Mastered for iTunes

Apple now offers recording advertised as "mastered for iTunes". It sounds "hi-fidelity", but make no mistakes, those recordings are still encoded as 256kps files.

 Yet, in the 9 to 5 mac article, there is something I find very interesting:

The document, titled “Music as the Artist and Sound Engineer Intended,” essentially asked publishers to submit high-resolution 24-bit/96kHz files, and not original CD masters to create the 256kbps files introduced with iTunes Plus in 2007. 

That means Apple now asks for high-resolution digital recordings, a level of resolution higher than a regular CD, to create the 256kps cuts. If Apple keeps the original files, either CD quality, or high-resolution, it takes little day-dreaming to imagine a future sound quality upgrade to the entire iTunes catalog.

Lets hope so, because as of today this cartoon pretty much sums up the frustration of finding legal & lossless music online.

  UPDATE: Ars Technica posted a very interesting article about this.

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.

UPDATE #2: Once again Ars Technica has a very thorough article on the subject: Does "Mastered for iTunes" matter to music? Ars puts it to the test.

We enlisted Chicago Mastering Service engineers Jason Ward and Bob Weston to help us out, both of whom were somewhat skeptical that any knob tweaking could result in a better iTunes experience. We came away from the process learning that it absolutely is possible to improve the quality of compressed iTunes Plus tracks with a little bit of work, that Apple's improved compression process does result in a better sound, and that 24/96 files aren't a good format for consumers.

Neil Young, Steve Jobs, and the quality of digital music

Ok, it's been a while since I've written something on this blog. So let's start again with a fragment of news about Apple and the quality of music on iTunes.

No one else than Neil Young apparently spoke with Steve Jobs and, well, other folks at Apple, about this. Unfortunately there isn't any encouraging news. Steve Jobs might have been interested in improving the quality of music on iTunes, but Apple, as a company, doesn't show any interest about this.

Oh well, we keep out finger crossed anyhow...

Source

Bandcamp

Along with HDTracks, Bandcamp is the leading online store when it comes to buy music in a lossless format. They specialize in "indie" music, but the catalog has a wide range of artists.

Since it's the St-Jean Batiste in Québec, I bought the album "Les chemins de verre" by the band Karkwa. It's not a brand new release, it's been available for over a year, but I've heard the song "Marie tu pleures" on the public radio and it has been on my purchase list for a long time. Lovely track, it reminds me of the mood of the Elephant 6 crew and I just bought my tickets to see Jeff Magnum [of Neutral Milk Hotel] at the Pop Montreal festival, so I was in the perfect state of mind it hear this.

Not many french artists are available outside iTunes. Most of the local labels don't offer a lossless purchase. Even a MP3 download is rare. It's nice to see that a big label, Audiogram, distribute their music on Bandcamp.

The album cost 12$, it's the same price no mather the format you choose. On iTunes it's 8$, so that fixed price make the MP3 pricy, but the FLAC format is cheaper than the CD version.

Once the payment is completed [I use PayPal], you are redirected to the download link.

It you use iTunes, you can follow my step-by-step guide to convert the FLAC into Apple Lossless format.

A note on how to find music you like on Bancamp

Since a lot of unsigned and little known bands are using Bandcamp, a nice place to discover them is the the blog Crawdaddy. They feature a Bandcamp band of the week.

 

Good read: How The Music Industry Is Killing Music And Blaming The Fans

A nice article on the music business.

While the industry continues to blame illegal downloading for its financial woes, it’s musicians who are paying the price while being forced to work harder than ever. But label inertia means culture itself is at stake, and even democracy could suffer, argues

Thanks to @barnabef for sharing this article.

Some Rolling Stones albums on HDTracks

HDTracks appears to be on a roll lately. They just added some Rolling Stones releases to their super high definition catalog. It's available in either 88khz or 176khz (both 24bit). This is a very good news and hopefully we will continue to see new high profile offerings in the future.

Here's what Teri Landi from ABKCO has to say about the remastering:

"Many years of research went into locating the original mono and stereo analog tapes that would be used in ABKCO's Rolling Stones Remastered Series. That research revealed a treasure trove of first generation tapes - true stereo masters from The Stones' 1964 Chess Studios sessions including the unedited version of "2120 South Michigan Avenue," Beggar's Banquet at its correct speed and Let It Bleed with splicing that indicates that the original intention was to leave little spacing between each cut. 

For the analog to digital transfers, vintage reel-to-reel tape machines were utilized - a modified Ampex 351 with original tube electronics (full track mono and two track stereo) and an Ampex ATR-102 modified with Aria Discrete Class-A Electronics (full track mono and two track stereo). A Sonoma DSD digital audio workstation was the chosen high resolution format and Meitner Design ADC8 and DAC8 MKlV converters were used for the conversion process. Cables used were the cryogenically frozen type supplied to us by Gus Skinas of Super Audio Center. Gus also provided much guidance to Jody Klein, Steve Rosenthal and myself for our first time use of DSD technology. For this HD Tracks release, the Bob Ludwig mastered DSD files were converted to both 176.4kHz and 88.2kHz high resolution PCM with Weiss Saracon conversion software."

Right now the following albums are available: The Rolling Stones, The Rolling Stones No 2, 12 x 5, Big Hits and Through The Past Darkly.

Favourites like Let It Bleed and Beggar's Banquet should be available in spring or summer. This is the full list of upcomming releases:

Out Of Our Heads | December's Children | Aftermath (US) | Let It Bleed | Out Of Our Heads (UK) | Aftermath (UK) | Between The Buttons (UK) | Beggar's Banquet | The 60's UK EPs - The Rolling Stones/Five By Five/Got Live | Singles Collection | Between The Buttons (US) | Flowers | Their Satanic Majesties Request | Metamorphosis | Got Live If You Want It! | Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! | Big Hits (UK) | Through The Past, Darkly (Big Hits, Vol 2) (UK) | Hot Rocks | More Hot Rocks | The Rolling Stones (US) | The Rolling Stones Now

The 88khz are 19.98$ and the 176khz are 29.98$. (You can use the coupon code STONES10 for a 10% off)

You might want to read the overview of HDtracks I did back in january.

Will iTunes sell lossless music?

This is a promising article from CNN: Apple in talks to improve sound quality of music downloads.

Apple and other digital music retailers are in discussions with record labels to improve the quality of the song files they sell, executives involved in the talks say.

As a result, online music stores could eventually offer songs that sound truer to their original recordings, perhaps at a premium price.

For example iTunes could offer an audio format in 24bit. iTunes and Macs can play Apple Lossless in 24bit, but the portable devices can't (yet). I also believe the Apple Airport Express downgrade the music from 24bit to 16bit, as mentioned on the Apple discussion forum.

Radiohead – The King of Limbs

A new Radiohead album! This saturday! Well that's a pleasant surprise.

Not much is known about the new album, but you can preorder it in WAV format here: http://www.thekingoflimbs.com/