Oh Hellz Yes...HiRez iTunes

SolidSqual

I don't know about you guys, but I have complete confidence in Apple's ability to make HiRez music successful. Apple will succeed where Sony failed and where HD Tracks might only dream.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/02/22/24.bit.music/index.html?iref=NS1

On3s&Z3r0s

If Apple can make an iPod that handles 24-bit material, that might just have to be the first Apple product I purchase. Course, they'd need to figure out how to get more than 64GB storage on it... an album worth of 24/96 content in FLAC from HDTracks clocks in at roughly 1GB.

Since that article mentions Nine Inch Nails... in case anyone's interested in seeing how good their equipment and ears are with different levels of compression / bit depth / sampling frequency on the same material for free, NIN is giving away the latest album in various formats. (http://theslip.nin.com/)

TORI3

From the article it appears that people are willing to pay extra for a higher bit-rate if they're offered a choice. I wonder what percentage of the market HD Tracks has? 2% maybe?

I have faith in Apple. It seems like they've been tapping their fingers in the audiophile market recently, especially with the introduction of the Wadia -- and now the refined Wadia 171. May not be the best transport, but at least it's a beginning.

It'll be interesting to see how they overcome the storage obstacle.

LessisNevermore

I'm excited at the possibility of hi-res becoming more mainstream, but it won't do a lick of good until the music industry stops the loudness wars.

We'll have a ton of hi-resolution, distortion-with no dynamic range to choose from. Yay?:frown:

ryanjoachim

TORI3 wrote: »

From the article it appears that people are willing to pay extra for a higher bit-rate if they're offered a choice. I wonder what percentage of the market HD Tracks has? 2% maybe?

I think 2% might be a bit high honestly, unless you're going by age group. I'd say 99% of people 14-30 who own an iAnything will hear 0 difference between low-fi and high-fi tracks, especially with the POS earbuds Apple bundles with their products.

Given Apple's track-record when it comes to pricing, I'd have to say they'll give HD tracks a 500% price increase over standard files.

On3s&Z3r0s

I'd guess that a 2% is a high estimate for HDTracks too, but kudos to Chesky for demonstrating that there is at least some market for hi-res downloads. I totally agree though that ultimately it's all going to come down to good mastering. I've got redbook CD's from Telarc and Mapleshade that sound as good to me as some of the 24/96 stuff I've downloaded from HDTracks, and I really don't know if you're going to get Ke$ha to sound a lot better just by going to hi-res (no offense to any Ke$ha fans).

If this does turn out to be just a way for Apple to milk people with an abundance of cash for more of it without adding any real value, that would suck, but certainly could happen. It's why I'm neither an early adopter nor an Apple owner (no offense to any Apple owners).

BlueFox

On3s&Z3r0s wrote: »

If Apple can make an iPod that handles 24-bit material, that might just have to be the first Apple product I purchase. Course, they'd need to figure out how to get more than 64GB storage on it... an album worth of 24/96 content in FLAC from HDTracks clocks in at roughly 1GB.

?????

The iPod Classic holds 160GB, and by using Apple Lossless compression you nearly double the disk size. Don't forget, you will need an iPod dock that can extract the digital off the iPod, and an external DAC that can play 24 bit, and a higher sample rate, tunes. Those of us who having been using the Wadia iTransport are ready to go. :biggrin:

sucks2beme

Given how much of the material out there sounds horrid on good gear,
It may not be a very well supported format.
The recording engineer on Norah Jones's latest should be shot.
90% of people don't care or can't tell the difference. And if you
remove the people who aren't going to spring for the higher cost,
not a big market. Add what ever cumbersome DRM they add
will kill it shortly after birth. I can hope something will come of it,
but it's an uphill battle.

On3s&Z3r0s

BlueFox wrote: »

?????

The iPod Classic holds 160GB, and by using Apple Lossless compression you nearly double the disk size. Don't forget, you will need an iPod dock that can extract the digital off the iPod, and an external DAC that can play 24 bit, and a higher sample rate, tunes. Those of us who having been using the Wadia iTransport are ready to go. :biggrin:

Admittedly, I'm not an Apple guy, so I could be wrong about the compression, but I'd be surprised if Apple had some sort of lossless compression that was twice as efficient as FLAC. I may have misunderstood what you said about doubling the disk size.

Anyway, it seems like Apple has some re-engineering ahead before any of the iPod's are suitable for hi-res content. Maybe it would work with a Wadia today, but being chained to that dock completely negates the portability benefit of the iPod. Also, since the classic has a mechanical hard drive, I think it has to load songs into cache memory, which probably isn't big enough to handle hi-res lossless files, so I think it's more than just a firmware upgrade. They have some significant engineering hurdles to overcome.

But, if they get this hooked up to where they can even sell the hi-res tracks and the early reviews are good, I'd put iTunes on my PC and give it a whirl.

BlueFox

On3s&Z3r0s wrote: »

Admittedly, I'm not an Apple guy, so I could be wrong about the compression, but I'd be surprised if Apple had some sort of lossless compression that was twice as efficient as FLAC. I may have misunderstood what you said about doubling the disk size.

I have no idea about FLAC but I read in one of the Wadia reviews that Apple Lossless has a 40% to 50% size reduction. Since I said using it nearly doubles the drive size, that would a correct value.

This is what Wiki has to say. I suspect it is accurate enough in htis case.

"Apple claims that audio files compressed with its lossless codec will use up "about half the storage space" that the uncompressed data would require. Testers using a selection of music have found that compressed files are about 40% to 60% the size of the originals depending on the kind of music, similar to other lossless formats."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless

Anyway, it seems like Apple has some re-engineering ahead before any of the iPod's are suitable for hi-res content. Maybe it would work with a Wadia today, but being chained to that dock completely negates the portability benefit of the iPod. Also, since the classic has a mechanical hard drive, I think it has to load songs into cache memory, which probably isn't big enough to handle hi-res lossless files, so I think it's more than just a firmware upgrade. They have some significant engineering hurdles to overcome.

But, if they get this hooked up to where they can even sell the hi-res tracks and the early reviews are good, I'd put iTunes on my PC and give it a whirl.[

Who cares about the portability of the iPod in this case? The Wadia allows the iPod, along with a decent DAC, to be a music server for the home two-channel system. If you want portability then use the iPod's $2.00 DAC chip to convert the 24 bit files to analog.

I have no idea if the iPod needs hardware upgrades or not to work with these files. That is just speculation at this time. However, I doubt if Apple would be very interested in selling these files if there was no way to use Apple hardware to play the files. Apple makes their money selling hardware, and the last thing they want to do is have people buying something else to play iTune files.

I suspect the iPod will be able to play these files, but if not maybe they will simultaneously announce a decent music server for playing the songs. Something like the Sooloos, but for only $2K.

SolidSqual

The current and several past generations of iPods are capable of playing WAV and AIFF which is all you need in uncompressed formats. Apple Lossless is also a good option if you lack space. Either way, MAX will convert mot anything into any format. No new technology is needed other than 24bit iTunes. What Apple must acquire is licensing.

On3s&Z3r0s

SolidSqual wrote: »

The current and several past generations of iPods are capable of playing WAV and AIFF which is all you need in uncompressed formats. Apple Lossless is also a good option if you lack space. Either way, MAX will convert mot anything into any format. No new technology is needed other than 24bit iTunes. What Apple must acquire is licensing.

You could be right... I was just going partly based on this quote from the CNN article:

Many models of Mac computers can play 24-bit sound, and the iTunes program is capable of handling such files. But most portable electronics, and many computers, don't support 24-bit audio.

To make the jump to higher-quality music attractive for Apple, the Cupertino, California, company would have to retool future versions of iPods and iPhones so they can play higher-quality files.

And partly based on the fact that, even compressed, 24/96 files are huge. So, if you have a lot of hi-res music a 64GB iPod Touch definitely isn't big enough (at about 1GB per album of hi-res music). And the iPod classic has different problems, IMO mostly around the mechanical drive. It's all conjecture at this point, but I'd be really surprised and impressed if Apple comes up with a good enough iPod that people are motivated to put hi-res music on it. I think it's more likely to end up on some kind of Sonos-style device like BlueFox said.