Beatles being remastered, but...

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Level 6

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Beatles being remastered, but...

One of the main reasons given for the delay in all the Beatles albums/tracks coming to the iTunes Store (or to be fair any download store), has been the ongoing work to remaster all their albums and presumably enhance their audio quality.

I have no problem with this, but it does raise an interesting issue.

Why then downgrade the audio quality to lossy AAC (iTunes Store), or WMA (Napster, Urge, etc.), or MP3 (eMusic)? Surely this defeats the whole purpose of remastering them in the first place (for downloads).

Supposedly the iTunes Producer (1.4 or later) tool used to submit tracks to the iTunes Store now supports Apple Lossless.

Come on Apple Inc, (& Apple Corp), you know it makes sense...

After all, even Apple Lossless tracks are still smaller than Movies and TV shows.

PowerBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Feb 16, 2007 8:53 AM

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Answer 1

Chris CA

Level 10

82,513 points

Feb 16, 2007 9:04 AM in response to John Lockwood

One of the main reasons given for the delay in all the Beatles albums/tracks coming to the iTunes Store (or to be fair any download store), has been the ongoing work to remaster all their albums and presumably enhance their audio quality.
It is? I haven't seen any announcements by Apple in regards to this.
Also, I have not seen any announcements that they will even be available in iTunes.

No, remastering doesn't defeat the purpose.
If you have higher quality input, you will have higher quality output.
It's similar to RIPping straight from CD or converting an MP# to AAC (or vice-versa).from a

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Answer 2

Paul Judd

Level 6

13,420 points

Feb 16, 2007 10:19 AM in response to John Lockwood

After all, even Apple Lossless tracks are still smaller than Movies and TV shows.

Your comparing apples and oragnges. A lossless audio track has nothing to do with a movie file that contains audio but video as well.

Again, it is not Apple's choice on how the music gets sold. Apple can only sell what the cointent holders will sell. Plus as far as I know AL doesnt support DRM.

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Answer 3

John Lockwood Author

Level 6

13,697 points

Feb 16, 2007 2:31 PM in response to Paul Judd

With regards to what Chris CA wrote.

All 13 Beatles studio albums have been remastered in preparation for their release on downloads services, according to Neil Aspinall who manages the band's musical legacy.
But contrary to rumours, Apple's iTunes Store will not have exclusive access to the recordings.
'It will be on all the services, not just one,' Aspinall told Fox News.

This seems pretty conclusive proof.

Are you disputing that AAC, WMA (lossy) and MP3 are all lower quality than CD? This is my point, whats the point in improving the quality when it won't even (as a lossy download) be as good as the old CDs.

With regards to Paul Judd's comment.

My point was that people are happy to download much larger files than Apple Lossless would be already, the fact that Apple Lossless is larger than AAC is obviously not a barrier. Therefore there is no technical or customer issue preventing Apple doing this (especially as their software at both ends can already support this). It is almost certainly just a record company decision.

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Answer 4

Chris CA

Level 10

82,513 points

Feb 16, 2007 2:55 PM in response to John Lockwood

Are you disputing that AAC, WMA (lossy) and MP3 are all lower quality than CD?
No.
Just that remastered music converted to AAC will sound better than the original converted to AAC.

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