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MP3 was great for its time. It’s not a crap format, there are merely better formats available today. They weren’t when MP3 came to the market. (Specifically AAC

by ugh 15y ago

MP3 was great for its time. It’s not a crap format, there are merely better formats available today. They weren’t when MP3 came to the market. (Specifically AAC was developed as a successor to MP3.) I’m also not sure whether this tells you anything. Apple started selling AAC encoded music at a time when no† music player could play it. Many mistakenly thought that AAC was some sort of proprietary Apple codec and it might as well have been. Today more people than ever have an iOS device or an iPod. There is no need at all for Apple to play nice and make sure that others can also use the ALAC. Why should they? Also: What’s the incentive for offering lossless music? No one† can tell the difference. Do you really think Apple will start catering to audiophiles? Because of the switch to flash memory space is limited, Apple’s current devices are not a good match for lossless music. — † Don’t be pedantic.

ethank 15y ago
Lossless music - there is an audience for it, and it creates the ability to stratify prices, which the labels/rights-holders/distributors like. See the vinyl boom, hdtracks.com, http://www.becausesoundmatters.com/ http://www.becausesoundmatters.com/, etc. So will Apple cater to audiophiles? No. Will they cater to margins? For damned sure they will if it serves them and those they entice to sign over content. Why would they switch to 1080P otherwise? Also: given device sizes it would be nice to have raw uncompressed/lossless and I could downsample at will to suit specific devices/systems.
- ugh 15y ago
  Sure it might happen, but it would also confuse consumers. That’s a huge negative point to me. I also don’t see the connection to this.
- bluedanieru 15y ago
  >Lossless music - there is an audience for it, and it creates the ability to stratify prices, which the labels/rights-holders/distributors like. Yeah, this kind of thinking is pervasive in the music industry which is why I make sure they never get any of my money. You're always paying for the licensing, not the delivery method (so they don't need to replace your CD at cost), unless they can make a buck by making you pay for that, in which case you are no longer paying for the license, but rather the delivery method. As such I don't even know what the fuck I'd be paying for if I bought a song on iTunes or whatever else.
- splicer 15y ago
  I only buy lossless music. I usually end up buying WAV/AIFF/FLAC direct from the artist, from their record label, or from Beatport. Once in a while, if I can't find something, I'll buy it on CD. Earlier today, I actually bought vinyl because I couldn't find a lossless digital version of this track anywhere: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwsUfEvmKwI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwsUfEvmKwI Lossy formats are useless to me since I can't remix them without it sounding like crap. I also feel I'm getting ripped-off when they charge near CD price for lossy tracks. Also, 20 years from now I'm going to want to convert my music to whatever fancy lossy codec has supplanted MP3 and AAC. By archiving in an open lossless format like FLAC (or now ALAC), I can do this without introducing artifacts.
  - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
    Do you really think you could hear the difference between 256kbps AAC and Lossless? Even if your hearing is way above average, most audio players and earphones aren't that good. (Also, given the less-than-subtle music you linked to, I doubt that it really matters.)
    - matwood 15y ago
      Do you really think you could hear the difference between 256kbps AAC and Lossless? All the people who claim to be audiophiles and think that thousand dollar wooden knobs make their music sound more rich certainly do.
    - prodigal_erik 15y ago
      Codecs like AAC apply psychoacoustic rules that were only correct for the overall piece being encoded, not samples taken from it. If a song has two overlapping sounds and the human ear physically can't hear both, a lossy codec looks for that and conserves space by completely omitting the sound that was masked, leaving you with no way to recover it if your postprocessing takes away the sound that had been masking it. A lossless codec preserves the sounds you might be able to hear after sampling or remixing, though of course it takes more space to do that.
    - splicer 15y ago
savoytruffle 15y ago
ALAC is used in AirPlay streaming (it was first announced along with the AirPort Express in mid 2004). This might be a plan to make AirPlay audio streaming more ubiquitous.
- jsz0 15y ago
  The nice thing about ALAC with AirPlay is it does not transcode to a compressed format for streaming.
yuhong 15y ago
"Apple started selling AAC encoded music at a time when no† music player could play it" Not that it mattered at the time as they were DRMed anyway.
altrego99 15y ago
> Why should they? Because others already have FLAC? Isn't it similar to the kid offering to share his bicycle, to his neighbor, with the hope of friendship, knowing fully well that it will do no real benefit since his neighbor already has an equally good machine?

by ugh 15y ago

ethank 15y ago

Lossless music - there is an audience for it, and it creates the ability to stratify prices, which the labels/rights-holders/distributors like. See the vinyl boom, hdtracks.com, http://www.becausesoundmatters.com/ http://www.becausesoundmatters.com/, etc. So will Apple cater to audiophiles? No. Will they cater to margins? For damned sure they will if it serves them and those they entice to sign over content. Why would they switch to 1080P otherwise? Also: given device sizes it would be nice to have raw uncompressed/lossless and I could downsample at will to suit specific devices/systems.

ugh 15y ago
Sure it might happen, but it would also confuse consumers. That’s a huge negative point to me. I also don’t see the connection to this.
bluedanieru 15y ago
>Lossless music - there is an audience for it, and it creates the ability to stratify prices, which the labels/rights-holders/distributors like. Yeah, this kind of thinking is pervasive in the music industry which is why I make sure they never get any of my money. You're always paying for the licensing, not the delivery method (so they don't need to replace your CD at cost), unless they can make a buck by making you pay for that, in which case you are no longer paying for the license, but rather the delivery method. As such I don't even know what the fuck I'd be paying for if I bought a song on iTunes or whatever else.
splicer 15y ago
I only buy lossless music. I usually end up buying WAV/AIFF/FLAC direct from the artist, from their record label, or from Beatport. Once in a while, if I can't find something, I'll buy it on CD. Earlier today, I actually bought vinyl because I couldn't find a lossless digital version of this track anywhere: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwsUfEvmKwI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwsUfEvmKwI Lossy formats are useless to me since I can't remix them without it sounding like crap. I also feel I'm getting ripped-off when they charge near CD price for lossy tracks. Also, 20 years from now I'm going to want to convert my music to whatever fancy lossy codec has supplanted MP3 and AAC. By archiving in an open lossless format like FLAC (or now ALAC), I can do this without introducing artifacts.
- Samuel_Michon 15y ago
  Do you really think you could hear the difference between 256kbps AAC and Lossless? Even if your hearing is way above average, most audio players and earphones aren't that good. (Also, given the less-than-subtle music you linked to, I doubt that it really matters.)
  - matwood 15y ago
    Do you really think you could hear the difference between 256kbps AAC and Lossless? All the people who claim to be audiophiles and think that thousand dollar wooden knobs make their music sound more rich certainly do.
  - prodigal_erik 15y ago
    Codecs like AAC apply psychoacoustic rules that were only correct for the overall piece being encoded, not samples taken from it. If a song has two overlapping sounds and the human ear physically can't hear both, a lossy codec looks for that and conserves space by completely omitting the sound that was masked, leaving you with no way to recover it if your postprocessing takes away the sound that had been masking it. A lossless codec preserves the sounds you might be able to hear after sampling or remixing, though of course it takes more space to do that.
  - splicer 15y ago

savoytruffle 15y ago

ALAC is used in AirPlay streaming (it was first announced along with the AirPort Express in mid 2004). This might be a plan to make AirPlay audio streaming more ubiquitous.

jsz0 15y ago
The nice thing about ALAC with AirPlay is it does not transcode to a compressed format for streaming.

yuhong 15y ago

"Apple started selling AAC encoded music at a time when no† music player could play it" Not that it mattered at the time as they were DRMed anyway.

altrego99 15y ago

> Why should they? Because others already have FLAC? Isn't it similar to the kid offering to share his bicycle, to his neighbor, with the hope of friendship, knowing fully well that it will do no real benefit since his neighbor already has an equally good machine?