Apple Rumored To Be Developing High-Resolution Audio Formats

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
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Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
I’ll believe it when I see it. It’s 2015 and the best you can buy on most storefronts are still MP3s.

Apple has long been rumored to be looking to introduce higher-quality audio formats for iTunes Store downloads and perhaps also Apple Music streaming. A year and a half ago, music blogger Robert Hutton claimed Apple was working to roll out high-resolution audio for the iTunes Store, and Mac Otakara made similar claims about an HD Audio format and new hardware being planned for release alongside iOS 8 later that year.
 
I doubt they are developing anything. AAC has long supported substantially higher bitrate, sample rate and channels. Distribution is another thing. But even so you are talking about a niche market. Sorry guys SACD died, DVD-A died, multichannel died. Even Stereophile, the unofficial king of high end audio has always only had about 60-90,000 subscribers. That's not many....and I can tell as a once subscriber I couldn't afford 90% of the stuff that was in that magazine.

The provable advantages are far drowned out by the perceivable advantages of so called high definition audio. The human brain doesn't care what looks good to a machine.

That being said, you can buy Super Audio CD grade digital downloads. Playback compatibility is a big issue though. HD Audio was not originally designed to be consumer friendly, it was originally designed to regain marketshare from piracy, so it's not something that will just work anywhere.

http://www.hdtracks.com/
 
I doubt they are developing anything. AAC has long supported substantially higher bitrate, sample rate and channels. Distribution is another thing. But even so you are talking about a niche market. Sorry guys SACD died, DVD-A died, multichannel died. Even Stereophile, the unofficial king of high end audio has always only had about 60-90,000 subscribers. That's not many....and I can tell as a once subscriber I couldn't afford 90% of the stuff that was in that magazine.

The provable advantages are far drowned out by the perceivable advantages of so called high definition audio. The human brain doesn't care what looks good to a machine.

That being said, you can buy Super Audio CD grade digital downloads. Playback compatibility is a big issue though. HD Audio was not originally designed to be consumer friendly, it was originally designed to regain marketshare from piracy, so it's not something that will just work anywhere.

http://www.hdtracks.com/

I'd buy higher quality audio in FLAC, if I could find it. It nearly impossible to get any mainstream stuff in high or lossless quality unless you buy the CD. I wish someone would do it finally.
 
I'd buy higher quality audio in FLAC, if I could find it. It nearly impossible to get any mainstream stuff in high or lossless quality unless you buy the CD. I wish someone would do it finally.

I fully agree, and I would buy it as well just because I'm a media whore. But the mainstream labels aren't going to bother. But if you like Miles Davis or Diana Krall, you might be in luck. I would love to get an SACD of Pretty Hate Machine or The Cure's Disintegration. It's mainstream stuff, that is respected from a music quality perspective. But no-one is going to invest in that.
 
I'd buy higher quality audio in FLAC, if I could find it. It nearly impossible to get any mainstream stuff in high or lossless quality unless you buy the CD. I wish someone would do it finally.

As another example. REM Automatic For The People is on DVD-A. It's 48/24. I have this.

From that HD tracks site you can get 96/24 in FLAC/ALAC/AIFF for $24 which is reasonable.

They have a 192/24, but you have to buy the entire REM catalog "box set" at $83....that hurts.
 
The apple format is ALAC, now all they need to do is actually sell tracks in that format so I can quit buying CDs and ripping to ALAC.
 
I'd buy higher quality audio in FLAC, if I could find it. It nearly impossible to get any mainstream stuff in high or lossless quality unless you buy the CD. I wish someone would do it finally.

For the most part, I'd rather buy a CD. No worries about the company going out of business and you have a disk you can sell if you don't want it.
 
I had thought they already did this, high quality, with no lock in features for a lot more?

We know Apple just wants to make their "own" format so you can only play it on Apple devices and then charge you more to get a FLAC copy to play anywhere else...and then it will only work with Lightning headphones..
 
I had thought they already did this, high quality, with no lock in features for a lot more?

We know Apple just wants to make their "own" format so you can only play it on Apple devices and then charge you more to get a FLAC copy to play anywhere else...and then it will only work with Lightning headphones..

It's lossless. The format that they use is irrelevant. What's more, you can find Android audio players that handle ALAC.
 
It's not really relevant to us. I don't think that we will be using Apple's service at any rate. I really dislike Apple's heavy handed approach in locking its customers to its platform with moves such as this.
 
We're reaching a point where 8TB storage hard disks are simply affordable.

FLAC's time may finally be here.

I don't really have a problem with 256k and 320k MP3s for any kind of listening in a noisy environment... but if you are trying to enjoy in a quiet room? Lossless is important.
 
We know Apple just wants to make their "own" format so you can only play it on Apple devices and then charge you more to get a FLAC copy to play anywhere else

I really dislike Apple's heavy handed approach in locking its customers to its platform with moves such as this.

Apple Lossless is completely free to use. It's royalty free and open source.
 
I had thought they already did this, high quality, with no lock in features for a lot more?

We know Apple just wants to make their "own" format so you can only play it on Apple devices and then charge you more to get a FLAC copy to play anywhere else...and then it will only work with Lightning headphones..


LOL... ALAC codec is royalty free and open source.
 
Apple needs their own compression method so they can restrict their hardware to it, and make boatloads more money off of their consumer base, which is less than able to realize such a marketing stunt when it hits them in the wallet.
 
We're reaching a point where 8TB storage hard disks are simply affordable.

FLAC's time may finally be here.

I don't really have a problem with 256k and 320k MP3s for any kind of listening in a noisy environment... but if you are trying to enjoy in a quiet room? Lossless is important.

We passed that point years ago. You'd have to have an insane amount of albums to use up 2TB. I've got about 700-800 CDs and in FLAC they use roughly 250GB of space. I'm Unlikely to own 3200 albums. I suspect it'd take me 3-6 months to listen to everything I own.

For the most part, I think the you need huge drives is for Video and to a lesser degree raw photos.
 
I don't think people care. Years ago we thought there was going to be a format war between DVD Audio and SACD, and it turns out they both lost. It's one of the first times I can remember that we went backward instead of forward. It seems like most people are satisfied with mp3.
 
They both lost cause they didn't improve the percievede audio quality compared to just plain old 441.khz/16bit.
 
I don't think people care. Years ago we thought there was going to be a format war between DVD Audio and SACD, and it turns out they both lost. It's one of the first times I can remember that we went backward instead of forward. It seems like most people are satisfied with mp3.

DVD-A and SACD brought no benefits and properly encoded mp3 is indistinguishable from the original in >90% of cases.
 
DVD-A and SACD brought no benefits and properly encoded mp3 is indistinguishable from the original in >90% of cases.

Technically, SACD brought benefits. Sony and Phillips defined the mastering requirement that peaks not peak above -6dB I believe. This leads to far less clipping, and far better masters.

I mean... It's all a bunch of fucking shit though. If they'd just properly master CD audio in the first damn place, we'd be good.
 
Great now we are going to have another audio format war.
 
The whole "high resolution" thing is a fad (not to mention it has a strong placebo effect on most folks) and it'll blow over. Look at the Pono Player that Neil Young is still backing at a massive loss: nobody cares about it and especially not at the ridiculous price they ask ($300) for like $20-30 worth of actual hardware. The whole idea is wasteful from start to finish anyway - I don't care if I had a damned petabyte of storage with redundancy and free power and replacements for life, I still wouldn't waste time collecting/purchasing anything past 16 bit 48 kHz files because our ears really do have limitations.

I'm sure most people interested in the whole high resolution gamble are aware of this page:

https://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

and to this day as Monty - who has his name on multiple audio technology patents, is well respected in the digital audio community, helped created Ogg Vorbis and Opus, and knows more about analog and digital audio than most of us could ever dream of - explains and proves with actual science (!!!) that we're just not really capable of discerning things above and beyond a certain point in terms of frequency response.

As the old saying goes, "Some things are true whether you believe them or not" and yes I realize in this situation it can go either way but, the science is hard and concrete and mathematically accurate so that's kind of difficult to just up and dismiss.

But if people believe - and it's that belief thing that causes the problems - they can actually hear a difference, well, I'll leave 'em to their beliefs.
 
Technically, SACD brought benefits. Sony and Phillips defined the mastering requirement that peaks not peak above -6dB I believe. This leads to far less clipping, and far better masters.

I mean... It's all a bunch of fucking shit though. If they'd just properly master CD audio in the first damn place, we'd be good.

And this is why I buy the SACD versions of things if available. It's not because high resolution audio is awesome - it's because the SACD version typically has the better master when compared to the CD version (which again, if they would have done the CD version in the same way, then that would be all we need. But then again, no "hi-Rez" sales).
 
I honestly believe MP3 @ 320Kbps is very very good. Good enough for most peeps. I personally do not mind it at all. With that said, I can tell the difference in almost all cases between lower and higher bitrates. I love FLAC and would prefer it over MP3 if available. Storage space be damned. If given the choice, I'd get lossless over MP3 any day if price were the same.

On the other hand, it's another Apple format. So I doubt I'll participate. Having so much invested in FLAC and MP3 already.
 
I dont these rumors, seriously. The community creates so much buzz about non existant material its not even funny.
 
Shouldn't it be higher fidelity?...Gotta stick to those terms the general audience can relate too right?:confused:
 
LOL... ALAC codec is royalty free and open source.

I meant this in a thought that Apple is making a "new" format, not using their existing formats. (title of thread based on the "to be developing" not "already developed"
 
Shouldn't it be higher fidelity?...Gotta stick to those terms the general audience can relate too right?:confused:

If the master is the same, there's no advantage to High resolution formats. Most people are incapable of hearing 20khz. 22khz in adults is fairly rare and outside of the studio, there's no advantage to them.

As someone else pointed out, the problem is how things are mastered on CD (i.e. too much. But that's how bands/labels want them mastered. They don't have to do hyper compression.
 
here is what i see when I read that headline
"Apple Rumored To Be Developing High-Resolution Apple device locked Audio Formats"
 
It would please the most people and be most economical if they started using FLAC. So obviously that wont' be happening.


I'm just waiting for the time when you are using your the nice high def apple format... you will be required to have your "authorized" beats headphones plugged in, otherwise it won't play either.
 
I mean... It's all a bunch of fucking shit though. If they'd just properly master CD audio in the first damn place, we'd be good.

THIS +1000

Crappy mastering leads to crappy everything else. E.g. Metallica's Death Magnetic. The guitar hero tracks were solid, but the master they used for CD was so blown out with distortion it was hard to listen to.
 
We know Apple just wants to make their "own" format so you can only play it on Apple devices and then charge you more to get a FLAC copy to play anywhere else...and then it will only work with Lightning headphones..

This.

If they do this, they will sell it as the best audio ever, and it's only available on Apple products (iPhone 7 or better and only with a pair of $500 Apple headphones.
 
The whole "high resolution" thing is a fad (not to mention it has a strong placebo effect on most folks) and it'll blow over. Look at the Pono Player that Neil Young is still backing at a massive loss: nobody cares about it and especially not at the ridiculous price they ask ($300) for like $20-30 worth of actual hardware. The whole idea is wasteful from start to finish anyway - I don't care if I had a damned petabyte of storage with redundancy and free power and replacements for life, I still wouldn't waste time collecting/purchasing anything past 16 bit 48 kHz files because our ears really do have limitations.

I'm sure most people interested in the whole high resolution gamble are aware of this page:

https://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

and to this day as Monty - who has his name on multiple audio technology patents, is well respected in the digital audio community, helped created Ogg Vorbis and Opus, and knows more about analog and digital audio than most of us could ever dream of - explains and proves with actual science (!!!) that we're just not really capable of discerning things above and beyond a certain point in terms of frequency response.

As the old saying goes, "Some things are true whether you believe them or not" and yes I realize in this situation it can go either way but, the science is hard and concrete and mathematically accurate so that's kind of difficult to just up and dismiss.

But if people believe - and it's that belief thing that causes the problems - they can actually hear a difference, well, I'll leave 'em to their beliefs.

Indeed. He has a video fully explaining this as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM
 
and then you play it on apple beats headphones? may as well stick with mp3
 
The amount of times I've found a track on iTunes I want then refuse to purchase because of crappy bitrates is unbelievable.

They obviously don't want my money.
 
I'm amazed about the ammount of people with golden ears that think that 320 Kbps mp3's aren't good enough even "in a quiet room"... i wonder why they haven't gone and taken the listening challenge since if they can make those claims then noticing that the cabling isn't audiophile grade must be soooooooooo simple!, come on guys, i know i know, the prize is only 1m USD$ which must be beneath you, but don't shy away, just show up everyone in the world how golden are your ears!

http://gizmodo.com/305549/james-ran...iles-can-prove-7250-speaker-cables-are-better


PS at 34 years i do still have a range that 19 years would envy, above 19 KHz with my crappy speakers even, and claim BS on those "purity" claims.
 
Honestly, 320kbps mp3's are good, but most of the mastering still sucks. High-res audio is a marketing point. I have tons of 320kbps songs/albums from Google Play and many are filled with artifacts. I'm not sure why this is, if it is from their compression or the download or what. Either way, I rip my music to FLAC with EAC. I have the space, and why would I want FLAC + mp3's? I'm a big fan of loseless audio bluray concerts/music. Better mastering as intended.
 
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