Is it a bit silly...

[Kimba W Lion]

...to talk about remastering quality and equipment, when most of the people on
this group see nothing wrong with using a "service" that breaks down on a very
regular basis?

Yes, Google is not talking to the rest of the world. Again.

And IMO, caring about quality applies to all endeavors.

Or is that just me?

[O]

In article <ot3qr79a50g314cal...@4ax.com>, Kimba W Lion

I'm sure you're not alone.

"All endeavors" seems a little too stringent for me. I care that
enough quality exists for the job at hand. We all use computer
programs, they all have bugs. What's the level of quality for a
computer program to make it acceptable for use? I'd submit that that
level is less than the level required for an automobile. I'd want my
automobile to have more quality engineering than my computer software,
as my life depends on my automobile.

It is a bit ironic to talk about the "quality" of delivery of material
(usenet posts) which are pretty uniformly devoid of much quality. Kind
of wanting to buy the best shovel to shovel excrement with.

-Owen

[Kimba W Lion]

O <ow...@denofinequityx.com> wrote:

>Kind of wanting to buy the best shovel to shovel excrement with.

Well, I sure wouldn't want it to break in the middle of a job.

[Oscar]

On May 23, 9:33 am, Kimba W Lion wrote:
>
> ...to talk about remastering quality and equipment, when most of the people on
> this group see nothing wrong with using a "service" that breaks down on a very
> regular basis?

I don't think it's silly at all. IMO, silly is iTunes's new
initiative, Mastered For iTunes http://tiny.cc/db4rew which provides
mastering engineers with software that helps tweak the music that will
be encoded as AAC, rather that relying on a standardized encoding
process. These files are not of a higher technical quality, just
(ostensibly) made to sound as good as possible within the restrictions
of the format. Legendary mastering engineer Bob Ludwig, formerly of
Sterling Sound and Masterdisk — who cut some of the best-sounding rock
vinyl of the 70's and 80's along with practically every US Nonesuch
classical album of the 70's (tragically pressed on some of the
noisiest vinyl of the era) — thinks differently:

'From a technical viewpoint, there are cases where the lossy 24-bit
AAC file would be superior to the lossless CD. I did an early
demonstration for some engineer friends of mine and the difference
between the 'Mastered for iTunes' file I created and the one that was
ripped from a 16-bit CD was easily heard on the little speakers on my
MacBook Pro.' (from email to NPR.org about the initiative)

I'm on the side of musician John Vanderslice who told NPR, 'The idea
of mastering for a lesser format is completely insane. My first
reaction was it would be like if you were a writer and you were told
that you would have to re-edit your book for the dimwitted or the
dyslexic. The idea of mastering is that you have the definitive high
resolution product and you wilfully ignore every other variable
downstream, whether it's compression codecs or speakers or whether
someone's listening to it on earbuds.'

IMHO, Mastered For iTunes is plainly Apple's final nail-in-the-coffin
for any hope of an Apple Lossless future. There is not enough room on
the 'cloud' for all that 'useless' extra data. A real pity!

[Oscar]

Here is a more in-depth article on Mastered For iTunes, well worth
your time.

From ArsTechnica, posted February 22, 2012 http://tiny.cc/bu4rew

<<By Chris Foresman

In an age when Apple has become the top music retailer without selling
a single physical disc, audio engineers are increasingly creating
specially mastered versions of songs and albums designed to counteract
the audio degradation caused by compression. Though audiophiles
typically scoff at paying for compressed audio, preferring vinyl or
high-end digital formats such as DVD-A, mastering engineers are doing
their best to create digital masters that can pass through Apple's
iTunes algorithms with minimal sonic corruption.

To highlight work done to improve the sound of compressed music files,
Apple recently launched a "Mastered for iTunes" section on the iTunes
Store. It now also provides a set of recommendations for engineers to
follow when preparing master files for submission to the iTunes Store.
To qualify for the "Mastered for iTunes" label, Apple says that files
should be submitted in the highest resolution format possible, and
remastered content should sound significantly better than the
original.

How does this work? Ars spoke with Masterdisk Chief Engineer Andy
VanDette, who recently completed a project remastering the bulk of
Rush's back catalogue. As part of the process, VanDette created
special versions of each song specifically for uploading to the iTunes
Store. He described the often lengthy, trial-and-error process of
trying to make iTunes tracks sound as close as possible to polished CD
remasters.

The state of compressed audio

All music purchased from iTunes is compressed using a "lossy"
compression algorithm called Advanced Audio Coding (AAC). Lossy
compression algorithms toss out some of the information contained in a
digital file in exchange for very small file sizes. Formats like AAC
(and MP3) try to be intelligent about what information is tossed out
in order to maintain fidelity with the original, uncompressed file.
They do so by eliminating frequencies and harmonics least likely to be
discerned by the average listener.

(The JPEG image format attempts to do the same thing with photos,
eliminating details and colors that aren't likely to be noticed by the
average viewer. This is why JPEGs can sometimes look blocky if saved
at a high compression rate.)

A number of music industry luminaries, including Jimmy Iovine (head of
Interscope-Geffen-A&M), Dr. Dre, and most recently Neil Young, have
bemoaned the fact most music now plays back from a compressed file,
resulting in a "degradation" of the sound an artist originally tried
to create.

"We live in the digital age, and unfortunately it's degrading our
music, not improving it," Young said in January during the D: Dive
Into Media conference.

Young and his cohorts are attempting to make uncompressed, higher-end
audio formats a common standard across the industry. Music throughout
the last decade is typically recorded using 24-bit samples at 96kHz,
and advances in computing power and hard disk space have recently made
even higher quality, 24-bit 192kHz digital recording possible.

However, even the standard CD format comes in a much lower resolution—
just 16-bit 44.1kHz. Compared to 24-bit 192kHz digital audio, a
finished CD only has roughly 15 percent of the information captured
during the recording process. Compressing the songs on a CD further
into 256kbps AAC "iTunes Plus" format cuts the data down to just one-
fifth of the size of CD audio, or as little as three percent of the
original 192kHz recordings.

"We're working with [Apple] and other digital services—download
services—to change to 24-bit," Iovine said. Young also admitted to
working with Apple to make 24-bit audio standard across its mobile
devices, though he suggested that no progress has happened since Steve
Jobs—known for his love of classic rock—died last October.

As an audio engineer, VanDette is "hopeful" hardware and storage
capabilities will one day make uncompressed, 24-bit audio a practical
standard. For instance, digital music service HDtracks already offers
a catalogue of 24-bit audio files at various sampling rates up to
192kHz. But such audiophile quality is only beneficial to those with
expensive stereo equipment capable of reproducing the subtle nuances
captured in these higher-quality files.

"I am encouraged to see a growing catalog at HDtracks, but being able
to have your entire album collection in your pocket is cool, too,"
VanDette told Ars. As long as iPhones and iPods are the most common
playback equipment, and the iTunes Store the top source for music,
compressed audio files are, practically speaking, here to stay for the
foreseeable future.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

Want an uphill battle? Try pushing the bulk of consumers to embrace
niche audiophile formats and upgrade to capable equipment. Instead,
audio engineers have taken to mastering versions of songs and albums
specifically for the iTunes Store.

A similar mastering process is already done to prepare albums for
other physical formats. As previously noted, recording is typically
done in a digital 24-bit 96kHz format. However, audio released in CD
format is 16-bit 44.1kHz quality, requiring a conversion from the
original source. Engineers adjust equalization, levels, compression,
noise filters, and other parameters to cram as much of the source
material into those limits.

(Returning to our earlier photo analogy, the process is similar to
converting a 14-bit RAW file from a DSLR into a standard 8-bit TIFF.)

Recording can also be done at varying bit-depths and sampling rates.
Sometimes it's still done using vintage analog gear (see recent Grammy
winners, The Foo Fighters). Albums are still released on analog vinyl
format, and in some cases are made available in high-end digital
formats such as Super Audio CD (SACD) or DVD-Audio (DVD-A). A
mastering engineer will take whatever source material is provided—
analog or digital—and optimize it for each release format, taking into
account each format's unique strengths and limits.

VanDette explained how mastering varies depending on the age of the
original recordings as well as the final output format. Many master
recordings for Rush albums are from vinyl's heyday, he said. "Back
then we would try and hide as much top end as possible, knowing that
the end users' styli would be crap."

"Most listeners today swear they love the bottom end on vinyl, but I
remember in the heyday of vinyl, it was all about top end," VanDette
told Ars. "'If we could only have a clear top end without all those
pops and clicks' we thought," he said, noting the tendency of low-end
record players to introduce unwanted noise. "Back then, bottom was the
enemy. It made the grooves [in the vinyl] too wide, and forced us to
turn down the overall level of the disc."

The constraints of vinyl aren't a concern when mastering for a CD, so
it's possible to boost overall levels as well as low frequencies
without ruining the rest of the mix. "While remastering the classic
Rush albums, I added as much LF as I could, always aware not to cloud
the classic 'ping' on Neil's snare, muddle Geddy's voice, or bury
Alex's guitar," he said.

"These are some finely balanced mixes, even 35 years later," VanDette
said. "I wanted to make sure the listener still heard the classic
album come through, without it being too loud, boomy, or modern
sounding."

iTunes Plus tracks available from the iTunes Store use the same 16-bit
44.1kHz quality as CDs, so the same master files created for CD
production are typically used to generate the compressed files
uploaded to iTunes. However, the compression process can eliminate or
distort certain sounds that, while most listeners may not notice
consciously, can degrade the listening experience.

"Mastering for iTunes was a different challenge," VanDette told Ars.
"You can't get around it—when you throw away 80 percent of the data,
the sound changes. It was my quest to make the AAC files sound as
close to the CD as possible; I did not want them to be any more loud,
hyped, or boomy sounding than the CD."

Because iTunes tracks are typically played back on decidedly average
earbuds or computer speakers, there is a tendency for some producers
to boost bass frequencies to make up for the tinny sound. However,
VanDette said, doing so is not really the answer. For one thing,
there's no guarantee that playback will always happen on sub-par
equipment. "There are now systems to slip you iPod into that have
decent bass response, and computer speakers that have a subwoofer," he
said. "I mastered an album for a mega producer who was intent on
adding LF for earbuds and laptops. The result was an album that you
can't listen to in a car."

Vlado Meller, engineer at Masterdisk, described mastering for iTunes
"like polishing your Bentley in total darkness, then turning on the
lights to see where you missed."
Jason Ward at Chicago Mastering Service agreed it's a bad idea to try
and create masters for specific listening environments. "Most modern
hits these days are sounding pretty fatiguing and less than ideal on
any system to my ears," Ward told Ars. "Though that probably says much
more about what is considered to sound good than the skills of the
relevant engineers."

"I just try to make things sound as good as feasible for as wide a
range of possible playback environments as possible," Ward said. "The
only real tragedy would be to make decisions which would penalize
listeners with good playback systems by making decisions to allegedly
enhance enjoyment on inferior playback systems."

Creating iTunes-specific masters for Rush's albums required a more
nuanced approach than just boosting the bass. "The delicate mix
balances of a Rush album dictated that I could only 'nudge' the
bottom, not really boost it," VanDette explained. "For iTunes
mastering I focused on making up for the losses created by the iTunes
AAC algorithm. Generally, I heard changes in level, bottom, top,
punch, and imaging."

But not every album, or even every song, could be treated the same
way. "On a live album I found the center image was lower, making
Geddy's vocal too low in the mix," VanDette said. "It was rare to be
able to use one static setting for an entire album."

The problem? The AAC compression algorithm is "quite quirky." Without
compressing a song, and carefully listening to it, then comparing to
the uncompressed master, there's no way to predict how the sound will
change. Vlado Meller, another engineer at Masterdisk, described
mastering for iTunes "like polishing your Bentley in total darkness,
then turning on the lights to see where you missed."

"There are no accurate real-time tools to help you hear what the
algorithm will do," VanDette said. "It was not uncommon to revise
tracks three, four, even five times until I got something that
compared well with the CD.">>

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT POST...

[Steve Emerson]

In article <ot3qr79a50g314cal...@4ax.com>,
Kimba W Lion <noreplie...@norepliesbyemail.invalid> wrote:

Not at all. I don't like it any better than you do.

But with gigantic corporations -- they're not going to put the resources
or the company stars on a small piece of the thing like Google Groups,
and especially not on a part of it like the interface with Usenet, which
in all likelihood is a term most people there wouldn't even recognize.

Facebook is worse. It's full of things that are broken. They don't give
a shit. The help forums are rife with complaints they never do anything
about. It has no effect on their immediate success. The fact that they
piss off sizeable numbers of users and in the long run create antipathy
-- that's the sort of large view that they're not going to possess.

Google at least owes its success to doing a good job with something
(search). Facebook owes its success solely to having an idea and not
utterly screwing it up.

In both cases, advertising revenues are at many removes from the way the
company handles problems of quality. (Probably not as many removes as
they think, however.)

Back to the big corporations: in a lot of areas, it's axiomatic that
when a quality-oriented small company gets bought, it declines or
becomes useless. Dog foods, which increasingly are an enormous business
-- boutique companies grow up out of the ground as an alternative to the
products of the semi-dishonest, word-mincing giants, and eventually they
become successful enough that a giant buys them. At which point you have
to find a new food.

With Deja News, we knew they cared because it was all they did.

PS: When GM was running Saturn, they started with the idea that it was a
completely non-GM operation, with a plant in Tennessee where any worker
could shut down the line, union agreements were different, quality was
based on W. Edwards Deming principles, etc. etc. Then the day came when
they said, You know, it's just impractical and expensive to run this
thing down in Tennessee. We're going to build the cars on a line in
Detroit and turn it into a brand.

That, to coin a phrase, says it all.

SE.

[Oscar]

Continued from above...

<<How Apple is battling compression

Apple is working to make compressed files available from the iTunes
Store sound better in two ways. First, it developed a set of
guidelines and tools to help engineers create the best sounding
masters. Apple said the conversion process it uses to convert from
uncompressed audio to iTunes Plus format is special, downsampling high-
resolution audio to 44.1kHz using 32-bit floating point values, which
are then converted to AAC directly. This process significantly reduces
noise and dithering typically introduced in downsampling, so engineers
can submit 24-bit 96kHz files directly.

Apple suggests submitting high-resolution audio files will become more
important down the road. "As technology advances and bandwidth,
storage, battery life, and processor power increase, keeping the
highest quality masters available in our systems allows for full
advantage of future improvements to your music," reads their guide to
iTunes mastering. "These masters matter—especially given the move into
the cloud on post-PC devices."

Apple also provides some basic tools to help engineers audition how
the AAC conversion process sounds. These tools convert any WAV or AIF
file into 256kbps iTunes Plus AAC files exactly as Apple does. While
they don't work in real time as VanDette would prefer, they do
automate the conversion process a bit. Apple even offers an Audio Unit
plug-in to compare the encoded file to the original in digital audio
workstation software.

In addition, Apple created a special landing page in iTunes linking to
content specially mastered or remastered for iTunes Plus format. While
there's no easily identifiable badge users can look for, some albums
specially mastered for iTunes (identified as such when uploaded by the
record label) have a small blurb of text at the beginning of the
description. "This album is Mastered for iTunes."

The first such album that appeared labelled in the iTunes Store, as
far as we can determine, is a live EP by Metallica called Beyond
Magnetic, released in December 2011. The description on the iTunes
Store clearly states "this EP is Mastered for iTunes." However,
VanDette told Ars that his colleague Meller recently worked on the new
Red Hot Chili Peppers album I'm With You, released in August 2011.
Meller created special masters for the iTunes Store, and it is
highlighted on the "Mastered for iTunes" section. That album doesn't
have any current indication of special mastering treatment on its
description page.

Regardless, the trend of mastering for iTunes is becoming more
commonplace. Universal Music Group announced on Tuesday that new
albums from Paul McCartney and Madonna have been "Mastered for
iTunes," as have catalog titles from U2, Bon Jovi, and John Coltrane,
among others. The iTunes Store lists recent albums from Lana Del Ray,
The Decemberists, Jane's Addiction, Wilco, and Taylor Swift under the
"Mastered for iTunes" label. Remastered albums from Beck, Nirvana,
Diana Krall, Herbie Hancock are there, as is the entirety of Pink
Floyd's catalog.

While major label artists are starting to have albums mastered just
for iTunes, though, indie artists haven't yet taken the plunge,
largely due to price concerns. "At our studio, we've never been asked
to provide a specific iTunes master," Chicago Mastering partner Bob
Weston told Ars. "Although I can see that it has the potential for
making the AAC encoded masters sound truer to the CD and LP versions,
it would be a time consuming process that the majority of our clients
probably wouldn't want to pay for."

The mastering work for Rush's catalogue is finished, and VanDette is
waiting on final record label approval before the new remasters will
be available on iTunes. (The versions currently available are
converted from remasters done in 1997.) Ultimately, he expects to get
more requests for specific iTunes mastering as time goes on.

"With the death of the CD being forecast in the near future, I believe
that mastering specifically for the most popular consumer format will
become more commonplace," VanDette said. "If Apple releases better
tools to make it easier—relying on the same algorithm used in iTunes
Producer—this could happen much quicker.">>

[Paul Goldstein]

In article <emersn-A7A971....@nnrp-virt.nntp.sonic.net>, Steve
Emerson
says...

>Facebook is worse. It's full of things that are broken. They don't give
>a shit. The help forums are rife with complaints they never do anything
>about. It has no effect on their immediate success. The fact that they
>piss off sizeable numbers of users and in the long run create antipathy
>-- that's the sort of large view that they're not going to possess.
>
>Google at least owes its success to doing a good job with something
>(search). Facebook owes its success solely to having an idea and not
>utterly screwing it up.

Exactly right about Facebook. I started using Facebook recently. I am
astonished
at how truly awful its user interface is. You feel like you are back at the
dawn
of the internet.

[graham]

"Steve Emerson" <eme...@n-n-nospamsonic.net> wrote in message
news:emersn-A7A971....@nnrp-virt.nntp.sonic.net...

> In article <ot3qr79a50g314cal...@4ax.com>,
> Kimba W Lion <noreplie...@norepliesbyemail.invalid> wrote:
>
>> ...to talk about remastering quality and equipment, when most of the
>> people on
>> this group see nothing wrong with using a "service" that breaks down on a
>> very
>> regular basis?
>>
>> Yes, Google is not talking to the rest of the world. Again.
>>
>> And IMO, caring about quality applies to all endeavors.
>>
>> Or is that just me?
>
> Not at all. I don't like it any better than you do.
>
> But with gigantic corporations -- they're not going to put the resources
> or the company stars on a small piece of the thing like Google Groups,
> and especially not on a part of it like the interface with Usenet, which
> in all likelihood is a term most people there wouldn't even recognize.
>
> Facebook is worse. It's full of things that are broken. They don't give
> a shit.

I cancelled the bloody thing a couple of months ago. They still enquire why
I haven't been there lately. Screw 'em.

[Matthew B. Tepper]

Solution: Use a REAL newsreader. "I has spoken!"

--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!!
Read about "Proty" here: http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/proty.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of my employers.

[Paul Goldstein]

In article <XnsA05CE71E7F7...@216.168.3.70>, Matthew B. Tepper
says...

>
>Solution: Use a REAL newsreader. "I has spoken!"

What does using a REAL newsreader have to do with Facebook's user interface?

[Matthew�B.�Tepper]

Paul Goldstein <pgol...@newsguy.com> appears to have caused the following
letters to be typed in news:jpleb...@drn.newsguy.com:

Nothing. But it has everything to do with the problem of trying to rely on
Google for Usenet access.

[Gerard]

Matthew B. Tepper <oyþ@earthlink.net> typed:

> Paul Goldstein <pgol...@newsguy.com> appears to have caused the
> following letters to be typed in news:jpleb...@drn.newsguy.com:
>
> > In article <XnsA05CE71E7F7...@216.168.3.70>,
> > Matthew B. Tepper says...
> > >
> > > Solution: Use a REAL newsreader. "I has spoken!"
> >
> > What does using a REAL newsreader have to do with Facebook's user
> > interface?
>
> Nothing. But it has everything to do with the problem of trying to
> rely on Google for Usenet access.

Like using wheat has everything to do with baking bread.

[O]

In article
<0690bc01-9c5d-44e9...@f9g2000pbd.googlegroups.com>,

Oscar <oscaredwar...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On May 23, 9:33 am, Kimba W Lion wrote:
> >
> > ...to talk about remastering quality and equipment, when most of the people
> > on
> > this group see nothing wrong with using a "service" that breaks down on a
> > very
> > regular basis?
>
> I don't think it's silly at all. IMO, silly is iTunes's new
> initiative, Mastered For iTunes http://tiny.cc/db4rew which provides
> mastering engineers with software that helps tweak the music that will
> be encoded as AAC, rather that relying on a standardized encoding
> process.

What standardized encoding process? MP3?

> These files are not of a higher technical quality, just
> (ostensibly) made to sound as good as possible within the restrictions
> of the format.

It looks to me that they are of a higher technical quality, at least
higher than CD quality.

> Legendary mastering engineer Bob Ludwig, formerly of
> Sterling Sound and Masterdisk ‹ who cut some of the best-sounding rock
> vinyl of the 70's and 80's along with practically every US Nonesuch
> classical album of the 70's (tragically pressed on some of the
> noisiest vinyl of the era) ‹ thinks differently:
>
> 'From a technical viewpoint, there are cases where the lossy 24-bit
> AAC file would be superior to the lossless CD. I did an early
> demonstration for some engineer friends of mine and the difference
> between the 'Mastered for iTunes' file I created and the one that was
> ripped from a 16-bit CD was easily heard on the little speakers on my
> MacBook Pro.' (from email to NPR.org about the initiative)
>
> I'm on the side of musician John Vanderslice who told NPR, 'The idea
> of mastering for a lesser format is completely insane

What lesser format? AAC? All Apple is saying is that if you're going
to submit to the iTunes store, you're going to give your customers a
better experience if you start with a 24 bit 96 khz master, than from a
16 bit, 44.1 khz master.

> . My first
> reaction was it would be like if you were a writer and you were told
> that you would have to re-edit your book for the dimwitted or the
> dyslexic. The idea of mastering is that you have the definitive high
> resolution product and you wilfully ignore every other variable
> downstream, whether it's compression codecs or speakers or whether
> someone's listening to it on earbuds.'

All the mastering techniques they've indicated are standard decisions
that you have to make anyway. Apple's saying that your music that will
be downloaded from iTunes will be played on a variety of output devices
of varying quality, and it's up to you to decide how best that should
sound.

>
> IMHO, Mastered For iTunes is plainly Apple's final nail-in-the-coffin
> for any hope of an Apple Lossless future. There is not enough room on
> the 'cloud' for all that 'useless' extra data. A real pity!

There isn't. Not yet. And lossless isn't. Anyone who's compared SACD
surround to CD lossless knows there's a loss in sound there.

-Owen

[Kimba W Lion]

Oscar <oscaredwar...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Mastered For iTunes

One word: Dynagroove.

It is interesting, though, that Apple would admit that AAC is bad enough to
require pre-distortion.

[Oscar]

On May 24, 8:52 am, O wrote:
>
> > I don't think it's silly at all.  IMO, silly is iTunes's new

> > initiative, Mastered For iTuneshttp://tiny.cc/db4rewwhich provides

> > mastering engineers with software that helps tweak the music that will
> > be encoded as AAC, rather that relying on a standardized encoding
> > process.
>
> What standardized encoding process?  MP3?

The standard way rights-holders created AAC before Mastered For iTunes
was to use a 16/44.1 'CD master' file and dither down. The new way
crawls higher up the ladder to 24/96 'studio master' files and then
dithers down to the same bit-rate/format: 256kps AAC.

> > These files are not of a higher technical quality, just
> > (ostensibly) made to sound as good as possible within the restrictions
> > of the format.
>
> It looks to me that they are of a higher technical quality, at least
> higher than CD quality.

False. 'Mastering for iTunes was a different challenge,' Masterdisk
chief engineer Andy VanDette told ArsTechnica. 'You can't get around

it — when you throw away 80 percent of the data, the sound changes. It
was my quest to make the AAC files sound as close to the CD as
possible; I did not want them to be any more loud, hyped, or boomy

sounding than the CD.'

> > I'm on the side of musician John Vanderslice who told NPR, 'The idea
> > of mastering for a lesser format is completely insane
>
>  What lesser format? AAC?

Yes, ACC is a lesser format than redbook CD. Eighty percent less data
on AAC 256.

> All Apple is saying is that if you're going
> to submit to the iTunes store, you're going to give your customers a
> better experience if you start with a 24 bit 96 khz master, than from a
> 16 bit, 44.1 khz master.

It's kind of like saying your car wash is going to be better if you
use Voss water imported from Norway rather than 'standard' LA tap
water. In the end, it's just water (or, compromised 256kps files).
Or, as longtime CBS/Sony Studios mastering guru Vlado Meller, now at
Masterdisk, said: '[Mastering for iTunes] is like polishing your

Bentley in total darkness, then turning on the lights to see where you
missed."

> > IMHO, Mastered For iTunes is plainly Apple's final nail-in-the-coffin
> > for any hope of an Apple Lossless future.  There is not enough room on
> > the 'cloud' for all that 'useless' extra data.  A real pity!
>
> There isn't.  Not yet.  And lossless isn't.

Lossless isn't _what_?

> Anyone who's compared SACD
> surround to CD lossless knows there's a loss in sound there.

Well, duh. What is your point? That SACD is like 1500% better than
Mastered For iTunes files??

[Matthew B. Tepper]

Kimba W Lion <noreplie...@norepliesbyemail.invalid> appears to have

caused the following letters to be typed in

news:8knsr75j2v3e8t9mg...@4ax.com:

How about New Orthophonic? Or, if you think it sounds the way a kick in the
teeth would feel, New Orthodontic?

[O]

In article
<d6570d5a-e562-4a72...@t2g2000pbg.googlegroups.com>,

Oscar <oscaredwar...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On May 24, 8:52 am, O wrote:
> >
> > > I don't think it's silly at all.  IMO, silly is iTunes's new
> > > initiative, Mastered For iTuneshttp://tiny.cc/db4rewwhich provides
> > > mastering engineers with software that helps tweak the music that will
> > > be encoded as AAC, rather that relying on a standardized encoding
> > > process.
> >
> > What standardized encoding process?  MP3?
>
> The standard way rights-holders created AAC before Mastered For iTunes
> was to use a 16/44.1 'CD master' file and dither down. The new way
> crawls higher up the ladder to 24/96 'studio master' files and then
> dithers down to the same bit-rate/format: 256kps AAC.

So the new way has more information which it can use to make
compression choices than the old way.

>
> > > These files are not of a higher technical quality, just
> > > (ostensibly) made to sound as good as possible within the restrictions
> > > of the format.
> >
> > It looks to me that they are of a higher technical quality, at least
> > higher than CD quality.
>
> False. 'Mastering for iTunes was a different challenge,' Masterdisk
> chief engineer Andy VanDette told ArsTechnica. 'You can't get around
> it ‹ when you throw away 80 percent of the data, the sound changes. It
> was my quest to make the AAC files sound as close to the CD as
> possible; I did not want them to be any more loud, hyped, or boomy
> sounding than the CD.'

I misspoke. I didn't mean that the end result AAC would be "higher
than CD quality," (although it could be), I meant to say that by
mastering from a format with more information you'd get better results
than if you master with CD quality.

>
> > > I'm on the side of musician John Vanderslice who told NPR, 'The idea
> > > of mastering for a lesser format is completely insane
> >
> >  What lesser format? AAC?
>
> Yes, ACC is a lesser format than redbook CD. Eighty percent less data
> on AAC 256.

First of all, that's a misnomer, as redbook CD contains a lot of
compressable space. If AAC gets you a file that's 20% of a redbook
file, and lossless compression gets you a file that's 50% then you're
"throwing away" 60%, and even then, if you don't have to worry about
saving every bit, you can do the compression a lot better.

>
> > All Apple is saying is that if you're going
> > to submit to the iTunes store, you're going to give your customers a
> > better experience if you start with a 24 bit 96 khz master, than from a
> > 16 bit, 44.1 khz master.
>
> It's kind of like saying your car wash is going to be better if you
> use Voss water imported from Norway rather than 'standard' LA tap
> water. In the end, it's just water (or, compromised 256kps files).

They're already "compromised." It's just a matter of degree.

If you're going to buy 256 AAC files, you'll have a discernably better
sound if they are Mastered for iTunes then if they were mastered off a
CD.

Your point is that they both suck, so neither are worthwhile, but AAC
at 256 kbs variable rate is pretty damn good. You should probably
conduct your own blind tests. Given you've worked for rock bands, your
ears may not be as good as they used to be.

> Or, as longtime CBS/Sony Studios mastering guru Vlado Meller, now at
> Masterdisk, said: '[Mastering for iTunes] is like polishing your
> Bentley in total darkness, then turning on the lights to see where you
> missed."
>
> > > IMHO, Mastered For iTunes is plainly Apple's final nail-in-the-coffin
> > > for any hope of an Apple Lossless future.  There is not enough room on
> > > the 'cloud' for all that 'useless' extra data.  A real pity!
> >
> > There isn't.  Not yet.  And lossless isn't.
>
> Lossless isn't _what_?

Yes, that's right, lossless isn't lossless. There's already loss of
the original recorded sound because of the choice of redbook CD format.

>
> > Anyone who's compared SACD
> > surround to CD lossless knows there's a loss in sound there.
>
> Well, duh. What is your point? That SACD is like 1500% better than
> Mastered For iTunes files??

My point is that you've already accepted some compression just from
accepting CD format. You've already got loss compared to a SACD
version properly done. So it's only a matter of degree. CD format is
just as "compromised" as AAC 256 lossy is.

-Owen

[Kimba W Lion]

"Matthew�B.�Tepper" <oy�@earthlink.net> wrote:

>Or, if you think it sounds the way a kick in the
>teeth would feel, New Orthodontic?

I think I may end up stealing that.

I know that when I complain about the latest remastering of a classic album, I
am often hit with the retort that it has to sound good for the iTunes/iPod
crowd. The latest abomination I wasted money on was the remastering of Mary
Hopkin's Postcard. Sometimes I think the audio industry reached its zenith
many years ago.