iTunes Download Bitrate Question.

Put it on a bigger soundsystem, and no one would wanna buy from itunes store anymore.

I am sorry, but if they are going to charge as much as a CD for their music, then they should be providing CD quality, not the rubbish currently sold. All the music I ripped to Itunes is apple lossless, and it sounds great. I have bought a couple of albums through itunes a few years ago for convenience sake, and they sounded crap. never again. I wish I could get my money back. I went out and bought the same on CD and reripped to itunes.

I read Ken's article. Almost sounds as if he's on the apple payroll.

First, bit rate (and bit depth) matter very much but it will only matter as it relates to what you are listening through. Stock buds, most docks, and almost all car stereos will sounds fine at 256 maybe even 128 all though I do not know why you would not use 320. The space issue is not that significant to today's world of terabyte drives. As we know, once you take down the rate unless you keep the original source it's gone.

There is little question that a perfect LP sounds better than most CD's light years better than a compressed digital a file. I could never live with LP's. Digital is just way more convenient. There are several reasons LP's sound great. The one most objective one is an LP can be converted to a bit depth of double a cd and a bit rate of 96000! Cd's brought this down to 14411 and you can read about how this was decided. There was some sound logic used to decide this. Taking the bit rate down further seems to be strictly a function of cost and marketing choices. It most certainly affects the quality for those who choose to invest in equipment that make 14411 and higher bit rate sound glorious. Ken mentions several well known music components that used with additional equipment (like a headphone amp, or separate DACs) would with out question decipher between a 128 and 14411 file. I don't know....a quality headphone without quality amplification plugged directly into IPOD...maybe you can't hear a appreciable difference.

The point hear is 256 is fine for many people, probably most. If you love great sound and invested some money to hear it 128 is unacceptable. 256 pretty unacceptable. I've listened and compared and the following I know is subjective but here goes....listening through a good headphone system...and mine is mostest by many standards say about a total spend of $2500, you can identify a 128 file 100% of the time. At 320 not quite as easy. If the production of the recording is stellar it could fool you. Decipher it from a 14411 file can be made 90% of time. I can not decipher between 14411 and 96000 but at 192000 you can decipher nearly 100% of the time against a 14411 file. Having a IPOD Classic which has plenty of space, every thing gets reduced to 320 for car listening. I likely would not notice 256 files. My problem is even though there are places to buy high resolution files, selection is limited. For final word, apple try as you might there are many formats like flac you ignore and it makes me thing less of Apple for doing this.

Larry

mp3 & aac are terrible formats & totally outdated - invented at a time when space on a hard drive was at a premium. Wav & flac files are a good way forward.

You wouldn't choose to play a VHS cassette on an HD TV so why use this format for audio.

Have a read of this is you want to understand more
http://www.demo.lastnightadjsavedmylife.org/ning/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/the- soundscape-consciousness-arena.pdf

I disagree with Larry's post (above) in as much as I think that 256kbps sounds empty & hollow on any decent system whether in the car, at home or elsewhere. However, its outrageous that format & bitrate that you buy from iTunes & many other sites is so poor, there really is no excuse given the price charged that you're not able to select what you want. Obviously most non-Apple devices don't play AAC as Apple won't license it so effectively you're buying poor quality music & locking yourself in to Apple products at the same time!
🙂

You are entitled to your opinion on Lossy vs. Lossless.

Holdz wrote:

Obviously most non-Apple devices don't play AAC as Apple won't license it so effectively you're buying poor quality music & locking yourself in to Apple products at the same time!

🙂

But this is just wrong. AAC is not a proprietary codec owned by Apple that needs to be licensed. It is, in fact, "

a standardized, lossycompression and encoding scheme for digital audio" that has been "standardized by ISO and IEC, as part of the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 specifications." You might want to read this Wikipedia page for more information.

This "AAC is owned by Apple" myth is so old and discredited I'm surprised anyone still believes it.

The long and short of it is Apple does not have complete control over what they sell in the iTunes Store. They can only sell what the record labels allow them to sell as they are the copyrights holders of the music.

At the end of the day, Apple charge far too much, for lossy music. For example, if you want to by PiNK's new album The Truth about Love, on itunes it is $16.99 for a 13 track album (then you need to include the cost of the data to download). The same 13 track album from JB Hifi is $14.99 (then you need to include the cost of going to a store to purchase). JB's also offer a Digipak that includes 3 extra tracks for $19.99. So CD quality is around 1400Kb/s, itunes offers 256Kb/s. So their price for this album on itunes should be (given the 14.99 from JB) $2.74, or they should be providing the extra Kb/s, (especially if they are charging more for a lossy album).

I'm not sure what country's store you're looking at but in the US store that album is $10.99 for both the explicit and clean versions that both have 15 tracks.

But the simple fact of the matter is, no one forces you to shop at the iTunes Store. If you don't like the products... don't buy them. Simple. If you want lossless than find where you can buy them online and buy them.

The Australian store, it has been noted by the consumer competition watchdog that apple is ripping us off in their pricing on itunes. Still for you $10.99 is a rip off for a 256kbs. You are correct, no body forces me to buy on itunes and I dont, for the simple fact of their **** bitrates. Most other online stores only sell in FLAC for lossless, which I then have to convert, as apple do not support FLAC. So for convenience sake, I would buy through apple if they sold a lossless format. I just dont understand why they cannot offer different bit rates, and they have not provided an answer when I have asked them directly. These days storage and download data limits are not much of problem.

nealfrommitchell park wrote:

I just dont understand why they cannot offer different bit rates...

Because the record labels won't let them. Apple does not own the copyrights to the music they sell so they can't just do whatever they want. The record labels are trying to protect their rapidly shrinking profits from CDs and there is very little chance they will allow Apple or any other digital music store to sell lossless tracks (either FLAC or ALAC) en mass in the immediate future. They may eventually, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

And lets face it... folks like you and I that want lossless are in the minority of the digital music buying public. Our demographic is so small that the record labels really don't care about us, so they will let the speciality digital music stores service our purchases.

So if record labels are limiting bit rate then how can hdtracks sell full albums from major label bands in 192hz 24bit aiff alac flac and wav? Bandcamp.com also gives option for mp3 (320) flac and wav. Also I listen to mog and spotify in 320 all day so is your point just conjecture or have you read documentation on labels limiting bit rate?

Because the record labels license those sites to sell lossless music in those bit rates. The record labels control the copyrights, so they license who gets to sell the music in what file formats and at what bit rates. The same goes for subscription streaming services.

It seems odd, don't you agree, that record labels would license high bit rate to low volume sites but not their biggest digital revenue provider iTunes?

I do not pretend to understand the mind of a record label executive. If you want to continue thinking about it, go right ahead.

I don't believe that it has anything to do with the record companies refusing to licence their music to Apple - its all to do with profit!
Maybe the record company's charge more for higher bitrate / better format - but I still doubt there's a major label out there that wants to take Apple on.

In my opinion its because the files iTunes sell are smaller & therefore use less storage & less bandwidth. Apple can get away with doing it as most people are clueless about music format.

People (including myself) believe that aac was proprietary to Apple as their DRM used to stop it playing on other devices.

There is no doubt whatsoever that .wav, .flac etc provide a way better sound - that is fact not a personal opinion.

All I have to say to online music providers & record company's who rip off their customers is long live music piracy - you deserve all you get...!

Like Ken, I think Michael has injested a few Apple seeds that are spouting.

Buying the physical CD is the only option that offers selection and quality. Lossless download sites and selection is extremly limited. While I do not mind buying physical CD's, I'd much prefer to live and use the technoligy we already have reaidly available. Until the vast majority of the public demands quaility download files (which is not likely) , we are not going to get them from mass market Itunes (nor thier chief competitor).

I have seen download albums for $16.00 which I beleive is completly out of line (and it seems only priced this way on million selling new relases). This kind of price is what drove many to seek a very cheap alternative.

If people pay that price, thats how they will be priced. We need more than myselff to refuse buying at that price level and that quality (for a download !). Apple I love ya hardware and software but vote for you get progressive and re-invent Itunes. There is a re-sugence of quality headphone systems people are buying.

Larry