Hydrogenaudio Forums > iPod with AAC support

KAMiKAZOW

Mar 4 2003, 13:16

According to THIS news message from the LA Times, Apple starts a new online music service.

Two short quotes from the article:

QUOTE

The new service was developed by Apple Computer Inc., sources said Monday, and offers users of Macintoshes and iPod portable music players many of the same capabilities that already are available from services previously endorsed by the labels. But the Apple offering won over music executives because it makes buying and downloading music as simple and non-technical as buying a book from Amazon.com.

[...]

Rather than make the songs available in the popular MP3 format, Apple plans to use a higher fidelity technology known as Advanced Audio Codec.

That approach allows the songs to be protected by electronic locks that prevent them from being played on more than one computer. Still, sources say, Apple wants to enable buyers to burn songs onto CDs. That feature would effectively remove the locks.

Good news.

rjamorim

Mar 4 2003, 16:20

QUOTE(KAMiKAZOW @ Mar 4 2003 - 04:16 PM)

Good news.

Apple knows what's good.

Let's just hope it'll play unencripted AAC, as well as their "protected" AAC. I suspect it will, since QuickTimes outputs unencrypted streams.

Mgz

Mar 4 2003, 18:02

tick tok tick tok ... for good ol' MP3 B)

hans-jürgen

Mar 5 2003, 01:29

QUOTE(KAMiKAZOW @ Mar 4 2003 - 08:16 PM)

QUOTE

Rather than make the songs available in the popular MP3 format, Apple plans to use a higher fidelity technology known as Advanced Audio Codec.

That approach allows the songs to be protected by electronic locks that prevent them from being played on more than one computer. Still, sources say, Apple wants to enable buyers to burn songs onto CDs. That feature would effectively remove the locks.

Good news.

I can't find a direct information stating that Apple plans to implement MP4 (not AAC!) in the iPod, but drawing this conclusion from the LA Times article about a new music service is probably correct or at least not entirely false. I just read a document from the MPEG about Part 9 of MPEG-4 dealing with full hardware implementation of this multimedia standard, and there they give time limits for proposals until some time in the next year, so this might take a while to come true.

By the way, if you also like the idea of a legal internet music service with AAC sound quality like me, you should take a look at LiquidAudio and their music service at http://www.liquid.com. AAC comes as a copyright protected LQT format here, but it's possible to preview new albums, download them, save them to HDD, burn a CD and even load them to a compatible portable player for $9.99. They also offer WMA and RA as alternative preview formats and WMA besides LQT as a download format.

Their freeware software player can also encode in LQT (using a FhG codec!) at a fixed bitrate of 78 kbps, too, so this might be a very good sound for portable usage. I don't know if there are any hardware players available, because they only give some general informations on the website (or I couldn't find more specific ones).

@floyd: We probably have two opposite opinions about the definition of robbery.

floyd

Mar 5 2003, 02:36

QUOTE(hans-jürgen @ Mar 5 2003 - 01:29 AM)

By the way, if you also like the idea of a legal internet music service with AAC sound quality like me, you should take a look at LiquidAudio and their music service at http://www.liquid.com. AAC comes as a copyright protected LQT format here, but it's possible to preview new albums, download them, save them to HDD and even load them to a compatible portable player for $9.99.

$9.99 for an album in encrypted lossy format? Thats robbery!

$9.99 for an album in lossless, unencrypted format would still be expensive for a digital format whose profit margins are far greater than audio cds, IMO.

deej_1977

Mar 5 2003, 11:31

QUOTE(floyd @ Mar 5 2003 - 10:36 AM)

QUOTE(hans-jürgen @ Mar 5 2003 - 01:29 AM)

By the way, if you also like the idea of a legal internet music service with AAC sound quality like me, you should take a look at LiquidAudio and their music service at http://www.liquid.com. AAC comes as a copyright protected LQT format here, but it's possible to preview new albums, download them, save them to HDD and even load them to a compatible portable player for $9.99.

$9.99 for an album in encrypted lossy format? Thats robbery!

$9.99 for an album in lossless, unencrypted format would still be expensive for a digital format whose profit margins are far greater than audio cds, IMO.

My .02 cents exactly! Cut out the greedy and expensive record label's marketing / production machine and the price per song should not be too high...

Phobos

Mar 5 2003, 20:13

glad to know apple knows we want to be able to burn to cds and backup freely

torok

Mar 6 2003, 03:32

QUOTE(floyd @ Mar 5 2003 - 12:36 AM)

QUOTE(hans-jürgen @ Mar 5 2003 - 01:29 AM)

By the way, if you also like the idea of a legal internet music service with AAC sound quality like me, you should take a look at LiquidAudio and their music service at http://www.liquid.com. AAC comes as a copyright protected LQT format here, but it's possible to preview new albums, download them, save them to HDD and even load them to a compatible portable player for $9.99.

$9.99 for an album in encrypted lossy format? Thats robbery!

$9.99 for an album in lossless, unencrypted format would still be expensive for a digital format whose profit margins are far greater than audio cds, IMO.

It probably costs more in bandwidth to serve you 450 megs then it does to cut a CD.