Apple may offer higher-than-16/44 and/or lossless music downloads at some point, but it would be neither a scam nor an indicator that they believe in audiophile pseudoscience — it would simply be a response to strong demand from a very profitable market. And as long as Apple’s not serving their demands, they risk losing them to competing ecosystems.
Agreed. Also, If people care about the quality of their music, they should also invest in quality headphones. I use Ear Monitors from Future Sonics.
Seen many many blind tests etc that show that its practically impossible to hear the difference between a high bitrate music file and a FLAC file.
Apple’s AAC 256 kbps format used in Apple Music is very good sound quality and in a blind test even with high end equipment it would be practically impossible to hear the difference between this and a lossless, FLAC audio file. I have high end headphones, earphones to listen to my music (Bowers & Wilkins P7 headphones and RHA T20 earphones) and the sound quality I get from Apple Music is outstanding. I would certainly not want to pay more for a 16/44 lossless music format and also pay for extra data on my iPhone because of this.
Then we get onto the next issue which would be higher data use by streaming these type of music files.
I sure do wish I could use the Ear Monitors. However, the skin in my left ear canal is too easily irritated. I’ve tried lots of products. So I fall asleep with very old skool original Apple style earbuds (podcasts, old time radio shows, comedy) and use Sennheiser on the ear headphones during the day. At 63, I recognize that my frequency response needs on the high end are no longer great, but dynamic range is much improved with better headphones. The BS factor with audiophile reviews is astounding. If I were young I would open a high end audio shop in somewhere like Abu Dhabi and laugh all the way to my yacht.
One of my tasks today is throwing out a bunch of old shit, so I’ve been listening to one of my favourite albums on a series of terrible speakers. It sounds exactly like it’s being played back over a tin can string phone.
I’ve heard the “practically impossible to hear the difference” thing a few times, and generally I agree with it. But I think we need to append a “…most of the time” to it to be fully honest.
One of my favourite albums is The Symphony Sessions by Tom Cochrane & Red Rider. I’m not saying it is one of the greatest albums of all time, but the combination of rock, a symphonic orchestra and a live audience is very easy to lose yourself in. I have no trouble picking out the lossless version on many of those tracks, even on fairly ordinary headphones.
Would that be a new year’s resolution.
bdumtiss
Well, he talked about telling lossless from hi-res, you talk about telling lossless from compressed… That is a huge difference. And you are, IMO, both right.
Hi-res formats are for editing, they give filters, effects etc. more data to play with, subsequently maintaining the highest possible quality until the final mix and delivery format are generated. It is pretty much the same thing with all digital workflows. You take photos in RAW, apply RAW edits, then generate a high quality TIFF to apply effects and edits that can’t be done in RAW, and once you are done you create a JPG or PNG. The difference between the RAW and its 1:1 representation as a 16-bit TIFF are almost impossible to distinguish, but the difference between a large gamut TIFF and a compressed JPG or PNG are clearly visible to a trained eye.
Almost everybody with an ear for music can hear the difference between lossless (FLAC or Apple Lossless) and a 256 kbps AAC, even with Apple’s own earbuds, if the mix is not over-compressed to begin with (in most cases the lack of dynamics in the mix make the use of a better format virtually useless). The difference between lossless and high-res is only noticeable with highest end equipment and (nowadays rare) source material with natural dynamics.
I have some high-res editions of a few records (e.g. some King Crimson live cuts and Donald Fagen’s Sunken Condos). With some Beyerdynamic cans for $1.2k, and a $6k dedicated DAC and headphone amp combo I can hear a faint difference… But seriously, how many people do that?
All of the speakers and headphones you (and blind testers) are using are designed for 16/44 playback, and often designed for AAC/MP3 lossy playback. And they are all analog. They are not necessarily capable of showing you the 24-bit audio quality.
What you are doing is like using a 1997 standard definition analog TV to compare the picture quality of DVD versus Blu-Ray and declaring that Blu-Ray is a scam because DVD and Blu-Ray look the same on your analog SDTV.
I can assure you, in a music studio, where we use 24/96 lossless audio, the sound quality is much better than what you are hearing on your gear at home. Absurdly better.
Nobody is suggesting you use your 3G/4G connection to download lossless audio. The 256 kbits AAC at 16/44 does indeed match your iPhone and its 16/44 converters and analog audio output.
However, if you were at your Mac, with its Wi-Fi and 24/96 converters and digital audio output, you might want to put a really good set of speakers on there (currently about $1000/pair but always dropping) and listen to the actual 24/96 audio file that was made in the studio.
The blind tests you are referring to are BS because it can take untrained ears a few weeks to become trained enough to hear the difference. The blind tests are done in one day. In one day, I can prove that it is impossible for humans to play the guitar, because that takes a couple of years to accomplish. But in a short time, you will get used to the better audio quality and then the AAC 16/44 256 kbits that you thought was great will sound awful and you will want your iPhone to also have lossless 24/96.
This is the same as how your SDTV used to look awesome but now somehow it doesn’t anymore after you get used to HDTV. The original Mac display was less than 1 megapixel and had no color and people in 1984 thought it was absurdly high quality. Times change, perceptions change.
And so a year from now, or two, you will be able to buy an iPhone with 24/96 converters and digital audio outputs and digital headphones like your Mac and you will jump at it. And you won’t mind downloading in Wi-Fi for the first few years. And you will likely have 256 GB storage so the large files won’t matter.
Sorry that this tech cycle also affects audio and also obsoletes your current audio gear, but that is how it goes. The benefit is you will in the future have listening experiences that are profoundly better.
And keep in mind, the content all has to be (re)mastered for 24/96, same as how movies had to be (re)mastered in HD for Blu-Ray. You (and blind testers) don’t have those HD audio masters yet, but guess what? Apple does. Music producers have been submitting content to iTunes in 24/96 for years now, and Apple currently makes a 16/44 copy to sell. But they can flip a switch and make the 24/96 available to the public at any time. This is needed soon because, frankly, they should no longer be selling you an AAC 256 kbits like you an get over an Internet stream. If you buy the track, you should get a better quality than a stream.
It will take a few years to get listeners equipped with the full 24/96 setup of converters, speakers, and masters, but once it happens, it will all be taken for granted like HDTV is today, or giant 5K iMac screens, or Retina iPhones and iPads, which were all also said to be a kind of scam. So there is no point in being that person who railed against that progress, because at some point you will be sheepishly apologizing for wanting music to be stuck at 2001 quality (16/44 AAC 256 kbits is from 2001) for your whole life.
That expensive gear was designed for 16/44. The fact that it is expensive does not make it ready for 24/96.
Nonsense. Both my DAC and headphone amp support up to 24/192, which is a higher resolution than you can normally buy music in (the high-res files I have are mostly 24/88 and 24/96).
There is no BS to hooking up a $600 Apogee Duet to a Mac and putting a $1000–up set of studio speakers (ideally more like $2500–up though) on there and playing a 24/96 master through them and hearing much, much more than what you hear through your iPhone earbuds. No gold contact cables or $20,000 amplifiers are required. Problem is, the 24/96 masters exist only behind-the-scenes right now, in music studios and in iTunes back-end. But the quality of a Duet with pro speakers ultimately comes to a future iPhone and headphones, along with 24/96 masters in iTunes.
If you have older ears, you need HD audio more than a young person, not less. You need a bigger, fuller audio soundscape, not a smaller one.
Are you watching an HDTV or one from 1997? HDTV didn’t happen overnight either, and was said to be BS for years until consumers got both an HD-capable setup and HD video content. You will have to have a little faith between the time you get an HD audio iPhone and HD audio masters. Yes, there is a transitional time where you have just the HD gear and no content and can’t see or hear the improvement yet. Then soon after, your eyes and ears are spoiled for the older content and gear.
One thing to understand with AAC is it is optimized for certain musical styles and not for others. A 4-piece rock/blues/country band can sound amazing through AAC lossy compression while symphonic music can be totally gutted.
AAC is perceptual encoding. A trick is being played on your perceptions. Like all tricks, it only works in some cases, some of the time.
A symphony on a 24/96 master, played through 24/96 converters and then through speakers that are designed for 24/96 playback sounds fucking amazing. You will hear separation between each violin. You will hear the rasp of the bow on the strings. The bass will make you feel slightly nauseated. Like being at a concert hall, which is the whole fucking point of recorded music. I listen to such a 24/96 setup all day at work in a music studio and it is hard to even listen to AAC/MP3 in any context once your ears are spoiled like that.
Ultimately, that audio quality comes to consumer gear in the same way as Retina Display and HDTV came to consumer gear.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you… the audio nerds. Plenty of interesting comments to read. Here’s mine: I have a home studio, and I can tell the difference between a 16/44 mastered final version of a song, and the same song converted down to AAC 256. However, there’s an art to the process (“Mixed for iTunes.”) It is possible, with a good amount of care, to tweak the mastering process to make a final mix sound just as good on iTunes as it does on a CD. As for the rest, I side with the gentleman who pointed out that blind tests with average people are pointless because average people wouldn’t know great audio if it slapped them in the head. Plus, Marco is very opinionated and prone to bouts of illogic where he draws faulty conclusions. Listen to John correct him on at least once on almost every episode of the awesome podcast ATP.
Studio guy here too. Most people can’t tell the difference, even the people who recorded it.
I play the AIF master to a client and then the MP3. Many times they think the MP3 is the final final and give it their approval.
I can tell. And, it breaks my heart (if not my ears).
“Gutted” is a perfect word. 🙂 The CD quality is great, though I’ve never heard anything higher for this recording, but even at 256 the AAC sounds like the omelette version of the same music. But the part that always surprises me is that there’s an obvious difference between the two even on shitty headphones. It isn’t that you need some minimum quality speakers to pick it out, it’s that the speakers are a whole different axis of corrupting of the original music.
You all are so cute. When it was Tidal or Pono everyone here, Jim etc included, were all ‘it’s all audiophile BS, there’s no difference!”.
Now that Apple might do it it’s all “Well, it’s a reasonable market and anyway of course we can tell the difference!”
I don’t know that there is a major difference in the hardware capabilities, other than the clumsiness and ugliness of the Pono. That’s what I think is bs about the Pono. We’re so far under hardware capabilities of the iPhone that we scarcely need something past that, especially trading for a shitty UI and overall experience. We might need a better market and better use of the iPhone capabilities, though.
Regardless of the merits of the argument, without great headphones it’s worthless. Or speakers.
Good headphones make anything sound better.
I’m not actually defending the Pono, but noting that when it hit it got savaged hereby the “there’s no difference! Resampled audio is FINE!! High res audio is nothing but a scam! ” crowd; the same crowd that seems to be giving this news a relative pass because, hey, it’s Apple doing it. If it’s silly to do high res audio because it’s all a scam and there’s no perceptual difference, then it’s still a scam when Apple does it and this post and many of the comments seem to say “hey ,there’s a market for it” – which could also have been said for the Pono and for other high res audio solutions. Sorry, but you can’t slam the concept in general and then give one player a pass. That’s just hypocritical.
To be clear, I think some music is noticeably better with lossless and high res audio (well-recorded music by real instruments and voices in a real setting, mostly) and some (say, Daft Punk or other highly processed stuff) doesn’t matter.
The dynamic range in 16-bit audio is well beyond what any human ear can discern. The suggestion that there is over-compressed because of the format is nonsense. A lot of music is over-compressed to make it sound louder, but that was a choice by the studio and is irrelevant to the topic of hi-res audio.
What you are suggesting is that 24/96 playback equipment will be compressing in realtime to suit listening environments. I don’t know of any equipment that does that, and to do it effectively, you’d need multi-track recordings with the instruments separated. In other words, you’d need to skip the mastering step entirely and expect the playback equipment to do it automatically. Yeah, uhm… I don’t think we’re there yet, or even soon.
And the comparison to HD video is nonsense. Ears and eyes work completely differently; any comparison is invalid.
Speakers that are designed for 24/96? Speakers are designed for analogue signals. This is the pseudoscience the article mentions. And “pseudoscience” is generous. There’s no science at all.
It’s as valid as when in the 1980s, headphone and speaker vendors were slapping “digital-ready” on their products. It meant nothing at all but fooled a lot of people into thinking they were somehow getting a more advanced product.
That’s not to say I don’t agree with your assessment of compression. Lossless at 16/44 will sound just as good as at 24/96 – and I’d love to see a double-blind test to prove otherwise.
You keep making comparisons to video. This is nonsense. Eyes work differently than ears. These comparisons are invalid.
I also take issue with this comment: “The blind tests you are referring to are BS because it can take untrained ears a few weeks to become trained enough to hear the difference.” If this were true then where are the double-blind tests where all the “trained ears” are able to hear the difference? There aren’t any. Not even one.
Hi-res is snake-oil, plain and simple. It’s a waste of time and money. ALAC at 16/44 is not discernible from 24/96 – this is proven. Feel free to prove otherwise.
No, the article clearly states this is a marketing move. Hence the term pseudoscience.
Who’s giving Apple a pass? Who here who claims that 24/96 doesn’t sound better than 16/44 is not admitting this is for marketing purposes only?
Your proposed setup will sound just as good with 16/44 ALAC.
I recommend watching this video: https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml
I feel with Apple Car Play that Apple is considering higher bit rate to accommodate car stereos.
You’re using a straw man argument. Dynamic range is one part of the equation. Yes, we can’t hear higher or lower frequencies than our ears allow (and there’s quite some variability between people). But it’s not what’s higher or lower the makes high resolution music sound better. It’s the nuances in-between those extremes. Compressed music damages the data, just like a jpeg photo damages the image data.
I could imagine an example of Blu-ray and DVD that might be parallel, though you’re right about the eye and ears working differently. But my difference would be with up-converting Blu-ray players playing DVDs at higher resolutions than they were created with. That may look at first sight better in some ways (some people can’t seem to deal with bars on their screen). But the quality is not the same as the exact same movie.
Not just because the original source was down-converted for DVD. So it is with high resolution masters, and DACs, and the speakers or headphones. If the music was mastered at higher resolution, the DAC has more to deal with in the data in the hearable range.
The differences are subtle to be sure, and many can’t hear any difference. But with a good DAC and great headphones or speakers, music mastered at higher resolutions is distinguishable for some people.
But that’s a lot of ifs. And the article’s point about whether that’s good or bad is more subtle than the deniers and the true believers would have one think.
I do not think that 16/44 is fast enough to render audio accurately.
I this is why my G5 sounds better.
No
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Before this week I’d have agreed with you, but this week I noticed that sometimes I hit the limits of the recording before I hit the limits of the headphones. It’s only on very specific recordings, mind you, and I think I’d still suggest getting better headphones first… but it was an unexpected result. 🙂
No doubt it depends on the quality of the headphones. If they’re not that good, they will fail. But really good headphones will make most things sound better than with bad headphones.
Umm, I don’t think there was ever any contention over higher fidelity audio streams/downloads offering better sound quality. I think most of the contention was around Neil Diamonds hyperbole claiming that iTunes “killed the music industry.”
And I think most arguments pointed towards skepticism that the average listener would even be able to tell the difference using $30 earbuds. That skepticism still appears to be there in this post (if you actually read the quoted paragraph).
So…yea. No one is giving Apple a pass. The article flat out admits this is driven purely by marketing.
You apparently aren’t familiar with both earlier posts/comments here and with Marco’s attitudes toward high res audio. In both cases the idea is dismissed as without basis, some here even arguing that 265k AAC is just as good as lossless CD quality audio. None of the arguments centered around earbuds. Frankly, you just aren’t informed about what the earlier discussions looked like.
Now, look at most of the other comments here – none of that is present. Because Apple? Or did all of those objections vanish? I wonder…
See reply above. Many commenters here claimed precisely that.
Most of what you say her has NO basis in reality and misses the point of my post. The mechanics and modes of normal auditory degradation with age are well understood and are completely different from those of eyesight degradation. Yes, HDTV is better for any sighted person. No, paying high sums for equipment producing sound waves your ears’ anvil, staple, and cilia can no longer handle is a waste of money, although I’m sure your system is a good conversation starter for your guests.