $2-$3 more it costs to buy the physical CD?

I'm sorry, but that's got to be one of

Re:

[moosesocks]

They probably aren't buying CDs either, DVD-Audio and SACDs.

I hate to be a troll, but do those really exist? It seems like the selection of movies released on LaserDisc is better than the number of albums on DVDA or SACD.

Music doesn't really benefit all that greatly from multichannel audio or an increased bitrate. The current CD bitrate is high enough that human hearing shouldn't be able to tell the difference between anything with a higher bitrate (There are 'proper' double-blind studies to back up this

Audiophiles

[paleo2002]

Why would people with high-end audio gear want to download digital music? I thought they all insisted on listening to wax drum recordings to achieve the best possible "natural sound".

AIF, AAC, RAW for Audio

[not_hylas( )]

The RAW equivalent for audio would nice, but lossless would be what it would take for me (and everyone I know) to buy online.

If any of you remember cassettes, low end MP3s are about equal (IMHO).
I haven't bought / downloaded any music because of this factor - it's just not good enough when I can purchase the CD and deal with it from there.

AAC is pretty damn good, but no, I can tell the difference for the most part and well, really, come on, get real - they already SELL it lossless, it's not like you're twisting knobs to transfer it to the hard drive.
If anyone can get the majority of the Corporate Music above the line brain dead to listen, it'll be Jobs, and Team Apple, both of them.

Re:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Apple can cater to the portion of the market that has rejected AAC, while simultaneously ensuring lock-in by using their proprietary codec that isn't interoperative with other players.

Umm, the OSS libavcodec has played ALAC for over a year and Mplayer and VLC both can play it as a result. That's not a lot of lock-in.

Win for Apple, and lossy everyone else, including customers. (Inless[sic] they have the wisdom to just say no and keep buying CDs. And iTunes store's popularity suggests lots of people don't.)

I've bought a couple of songs from iTunes Music Store, when they were not easily found elsewhere. Getting rid of the DRM was not hard, even without burning a CD or losing quality. Apple is moving away from DRM as well, as fast as the studios will let them. They don't care about the music. They just want it easy for people to use iPods and they seem pretty content to let

Do you understand what "lossless" means?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Unless they are DRM'd, it doesn't particularly matter what format they're in -- you can transcode them to another lossless format, without loss! (Duh.)

Or you could transcode to mp3 and play it anywhere.

Re:

[UnknowingFool]

Apple can cater to the portion of the market that has rejected AAC, while simultaneously ensuring lock-in by using their proprietary codec that isn't interoperative with other players.

AAC is not proprietary to Apple. It was designed to be the successor to MP3 by the designers of MP3 and is designated MPEG2, Part 7. Fairplay extensions to AAC is proprietary to Apple. Many software and hardware play standard AAC according to wiki [wikipedia.org], even the Zune. As for lock-in for Fairplay, it exists if and only if you w

Re:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

AAC is not proprietary to Apple.

I think you're misunderstanding the grandparent post. He was talking about Apple providing ALAC for users that did not like AAC. ALAC is "Apple Lossless Audio Codec" and is an Apple, proprietary technology, not another name for AAC or an MPEG standard.

Aside from that, being a lossless format, it is already possible to convert it to any other format losslessly with existing freeware and several software players have reverse engineered it and play it just fine. Lock-in is not really a concern.

Re:

[Nyeerrmm]

True, but you're probably not going to hear all the details on your iPod anyway. The real advantage of this, at least in my mind, is the ability to transcode to a format you want without fear. I don't claim to be able to hear the difference between lossless and 192 or 256 MP3, but the idea of taking a 128 AAC and converting it to a 192 MP3 to play on something that doesn't support AAC is problematic, and that is something that can be fairly easy to hear.

So with hard drive sizes getting large enough that a

Re:

[Bertie]

But that's not the point. I encode my CDs to FLAC, I can re-encode to any lossy or lossless codec I like without any degradation in quality. So it's perfect for archiving music. Or, indeed, buying downloads that I'm going to want to keep indefinitely. I see MP3s and other lossless codecs as something transient, an equivalent of cassette tapes - all right to listen to, but you wouldn't want to keep them forever.

Re:Flac is gay..

[jacksonj04]

It's still a lossy format which strips out some of the audio detail. I'm no gold-connector-magnetically-balanced-shielded-cable audiophile, but I do appreciate being able to listen to the entire depth of a piece of music (especially classical).

Perhaps a better way of putting it would be 'the human ear cannot distinguish between 320kbps MP3 and FLAC if listened to on iPod headphones', which is fair enough. There's no need to include everything if all I'm going to do is listen to it on the bus. Which leads to my original point - MP3 is lossy. AAC which is my format of choice is better quality for the space and bitrate, but is still lossy. FLAC isn't, which means I could have my lossless FLAC copy on my desktop where there's easy storage space, then have iTunes automatically create reduced quality versions for carrying around on my iPod. Compression from lossless source is always better than compression from an already compressed copy.

Not to mention that the iTunes store *isn't* 320kbps. 128kbps for the normal content, 256kbps for iTunes Plus.