iPod this, iPod that...

Lately the media seems to be talking about iPods all the time (at least here in the UK). For example, they recently gave away some mp3 players as prizes on the radio and they were iPods, and when there was a report on the news about file sharing, it was an iPod they used in the example of portable mp3 players.

I have to admit, I've never tried an iPod, so I don't know exactly how good they are, but as far as I can tell from what I've read there's nothing particularly special about them apart from they're really, really expensive and they have a very slick minimalist design (typical Apple).

So... has Apple taken complete control of the media, or what? Or has everyone just decided that iPods are the best, and ditched all their other players?

And does anyone think I need to update my old Archos player?

Apple rocks at marketing. The competition doesn't come even close.

That alone justifies most of iPod's popularity.

There's also the point that it's integrated with the iTMS, by far the most popular online music store. But it's hard to tell if the iTMS is popular because of the iPod, or if the iPod is popular because of the iTMS.

Well, iPods have quite a large market share, to say the least. Also, many people seem to love their scroll wheel.

You can get to any one of your 10,000 songs in 3 clicks.

I must be out of touch. Never even heard of iTMS. Don't suppose they sell full quality downloads do they? I'm eagerly awaiting the day when I'll never have to buy another CD again.

iTunes Music Store

http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/

Man, where have you been for the last year or so...

Out of circulation, maybe on the space station, an isolated island in the pacific or in siberia...

You must be one of the few people that didn't notice that Apple has launched their internet music store in UK. And Napster, and BPI has launched
The Official UK Download Chart

You must be pulling our legs...

(Noticed your other post asking how mp3 files could be smaller than wave)

No. I honestly have not heard anything of iTunes until now.

As for Napster selling music online, yeah, that was all over the news a couple of months ago. I haven't heard anything in the news about iTunes, and as for online news I don't read much, I just come on the forums every now and then.

I don't have much interest in Apple, really. I hate Macs (despite having to use one for work). I hate all those shiny plastic buttons on everything. I'm a custom-build/functional software guy, so PCs are my true love.

Anyway... what of my question? Can you download full quality music?

I was quite excited about Napster until I found out they were only offering low quality music to download.

Define full quality

OK.

I noticed your other post regarding music creation software.

Have you checked Apple's Garage Band?

That application alone could make you consider buying a Mac, if you are into creating your own music.

I don't have a Mac, but use Windows XP, so I'm not biased here.

As a musician wanting to use your creative force -- without beeing restrained by technical nitty gritties -- I would expect that the ease of use of Garageband would be right up your alley.

CD quality (ie the quality you get when you walk into a shop and buy a CD).

Sehested, thanks for the suggestion, I'll check out Garage Band. (And thanks for reading all my posts!

I will never, ever buy a Mac though. NEVER!!!

Then, no. No online music store sells lossless tracks, except indie ones and semi-legal ones.



Yeeees.

Never.

That's the kind of flexible behaviour everyone should have!

You, sire, is a model for us youth.

iPods used to be real pricey (IMO ridiculously so), but their current prices seem reasonable to me. They're like a pop-icon now, so that's probably why you hear so much about them.

Apple markets the iPod much more than its competitors do (or most can afford to), so many people don't know that there are alternatives. It's been my experience that most people I've talked to don't realize there are other DAPs besides the iPod. I personally don't care for the iPod's design, but I don't bash it. I just didn't buy one.

I am sorry but nowadays the quality you get from most CD in shops is far from beeing "full quality".
It appears that you need another definition for "full quality".
If you mean "quality of usual commercial CD", then unfortunately yes, the quality of compressed audio in AAC is often very close to that.

Fantastic point, Gabriel.

As someone else from the UK, yep, all you hear about are iPods, anyone who has a portable in the Office with me (they are 90% 35+), bought an iPod not realising that anything else was about.

Why not? Because it is a computer, too?

Feeling insecure about your PC making double use?

I'm mystified by the hype myself, as my 3 year old Nomad Jukebox:

a) was cheaper, even three years ago, for a 20gb HD player.
b) plays back 320kbps mp3s properly.
c) is nearly gapless, as opposed to having ~1 second pauses between tracks.
d) has longer battery life.

People are just suckers for slick marketing and snazzy form factors I think. Which is why those horrendous fruity iMacs sold so well.

oh, and i'm a fan of Macs myself... If they fix the above problems my next player will be an iPod, but as it stands I can't justify one.

I also don't get the whole iPod thing, though I will say this: look down any city street or bus aisle, and what do you see? White earphones and scroll-wheels!

Apple hit a home run with iPod, but the question really should be how long can they maintain their lead? Other players offer better value, better features, or better warranties, yet the iPod is more ubiquitous due to advertising and/or its perceived superiority in terms of form vs function. Once a product becomes common, however, it stands to become marginalized when other manufacturers begin to offer something more compelling in terms of the features I've mentioned above. Even the the hippest devices and fads lose their luster once they can be found everywhere.

iPod might have introduced the uninformed masses to digital audio, but I doubt it can maintain its status for more than another year or two if Apple doesn't ensure that it offers something that other players don't. For those of us in the 25 and up crowd, getting "oh la la" comments about our DAPs on a bus isn't enough (by itself) to make one run out and buy an iPod. Give me something with long battery life, a good dollar-to-MB ratio, a strong, wear-resistant exterior, and excellent sound quality; then, we'll talk.

Just looked at that and its scary William Shatner at number 10.

First off I have to say that I have an iPod so I may be a bit bias.

I've tried a friends Zen, and I have to say that though it is better than the iPod in terms of battery life and price, the iPod looks better, has a much better UI and the intergration between iTunes and the iPod is great.

Also being able to use AAC was a big plus point for me.

The only other make of DAP I would be interested in would be iRiver but at the time when I bought my iPod they were near impossible to get in the UK. I wouldn't buy a Creative model, mainly because I've had issues with Creative in the past regarding drivers for my sound card and I also had issues with their speakers.

Dreamtactix,
If people don't realise there are other types of mp3 player, what planet were they living on before the iPod came out? The iPod has (correct me if I'm wrong) only been around a couple of years now.

By the way, who is that pic of in your avatar? She's nice!



I'm totally confused. How can a CD be less than full quality? Aren't all CDs 44100, 16 bit sound 2 channels? If not why not, and how come you never get more than 74 minutes on a CD if data is lower quality? I am honestly totally confused, here.

The only "lack of quality" I can see in modern CDs is that the volume levels are often way too loud and the amplitudes hit maximum too often. But that is not so much a loss of quality to me, as that is how the song is supposed to sound (plus the sound is slightly higher resolution as it is louder). A loss of quality to me is a lossy file with missing information.



The list of things I hate about Macs goes on and on and on. Too long for me to list here (but I will if you want me to). And before you say that I'm only biased because I'm used to PCs — no, I used Macs exclusively for about 4 years before I ever saw a PC, and the very first day I used a PC I fell in love with it instantly. There is only one thing I like about Macs and that is the folder icon in OSX (which I copied and now use on my PC).

The day online music stores start selling lossless audio is the day I'll consider using one. To me it's seem very idiotic to pay the same price for compressed music as you would for the real cd. So until I can get lossless audio, like flac, ape or wavpack iTMS or whatever it is, can keep on seeling to the hoards of people willing to throw money away on garbage. Yes, the music is often "transparent", but that does NOT make it cd quality. CD's are 44100, 16-bit, 2ch. MP3's are 44100, 16-bit, 2ch. The difference is CD's are 1411kbps, MP3's are 8-320kbps. Big difference. CD's can encoded as many times are you want, mp3's cannot, unless you want terrible sound quality. I think it's taking advantage of the people who dont understand what mp3's are.

Oh come on now, welcome to hydrogen audio! You imply that determining quality is as easy as counting the bits!

I bet that all the music on online shops come from stock CD-s so it is definitely the ultimate quality. So I have to agree with Duble0Syx.

Triza

Well, a mp3 is certainly never going to sound "better" than the source it was encoded from. That is a fact. Unless you eq'ing the mp3 or some other processing, which is not a fair test. MP3 can never be as good or better than the wav it was encoded from. If I am wrong about that please let me know. Personally, if someone has no problem paying for lossy audio then go ahead and do so. I for one won't .

iPods aren't very impressive in most ways. The only thing they have going for them are iTunes, and a good team of marketing people. There are plenty of other players that sound better, have longer lasting batteries, more storage, more supported formats, and more features in general. All in all the iPod does well because a) it's simple to use b) apple spends lots of money promoting it and c) people can't look into buying something if they don't know it exist, so the iPod comes to mind first usually. Again, I have nothing against any of these "i" things, they are just not for me.

Most music on the stores are encoded right from the master tapes. Especially older albums (>10 years) can actually sound better on the stores than the CD versions because of poor mastering/compression used back then.

Thank you Duble, that is exactly how I feel. Why pay to download a lossy version of something when you can just as easily have the lossless 'original'? If I didn't care about sound quality, I'd just download all my music from eMule as 128 kbps mp3s, and it would save me a fortune on CDs!


It depends what you mean by "quality". I would say there are two very different meanings for the word quality in this context:

1. The content stored on the medium
If you're using the term "quality" in the general sense to describe a recording (such as music, or a digital photo) then you're normally talking about how faithfully reproduced it is and how satisfying it is to behold. In other words you're talking about the technology or expertise used to capture and arrange that recording in the first place. Which has nothing to do with bits or resolution.

2. The medium itself
But "quality" in the sense I mean here (quite obviously, I thought) refers only to the number of bits, or the resolution, and to any loss thereof in conversion, transferral etc. It also refers to the degree of compression artefacting, and any other such non-transparent factors of digital media. This meaning of quality has nothing to do with how well a piece of music has been mastered, or how good the camera is that took the photo. It is not really about how good something looks or sounds, more about the invisible process of how the digital information is stored, that should not be apparent to the viewer/listener unless the quality is drastically reduced.

All I'm concerned about here is that we started out with an original recording which was transferred to CD to be sold to consumers. When this recording goes on a CD it is 44,100 bits per second (etc.) and that "resolution" is higher than a human can percieve. The quality of this medium (sense 2, above) is effectively transparent. If that "resolution" is brought down, especially to levels well within the boundaries of human perception (as is the case with, say, 192 kbps CBR mp3s), then that loss of "quality" (in the resolution sense) is of great concern to me.

Whether or not the converted file is still transparent, or sounds any different to the listener is not really the point. The point is that quality has been lost. Quality in the 2nd sense. I'm not here to talk about quality in the 1st sense. If I want a better quality recording of my favourite song there isn't much I can do other than go to a concert with a microphone and hope I get lucky. (Yeah, or buy the same song on a different compilation and hope the mastering is better.)

I'm not even saying I don't want my songs in mp3 format. I do. I just want to be the one to encode them, and I don't like that choice being taken away from me. Especially when I am paying money to a record company for — quite literally — nothing.

Mmm... I am certainly not an expert, but I would expect that solution to cost much more. I would not bother doing that as a businessman. Do you have some proof? I am not arguing because I do not know, just assume.

Triza

Tell that to people that rank the reference sample in my listening tests.

It's been my experience that most people I've talked to know 3 major things as portable devices: cassette player, CD player, and iPod. I've further backed this up from all the "what's that?" questions I get about my iRiver H120.

My avatar is of Akira Asakura, singer from a short lived Japanese band, ROmantic Mode. It's scanned from my copy of the album, Vision of Love, which is my personal favourite of theirs.

Well, maybe it's just me, but I prefer the sound of a nice flac over a 192kbps mp3 any day. The lossless stuff just sounds better. While an mp3 seems to confuse some people on which sounds better, the source wav is "physically" the best. of the two. If some people think the mp3 sounds better thats fine, I guess mp3 has good use. Personally, whether I can hear it or not, I like having frequencies above 18-19Hz. I just want my audio to sound the way it was intended to sound, not necassarily "better." Which is the only real thing I have against mp3's and iPods. MP3's are obviously not lossless, and iPods (AFAIK) don't play any lossless formats. Of course I'd happily listen to some vorbis files on a portable. But at home it's lossless all the way.
And in the ways of portable players, I'd much rather have the player that does the most than one that is better advertised and looks cooler. A good example it the iRiver H120. No one seems to have heard of them, yet in every test I've seen they do everything better than the iPods. I suppose if you use iTunes you may want an iPod. I plan to buy an iRiver H140 though. Everything Apple makes is expensive, and rarely does anything a cheaper alternative won't do better, in my experience.

Lol now you're just breaking ToS #8



That makes no sense. You choose what is better, not based in physics or whatever other factor you conjure.



It can sound the way it was intended to sound when it's lossy. It's called transparency.



They do. Research before posting stuff you don't know about.


As I see it, you have some very strong prejudice against lossy audio (not unlike countless "audiophiles" that post at this forum). You might never hear any artifact in a lossy encoded file, but it is lossy, so it must sound worse than lossless, period.

Sad...

Not what I meant. If you notice the sentence before...I said I prefer the sound of a flac over a 192kbps mp3. The quality difference can be ABX'd. I know what mp3 encoder was used can make a difference, but that is what I meant.


All I mean by that is the wav file will have more music data than an mp3. Although the amount of bits do not equal quality, it's clear there will be more bit of information in the source wav file than an mp3. In this instance the WAV is the complete audio, which makes sense to me to say it is "physically" better since all the original music data is there. Not neccasarily sounding better. It is a fact that the wav an mp3 is encoded from will have more bits than the resulting mp3. Again, i know bits don't eqaul quality.


While that may be fine for some people, just because there is no audible difference, there is still a difference. That is also a fact. A lossy file is not the same a lossless file. So while audibly transparent, there is still a difference.


Sorry, I forgot they play apple's lossless codec. I already knew that, it just slipped my mind. Apple lossless is probably a nice codec, but IIRC it isn't very well supported in software, aside from the obvious iTunes and WMP. Can it be played on linux at all?



Is there something wrong with being an audiophile? I just like to preserve the music. Your opinions are no more concrete than mine about lossy audio. You are obviously a fan of it, where I am not. Don't get me wrong, I like Ogg Vorbis a lot, and when using lossy codecs I use it. But for archiving my music I see no reason I shouidn't use a lossless codec? I can recompress it to any other format I desire without killing the sound. I don't have any "prejudice" against lossy audio. But given the choice I'll use lossless. It's comforting to know that when I listen to my music that I know it's all there. It's not about hearing a difference, it's about keeping the music I paid good money for at the best quality possible. The iRiver H1xx players do have pleny more features than the iPod, and i've rea nurmerous reports of them having better sound quality. If someone wants an iPod thats fine with me, but it never hurts to at least look at the competition, you never know what you might be missing. Just because it's not got an ad on TV doesn't mean it can't be better. I apologize for not making these things clearer before. No hard feelings I hope.

My wife likes to listen to audio books she buys from Audible.com, which are in some funkily encoded version of mp3. I got her an I-Pod because based on every review I could find on the net it was the only hard disk based portable player which will reliably play these files correctly. I ripped a bunch of CDs to it as well using their default settings for AAC and it seems to me (and to her) these sound good enough for headphone and cheap compuspeaker listening. It'll be a cold day in Hell before I pay a buck a song or whatever it is to buy compressed files from Apple or anybody else, though.

Ipod's have become a fashion icon, that's why they sell so good... It's all about the image. Apple currently rules that image. People have started to buy Ipod's, next, they'll buy a Mac..

iPods also sell well because much of the computer and non-computer press are praising them. Don't believe me? Do a search for iPod reviews with major publishing places, and one will see them heaping praise on Apple for what they've done with the iPod. And this praise is coming from traditional PC publishing houses, too; places that normally have an unhealthy dislike of all things Apple.

Another item that points to the iPod's not being just a fluke is to see how many companies (Dell and Creative) have tried to copy its simple interface. Heck, even a software programmer copied its "look and feel" (scroll wheel and all) for a PocketPC software MP3 player. It's not all about flash and style, but that's certainly something Apple's done with the marketing campaign and such. It seems the marketing has caught the public's eye.

I own a 2nd generation 10 GB model I bought refurbished. I've had it for a year now, and I've been very happy with it. I've been toying with the idea of installing Linux on it so I can play Ogg files, but I'm a little timid about making the leap. Anyway, I've enjoyed owning it, although I do not like the fact I cannot listen to gapless music. I'd like to see that issue resolved if I consider buying another iPod.

If you haven't gotten to use one, you may believe it's all hype. Try one out, and you may be impressed; and you also may not be. It depends on whether the iPod does what you need such a device to do for you.

Sorry to be so wordy.

You said you prefer the sound of FLAC over a 192kbps MP3, not one 192kbps MP3. "A" implies any 192kbps MP3. You need to learn semantics and logic.



OK. So you can admit lossy audio can, in some occasions, sound better than lossless?



Congratulations, Einstein. Now tell me: so what? Are these files meant for hearing or what? If you hear no difference while listening, it did its job.



Nope.

Still, it's by far the most widely supported lossless format considering hardware+software. (WMA lossless is also very widely supported concerning software, but I know of no hardware player supporting it)



No. What is wrong is people considering themselves audiophiles just because it's trendy. And people insisting their hearing kicks so much ass they can only be happy with lossless, and still come to my tests and rank the reference often.



Nope. I'm just not badly biased towards lossy or lossless.




Placebo.

Duble and rjamorim,

The conversation here seems to be getting pulled out of its original (larger) context. This was a conversation about whether or not it is acceptable to pay to download a lossy audio file. And this was a conversation about personal preference, not an argument about which is better. At least it should be: I can't tell you what you want and you can't tell me what I want.

Duble and I simply do not want to pay to download an audio file that is lossy. Call us audiophiles, or perfectionists, or completists, or obsessive compulsives. It is just whom we are, and we are by no means alone.

There are a great many photographers who flat out refuse to store photos on their cameras in lossy JPEG format, even though this means that they can only store 20% as many photos on their camera, and the image is virtually identical to the original (even when zoomed in).

While I don't really have such an aversion to lossy compression, I certainly don't want lossy files when I am paying something for nothing.

Lossy downloads (to me) means:
Loss of information;
Loss of control over how it's encoded;
Loss of quality (since the files do not use LAME presets);
Loss of equality with shop-buyers who get the whole thing;
Loss of ability to re-encode it with another setting;
Loss of ability to process/filter/apply effects to the sound (since it's only designed to be played "as is");
Loss of disc space (since the files are CBR, which defies all logic);
And loss of life (due to me committing suicide from not having lossless files).

And most importantly of all, as I said before: if it cost the record companies more money to sell me lossless files then I might understand the decision, but it makes absolutely no difference to them how the files are compressed, so there is absolutely no point in offering lossy files, when the lossless files could just as easily be made available.

The record companies have it made. They just sit back and let people pay them for doing absolutely nothing. I feel the least they could do is provide us with some form of choice.

Again, I must emphasise that this is my preference with regards to paying something for nothing. I personally am not willing to part with cash for such a service. That does not mean I hate lossy encoding (on the contrary, everything I own is encoded) and it does not mean you have to agree with me (on the contrary, I like to be different to other people).

All the super compressed CDs out there aren't worth it to you then?

You have control over how a CD is mastered/mixed/recorded?

Do you control the quality of CD pressings at the factory?

Pictures and a plastic case.

You can re-incode all you want although it will be transcoding (DRM no).

EQ? Plugins in player??!?

PCM is CBR


Sorry to hear that.

Chang,

I think you've missed the point with most of those, and you're confusing mastering with encoding. This conversation has nothing to do with how the original copies are prepared, mastered and digitised to PCM. That cannot be decided by the consumer. This is about how those PCM files are compressed/encoded, which we have the ability to choose by how we buy the music (CD or download).

But mastering and encoding are two entirely different processes. Totally unrelated.

Here's an analogy to illustrate the difference: when George Lucas remastered Star Wars, the film underwent many processes in order to improve it an prepare it for viewing. Those processes are not my concern as I cannot change them. But now that Star Wars is available on DVD, it is available in two resolutions (PAL and NTSC resolution). I can choose the resolution I want. Obviously, the higher resolution is closer to the original film since there is less information missing (I realise there are many other factors in buying a DVD, but this is just an example).


How can a CD be compressed? I dont' follow. CDs are just raw data with no compression. If they could be compressed then you'd get CDs of different lengths, but no CD can exceed 74mins. Please correct me if I'm wrong, here.

Compression in the mastering world is maximizing the percieved volume, but in turn it ruins (when used excessivly) the dynamics of the audio being subjected to compression. Therefore you are lossing sound information after you compress the audio and therefore making it subquality.

I was just countering your reasons because they do apply to the world of buying audio CDs just as well as digital files you can purchase online.

Good point, but that kind of compression is irrelevant, since both the CD and the download will suffer from the same compression, plus anything else the masterers have chosen to do to the sound.

I find it funny that people whine so much about buying lossy audio at online stores, but don't mind at all buying lossy video and audio in DVD (or some 'tard out there will claim MPEG2 is lossless?)

ChangFest: I suggest you give up. These people can't be convinced by reason. They are moved by a fervor not unlike religion (in more than one aspect)

I see ChangFest's point, which is basically a rhetorical question: Does the recording industry give you a choice on other similar matters? Do people still buy the products?

However, there are a few things I take issue with:

Yes, but usually printed on high quality nonstandard-sized paper via high quality presses, something that would be difficult for a home user to emulate.


He is actually correct in this. Lossy codecs depend on users listening to the file with no additional processing to achieve transparency. EQ-ed, filtered, or run through effects, lossy encoding can easily reveal flaws.


Losslessly-compressed PCM formats (FLAC, APE) are not. You ought to know this.

By the way, here's a nice Internet music store which offers lossless FLAC downloads (or WAVs, if for some infernal reason you'd prefer totally uncompressed PCM)...
<3 www.magnatune.com <3


rjamorim: The MPEG2 compression used in DVDs is quite sufficiently high quality. Some MP3 music stores, on the other hand, still give sell lower-quality lossy audio with audible artifacts.

The lossy audio sold in some stores is also quite sufficiently high quality. But obviously the anal pseudo-audiophiles at HA will NEVER be content no matter how transparent and overkill the quality is. That's placebo for you.

Should I understand that files encoded with lame presets are lossless?