Are people getting ripped off when it comes to compressed music from such online music stores like iTunes? According to an aritcle by the New York Times called "From a High-Tech System, Low-Fi Music" the answer is yes. The New York Times article states that "The iTunes store does not warn about the permanence of its method of compression; once freeze-dried, there is no way to reconstitute the music into CD quality for playing through a good stereo."
There was an interesting article in the New York Times over the weekend. Called "From a High-Tech System, Low-Fi Music," its focus was on compressed music files that are lossy by virtue of the fact that they've been compressed and, hence, are missing information.
So people who use iTunes for their iPods aren't getting value for money, the story suggests: "Customers are led to believe that they are getting a CD in all respects except the trouble of going to the mall. The iTunes store does not warn about the permanence of its method of compression; once freeze-dried, there is no way to reconstitute the music into CD quality for playing through a good stereo."
In other words, iTunes-cum-iPod users are paying way too much for far too little -- literally. While this is correct, Apple is far from being the only villain in the piece. The same applies to the other corporate music sales sites.
View: From a High-Tech System, Low-Fi Music (Free Subscription Required)
News source: TechNewsWorld
There was an interesting article in the New York Times over the weekend. Called "From a High-Tech System, Low-Fi Music," its focus was on compressed music files that are lossy by virtue of the fact that they've been compressed and, hence, are missing information.
So people who use iTunes for their iPods aren't getting value for money, the story suggests: "Customers are led to believe that they are getting a CD in all respects except the trouble of going to the mall. The iTunes store does not warn about the permanence of its method of compression; once freeze-dried, there is no way to reconstitute the music into CD quality for playing through a good stereo."
In other words, iTunes-cum-iPod users are paying way too much for far too little -- literally. While this is correct, Apple is far from being the only villain in the piece. The same applies to the other corporate music sales sites.
View: From a High-Tech System, Low-Fi Music (Free Subscription Required) News source: TechNewsWorld
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http://www.xciv.org/~meta/audio-shootout/
http://www.recordstorereview.com/misc/aacmp3.shtml
The AAC codec in iTunes has improved since last year, and this is not the codec used by the Recording Studios to encode their masters so they show nothing to me...
In my own tests, I have preferred AAC to MP3 (128 vs. 192) 9 out of 10 times.
I suggest anyone who is looking for a legal way to buy music to check out AllOfMP3. They even offer a few free albums as well! It is the VIP service that is the best bit though
When there is criticism of violent video games the Playstation 2 and GTA3 automatically mentioned for the same reasons.
Just don't take it personally.
Erm... I don't know how you came to that conclusion.
Car = 4 wheels or so... bike is almost car you wont count the difference
Hahahaha, that's a good one. You either a) have crap speakers or b) have crap ears or c) both. And have you ever heard of lossless compression like FLAC or SHN? Apple also has their own lossless audio compression. Yeah the files will still be 50 MB or so, but that's something that I would actually pay for.
Lossless codecs are best for that, such as FLAC.
i never plan on buying from the itms for the reason that they don't offer a lossless version to download. i think it would be nice if they gave people the opportunity to download lossless versions, unfortunately the space required to hold a lossless version of every song would be ridiculous. i don't think bandwidth would be much of an issue as i imagine most people would just accept the default quality and not ever bother to download the bigger, lossless version.
The whole time I was reading all the other posts, I was waiting for one just like yours. I too was thinking to myself, "how the hell do they expect people to sit there and download 30-40 MB singles?" I mean, I have a few friends who are still on dial-up, and even then, the current bit rate the iTMS offers takes them about 10 minutes to download a song. Now what about a file that is 10x the size? Personally, I couldn't care less about what is currently being offered. I can't say it sounds the same as a lossless song, but for the convenience, I'm damn satisfied.
No... the *average* person buys CD's and has a reasonable hi-fi. They can often notice if someone has given them a copied CD from 128k or 192k MP3's, but in general are interested in the song more than the quality.
Audiophiles buy DVD-Audio and have setups with digital speakers running through dedicate poweramps.
You can't just say CD's are for audiophiles, as that is simply not true. Just because iTunes has poor quality files does NOT mean that suddenly CD's are fine for audiophiles.
IF you are so in tune with the differences between CD audio and compressed audio and can feel/hear the difference; then you understand enough about this technology that you don't need a disclaimer telling you that a 3Mb song is not the same as buying it on the CD -- hit up amazon or your retailer and plop down far more money for the quality you require (and a bunch of extra tracks which don't measure up to the 2 or 3 good ones on the CD).
On the other hand if you want the convenience of only buying the tracks you want and can accept a decent sound quality you hit up itunes or another one of its competitors.
Sound fair?
That made me laugh, most audiophiles i know would not touch digitally recorded music if you paid them, they still use turntables from which you get the pure analogue signal which with the right equiptment blows "cd quality" out of the water, Mind you they do spend upwards of £10000 on the decks and needles and use valve amps. I have had the difference between records and CD's and the difference is stunning in vinyls favour!.
Depends which audiophiles you are talking about. Many audiophiles that are into classical music like the dynamic range and the frequency response of DVD-Audio. I didn't take into account vinyl players because this was a discussion about digital music, but yes... you are right - there are an awful lot of people that prefer vinyl because of its warmth, but at the same time vinyl will wear out and some people prefer the longitivity of a digital format, or the fact that you can have surround sound.
The extreme bitrates offered by SACD rival the data storage ability of analog records. But because it's a digital signal, there's no possibility of interference or degradation.
Do you really think a properly encoded VBR MP3 or WM9 file is 30-40MB?
Give me a break.
Additionally, these stores are meant for people with broadband. Downloading a 30MB file takes what.... 10 seconds?
Oh no, I guess I might as well go to the mall........
And look at what davematthewsband.com does. DMB tracks aren't available on iTunes, as the band was not satisfied with the quality of the tracks or the system itself.
They have their own store, which is how I think things will go in the long run.
They offer all of their albums in WM9 128kbps for $10 and WM9 Lossless for $13.
(The Bonaroo and Gorge downloads are in MP3 VBR and FLAC).
Providing the media is looked after, which in the case of records will last as long as you look after the media
Not true, any signal can suffer interferance and degradation, just because is is digital does not mean it is not succeptable.
Last edited by 16997 on 08 Jul 2004 - 15:45
Vinyl is a needle physically running across the disc... digital is a laser reading the disc; fundamental difference. Therefore DVD-A, vs. vinyl - all conditions being equal - will last longer.
I was well aware of that, what i meant was that some disks (CD / DVD-A - SACD) can scratch very easily, even when in your player or in storage, so the fact that it is a laser that is reading the information from the disk, both mediums are easy to damage and rendered unplayable, does not inherently mean that the media will last longer,
but yes i accept the point that all conditions being equal observation, Though i do have some vinyl that is 15 Years old and plays perfectly.
My overall point is that the original instrument that produced the sound did so with an analogue output, to produce the DVD-A, SACD CD whatever the analogue signal had to be encoded in someway to produce the digital signal and as digital endocing is inherently lossy some clipping of the analogue signal will occur, whether you can hear the clipping is another matter.
Its got nothing to do with the bit rate or data storage capacity of vinyl (?????) the object of the game is to re-produce the signal as close as possible to the original signal, which is why with the right equipment, vinyl wins hands down.
Last edited by 16997 on 08 Jul 2004 - 16:08
Vinyl just has different limitations. It takes a greater excursion of the needle to produce low frequencies at higher volumes and this might cause a track to be a bit too close to the next, causing skip. So there are limitations to the dynamic range that vinyl can produce, which is what DVD-Audio has tried to combat.
Also, don't forget that as well as analog captures an analog sound, there is an increasing amount of digital editing and effects going into music production - obviously this means that analog is not optimal for recreating these sounds because keeping them in digital means zero loss of sound detail.
I'm not completely disagreeing with you at all - vinyl is very good for audiophiles, but has its limitations much like digital. But, as digital approaches nearer analog with DVD-A, and with the reliance upon the industry to use digital effects, digital becomes a mere preference, rather than a limitation; with surround sound in digitals favour then digital becomes prefered. Maybe a new analog system is needed?
I must admit that i haven't had much dealing with DVD-A only reading from a technical aspect , but i will endeavour to investigate further. It could be a possiblity for a new analogue system but as you say with industries wider acceptance of digital as the accepted standard now, would marketing a new anlogue standard be economically viable. I suspect that there would be a niche market for it but enough to warrant the cost of producing it is another matter
thanx for your time
NEway, thnx for the interesting debate... it was fun.
MP3 has been going on forever, and now when the iTunes music store is so popular (mind-you AAC is much better sounding than MP3) there are trolls here and there.
The thing about codecs is that they try to emulate the human ear as much as possible and remove stuff you don't really pay attention to, some do better job than others, and strip useless information (at certain frequencies) and you end up with a much smaller file.
But the audiophiles of us can really hear out the difference between a CD and an AAC/MP3.
But if you listen to music usually on your computer to relax, or on your portable player, AAC/MP3 or better yet Ogg Vorbis is a good enough alternative.
how come? i thought it was all digital. or do u mean aac vs mp3?
Also, many CDs were not produced from masters. Many of the iTunes songs are from masters or even better re-mastered masters (particularly those which are remastered exclusively for the intent for digital distribution). Going back to these sources can be superior than using the CD as the source.
You don't have to be an audiophile or even have expensive equipment to be able to tell the difference between a lossy and a lossless version of a song.
What a joke. Have you actually LISTENED to audio from the iTMS? Have you ever compared it to something like... say... a LAME-encoded MP3 VBR with 160kbps minimum? Or WM9 85-145 VBR?
Probably not.
AAC, at least using Apple's iTunes store and codec, is total rubbish.
I have a nak amp with kef speakers and can't tell the difference b/w aac and the original source.
I'd rather iTMS use 192kbit AAC but i think i just feel funny listening to 128kbit music (maybe bad experience w/ mp3)
On mid to low range equipment, AAC is a better format. Seems to do well on crappy equipment, better than mp3 ...only slightly though. If you have a high-end system (including speakers/headphones), a LAME-encoded, variable-bit-rate MP3 can't be beat once going above 128kbps - period. It's not up for debate, this is how it is.
On mid to low range equipment, AAC sucks. On high end equipment, AAC sucks.