iTunes 'not CD-quality'

[buzlink]

I would start purchasing iTunes songs if they were encoded at least 160.

There is a huge diffrence.

Try comparing a CD and an iTunes, there is a diffrence!

[nuka_t]

No lossy codec can prduce "CD Quality" sound, doesn't matter what bit rate.

but apple claimed it did. thats the whole point.

also, about the ipods having low sound quality, although i probably wont hear much of a difference, why get an ipod when you can get an iriver?

[icecaveman]

DRM Wise, WMA is poor compared to Apple's DRM.

The Problem with WMA is that when you purchase music on one computer you can only play i ton that computer. If you do reformat you can only restore licenses so many times as it thinks you are restoring it to a different computer.

Of course you can burn to CD and rerip to get rid of the DRM but then there is some quality loss.

How does that make it poor? one has proven more secure than the other, it's true Microsoft's DRM is more restrictive but that does not make it poor, do you even understand the meaning of that word?

[Redestium]

DRM Wise, WMA is poor compared to Apple's DRM.

The Problem with WMA is that when you purchase music on one computer you can only play i ton that computer. If you do reformat you can only restore licenses so many times as it thinks you are restoring it to a different computer.

Of course you can burn to CD and rerip to get rid of the DRM but then there is some quality loss.

Well it hasn't been cracked to date, seems pretty strong to me.

[Tim Dorr Veteran]

Well it hasn't been cracked to date, seems pretty strong to me.

If you can play it, you can crack it. Audio loopback, CD-RW, or TotalRecall sound driver; take your pick. However, how much music that's on P2P came from WMA's that we extracted this way? And how much came from AACs from the iTMS? To me, there doesn't seem to be much point, as you can go out, get the CD, rip it, and get better quality than going from WMA -> MP3 or whatever.

[the evn show]

I can't believe what you are saying.  You are just nitpicking now.

If I was nit-picking I'd point out the places where you say "there" when you mean "their".

The fact is that most analysts believe that Apple claims to have more of the market and unit share than they really do have.

Alex Salkever is the only person that I can find who has written an article to that end, do you know of others that I don't?

Apple owns so right there your claim of 70% can be dismissed as meaningless.

The 70% of legal online music downloads is recorded by nielson soundscan which is the same company tracking physical music sales to determine which CD's are "hits" and which are not. It's not too hard to follow Apple's line of reasoning to support their claims of 70% of the high-end MP3 player market.

If you can find sales numbers for the Rio, Creative Labs, Archos, and iRivier, etc. we could figure out what the high-end MP3 market player statistics are like. For whatever reason I can't find any figures after 20 minutes of googling.

And the CNN article you referred to was also talking about the entire world and not just the "countries that have legal online music stores doing business there"

The 50% market share claim was made by Phil Schiller in early may (after q2 results were posted) and he was specifically talking about the four largest markets. CNN dropped the qualifiers of "america, japan, and western europe", BusinessWeek did not leave that information out, nor did it dispute apple's claim of 50% market share in those markets (they're the ones who started talking about world wide numbers)

World-wide apple is claiming about 30% of the MP3 player market - the data in your article does not refute that claim, nor would it make a terribly strong case for reasons already mentioned. In the markets Apple mentioned they claim 50% of the market, you can make of that what you will.

Are you aware of any music stores operating in China or Pakistan or is it safe to assume that western europe, japan, america, and canada are home to the majority of legal online music sales? I looked and couldn't find anything there; the major ones in north america and europe do not have a presence there.

Anyway, I'm not going to even bother responding to somebody who is twisting things to fit his argument.

Can you plug your own ears and sing, or would you like me to call someone to help you?

[yert*]

,Jul 5 2004, 23:40] I regularly download VBR files from usenet that are higher quality, but the size increase is quite substantial.

*edit*

Legally, yes, iTMS has the "best" quality downloads.  Unfortunately, I no longer use my iPod.

Doesn't that Russian site have better quality files? It's legal too... allofmp3.com

[Redestium]

If you can play it, you can crack it. Audio loopback, CD-RW, or TotalRecall sound driver; take your pick. However, how much music that's on P2P came from WMA's that we extracted this way? And how much came from AACs from the iTMS? To me, there doesn't seem to be much point, as you can go out, get the CD, rip it, and get better quality than going from WMA -> MP3 or whatever.

Didn't have to do nearly that much to get past fairplay though, which was what I was getting at.

[XanDaMan]

I thought all cd quality was ≈ 96 kbps

Lol, that it most definately isn't

[aaron901]

some people just love to start trouble.

[threetonesun]

You know, now that you mention it, argue all you want about the iPod's market share, but I've honestly never seen anyone have a hard drive player other than the iPod. I've seen a lot of flash ones out on the street, but never see iRivers or Zens, or any of those.

[Wickedkitten Veteran]

Doesn't that Russian site have better quality files? It's legal too... allofmp3.com

it's only legal if you live in Russia if you read their T&C.

You know, now that you mention it, argue all you want about the iPod's market share, but I've honestly never seen anyone have a hard drive player other than the iPod. I've seen a lot of flash ones out on the street, but never see iRivers or Zens, or any of those.

You definitely see people here with irivers lol. One of my mates actually has ipod headphones on his though because he can't afford an ipod and is ashamed of the way his iriver looks.

[johnhood]

Wickedkitten I'm lovin' the avatar! :D

[STV]

DRM Wise, WMA is poor compared to Apple's DRM.

The Problem with WMA is that when you purchase music on one computer you can only play i ton that computer. If you do reformat you can only restore licenses so many times as it thinks you are restoring it to a different computer.

Of course you can burn to CD and rerip to get rid of the DRM but then there is some quality loss.

actually, unlike the FairPlay DRM that Apple uses, the WM DRM is actually much better. the WM DRM actually does what it is supposed to do and has not been crackede since version 7. which do you think would be more practical to use (in the eyes of the recording companies)? if the license allows it, you can burn it to a CD, put it on a portable device, and so on.

i dont understnad why you think that the FairPlay DRM is better than the WM DRM. recently the FairPlay one has been cracked only a couple of months after each release, while the WM one hasnt been cracked since v7 (hadto say it twice).

STV

[Gary_Player]

I don't like any of this here new-fangled eMPeeThree technolology. Give me a good old vinal record anyday :p

You know the sound quality off one of those records is crap compared to what you can get off a CD or even a tape but all those LP fanatics argue that music just isnt the same without a record's imperfections *shrugs*

To each his own, personally 160kbps AAC works fine for me :yes:

[Southern Patriot]

Wickedkitten I'm lovin' the avatar! :D

Same here... glad to see she finally got one ;)

[cal2002]

DRM Wise, WMA is poor compared to Apple's DRM.

The Problem with WMA is that when you purchase music on one computer you can only play i ton that computer. If you do reformat you can only restore licenses so many times as it thinks you are restoring it to a different computer.

Of course you can burn to CD and rerip to get rid of the DRM but then there is some quality loss.

Not true, and it doesn't even matter. The license can be re-issued by the owner. Plus, WMA has better renewability then Fairplay.

but apple claimed it did. thats the whole point.

also, about the ipods having low sound quality, although i probably wont hear much of a difference, why get an ipod when you can get an iriver?

I was replying to the post above me when i stated that, the post was that wma or mp3 or something was cd quality at 96kbps. Please learn to read before quoteing a post.

[Silvorgold]

I dont notice the dif between CD and aac, i love aac, i deleted hundreds of tracks i originally had in mp3, and re-ripped cds in aac format, never looked back :)

[oik]

expecting cd-quality from a lossy format is stupidity at it's finest.

[frod]

For those who claim to hear the difference in anything encoded above 192Kbs AAC, you are lying. Simply, our ears are only adapted hear certain range, and that is 20-20,000 Hz. It doesn't matter what we claim to hear, it simply isn't audible to our brains. Animals, yes, humans, no.

umm you're not very educated on this matter are you? that range is "theoretical" just like our scale used to measure sight. using your judgement it would then be impossible for anyone to have vision better than 20/20. knowing that the eye doctors rated me as having better than "perfect" vision, i can say theoretical ranges and scales are stupid.

also, nothing is audible to our brains (unless you believe in esp). we have these things called ears for the sole purpose of converting things which are audible into signals our brains can understand. to say that everyone has the same exact quality of ear hardware is pretty ludicrous.

i can hear the difference between 256kbps mp3 and cd a lot of the time. it depends on what i'm listening through and what type of music i'm listening to. sometimes i can ever hear the difference between 320kbps mp3 and cd. and sorry to say, i'm not lying.

this whole thread just reminds me of linux vs windows vs os x debates. it never goes anywhere. half the people are uneducated on the matter and still trying to state their opinions as objective truth. really frustrating.

anyone who cares about digital audio quality is going to know about lossy audio compression at least somewhat, and most of them who care a whole lot about it aren't going to be buying from the itunes music store. the people who are buying the songs are either 1. completely oblivious to the concepts of audio encoding and wouldn't care even if you offered a lossless version or 2. know what they are buying and are fine with it.

so what's the point in this news article?