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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 bo

by 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
    No, I can't; and I wasn't claiming that I can. However, as I stated, if I use an MP3 or AAC in a remix, then compress my remix using a lossy codec like AAC or MP3, the result will sound like crap. It's similar to working with JPEGs in Photoshop (rather than RAW), then trying to re-compress to JPEG: you usually get artifacts. I've been playing classic violin since the age of 3, and I'm very sensitive to details. Just because you don't find a particular genre of music "subtle" doesn't it's not susceptible to the compression artifacts I'm talking about.
    - sjwright 15y ago
      > if I use an MP3 or AAC in a remix, then compress my remix using a lossy codec like AAC or MP3, the result will sound like crap Or far more likely, it won't sound like crap. > trying to re-compress to JPEG: you usually get artifacts. This argument is akin to suggesting that a very very very minimally JPEG compressed screenshot of a website is inferior to plonking a film camera in front of your LCD and exposing a frame. After all, big analogue artefacts don't matter nearly as much. The reality is, AAC at 256kbps is such a light touch that it could probably survive four or five rounds of offset re-encoding before the artefacts would compound meaningfully.

by ethank 15y ago

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
  No, I can't; and I wasn't claiming that I can. However, as I stated, if I use an MP3 or AAC in a remix, then compress my remix using a lossy codec like AAC or MP3, the result will sound like crap. It's similar to working with JPEGs in Photoshop (rather than RAW), then trying to re-compress to JPEG: you usually get artifacts. I've been playing classic violin since the age of 3, and I'm very sensitive to details. Just because you don't find a particular genre of music "subtle" doesn't it's not susceptible to the compression artifacts I'm talking about.
  - sjwright 15y ago
    > if I use an MP3 or AAC in a remix, then compress my remix using a lossy codec like AAC or MP3, the result will sound like crap Or far more likely, it won't sound like crap. > trying to re-compress to JPEG: you usually get artifacts. This argument is akin to suggesting that a very very very minimally JPEG compressed screenshot of a website is inferior to plonking a film camera in front of your LCD and exposing a frame. After all, big analogue artefacts don't matter nearly as much. The reality is, AAC at 256kbps is such a light touch that it could probably survive four or five rounds of offset re-encoding before the artefacts would compound meaningfully.