It’s very rare that I talk about audio and music. I’m not an expert or an audiophile. I don’t have formal training but I’m a HUGE fan of music overall. I have nearly 20,000 songs in iTunes and each one of them is in perfect quality or at least up to my standards. I can tell you what kind of file and what the kbps is just by listening to it. By the way, “kbps” stands for “kilobits per second” (not kilobytes).
Pre-Blog Post Note: I’m not a professional and most of this is “assumptions” based on my 10+ year love of music. I don’t speak for anyone, including BT. This is just my opinion :) -Adam
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A History Lesson
When iTunes was introduced to the world on April 28th, 2003, the highest kbps for purchased music was only 128 and this was acceptable to most but audiophiles complained that 256kbps music was needed as 160kbps generally translates to “CD-Quality” and ripping at 128 would result in loss of that quality. Then again, Apple touted that 128kbps AAC (the codec used by the iTunes Music Store instead of the more popular MP3) was more efficient at compression and thus CD-Quality MP3s were 160kbps but in AAC, 128 was acceptable. Confused? It’s not important, just a little bit of history.
Anyway, on May 30th, 2007, Apple introduced iTunes Plus. This was a response to two things. One, the consumers that wouldn’t use iTunes due to DRM restrictions set by Apple’s store and that 128kbps was too low quality. iTunes plus tracks generally cost $1.29 (30 cents over the standard price) and came without DRM and were double the quality of Apple’s 99 cent tracks. The users were happy! In 2009, Apple announced that he entire store would become iTunes Plus enabled by the middle of the year and all tracks would be 256 and without DRM and variable pricing would be put in place. Basically, this was a response to labels demanding some tracks be sold for $1.29 and Apple didn’t want to budge.
Today, when you browse the iTunes Music Store, every track is encoded at 256kbps (above CD-quality) and DRM-free and tracks range from 79 cents to $1.29. Consumers are happy, labels are happy. Oh, one other technical side note; If you rip a CD at 256 KBPS, you won’t always get that much quality out of it. You’re ripping more than you need to. I’m going to share with you why iTunes isn’t the place to buy music that you truly appreciate or music that you want longevity out of.
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Why iTunes Isn’t The Best Place to Purchase Music
Today, Brian Transeau’s (aka BT’s) latest album, “These Hopeful Machines” has landed on Amazon, iTunes and your local record store. Brian’s music is fantastic, wonderful, celebrated and timeless. I listen to tracks he created over 12 years ago and the songs might as well be a couple of weeks old. Every track he has created is delivered in a way that you can experience each album back to back without the feeling of boredom and, honestly, his music inspires me. My ex-girlfriend, Laura claims that I have a “man crush” on Brian for his art of music and I admit it. The crush is real. His music has helped me write over 50% of my blog posts for the past 10 years. He’s helped me get through good times and bad and helped me through a 16 hour car ride across state lines. His music has lifted my appreciation and awareness to new levels and it has brought me down to the level of realization that we’re so tiny in this huge universe. Brian makes electronic-audible art.
His music never should be consumed at 128kbps AAC, MP3 or WMV. Even at 256kbps, I think you’re doing yourself a disservice. Go ahead and enjoy your Smash Mouth album at 256k but music from artists like BT, U2, The Beatles and Moby (and many more) should be played in a different way outside of the iTunes Store restrictive quality model.
For a while, audiophiles have begged Apple to provide variable pricing for different qualities. 96kbps can be purchased for 49 cents and AIFF / Apple Lossless should cost $1.50-$1.99. Audiophiles will pay $19.99 for an album in Apple Lossless because they know the advantages to paying more for that file format. However, Apple keeps things simple and only provides 256K music.
Before I continue, let me stop and say that if you use Apple’s included earphones, then just stop reading and purchase Brian’s new CD on iTunes for a few bucks and listen away. You’re not going to get anything out of this if your earphones cost less than $99 (Apple’s earphones cost $29 and even then, they’re a ripoff).
My earphone of choice is the Shure SE530. I currently own a pair of Bose QuietComfort 2 cans (which totally blow at $299 they’re a ripoff), Etymotic ER-4, Shure SE420 and the Shure SE530 earphones. The Shure SE530s retailed for $599 when I bought them. Those died outside of the 2 year warranty and guess what, I bought a new pair for $449 (their current price). Why? They’re totally worth it. Earphones, headphones, cans and monitors are all different kind of devices to help you listen to music. Each have their own advantages and pricing does matter. I just saw that Ultimate Ears, a subsidiary of Logitech, released a 6 driver pair of earphones for $1350 and if I had the cash, I’d buy them. I don’t understand by people pay $300 for an iPod and buy thousands of CDs for $12.99 each and then plug in a pair of $29 earbuds. It’s stupid and you’re not enjoying music the way you should.
Long story short, if you’re not in a pair of earphones that cost at least $99, then just stop reading. For young and newbie audiophiles, the SE115 (link) are a great starter pair of earphones. They’re only $115. My first pair of “good” earphones were the SE110 and I never looked back and every year I upgrade because it’s worth it!
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Ok….Back on topic
Brian’s new album comes out today. Do not buy on iTunes (unless you want to). I’m sure he would love you to purchase a digital and analog copy of his music but hear me out. I’m lazy so I went to Wikipedia and searched for AAC, MP3 and Apple Lossless. Below are the descriptions.
MP3:
MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression. It is a common audio format for consumer audio storage, as well as a de facto standard of digital audio compression for the transfer and playback of music on digital audio players.
The use in MP3 of a lossy compression algorithm is designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent the audio recording and still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio for most listeners. An MP3 file that is created using the setting of 128 kbit/s will result in a file that is about 1/11th[note 1] the size of the CD file created from the original audio source. An MP3 file can also be constructed at higher or lower bit rates, with higher or lower resulting quality.
The compression works by reducing accuracy of certain parts of sound that are deemed beyond the auditory resolution ability of most people. This method is commonly referred to as perceptual coding.[5] It internally provides a representation of sound within a short-term time/frequency analysis window, by using psychoacoustic models to discard or reduce precision of components less audible to human hearing, and recording the remaining information in an efficient manner.
AAC:
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates.[1]
AAC has been standardized by ISO and IEC, as part of the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 specifications.[2][3] The MPEG-2 standard contains several audio coding methods, including the MP3 coding scheme. AAC is able to include 48 full-bandwidth (up to 96 kHz) audio channels in one stream plus 16 low frequency effects (LFE, limited to 120 Hz) channels, up to 16 “coupling” or dialog channels, and up to 16 data streams. The quality for stereo is satisfactory to modest requirements at 96 kbit/s in joint stereo mode; however, hi-fi transparency demands data rates of at least 128kbit/s (VBR). The MPEG-2 audio tests showed that AAC meets the requirements referred to as “transparent” for the ITU at 128 kbit/s for stereo, and 320kbit/s for 5.1 audio.
AAC’s improvements over MP3
Advanced Audio Coding is designed to be the successor of the MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, known as MP3 format, which was specified by ISO/IEC in 11172-3 (MPEG-1 Audio) and 13818-3 (MPEG-2 Audio).
Blind tests show that AAC demonstrates greater sound quality and transparency than MP3 for files coded at the same bit rate.[1]
Improvements include:
- More sample frequencies (from 8 to 96 kHz) than MP3 (16 to 48 kHz)
- Up to 48 channels (MP3 supports up to two channels in MPEG-1 mode and up to 5.1 channels in MPEG-2 mode)
- Arbitrary bit-rates and variable frame length. Standardized constant bit rate with bit reservoir.
- Higher efficiency and simpler filterbank (rather than MP3’s hybrid coding, AAC uses a pure MDCT)
- Higher coding efficiency for stationary signals (AAC uses a blocksize of 1024 or 960 samples, allowing more efficient coding than MP3’s 576 sample blocks)
- Higher coding accuracy for transient signals (AAC uses a blocksize of 128 or 120 samples, allowing more accurate coding than MP3’s 192 sample blocks)
- Can use Kaiser-Bessel derived window function to eliminate spectral leakage at the expense of widening the main lobe
- Much better handling of audio frequencies above 16 kHz
- More flexible joint stereo (different methods can be used in different frequency ranges)
Apple Lossless:
Apple Lossless (also known as Apple Lossless Encoder, ALE, or Apple Lossless Audio Codec, ALAC) is an audio codec developed by Apple Inc. for lossless data compression of digital music.
Apple Lossless data is stored within an MP4 container with the filename extension .m4a. It is not a variant of AAC, but uses linear prediction similar to other lossless codecs such as FLAC and Shorten.[1] All current iPod players can play Apple Lossless-encoded files. It does not utilize any digital rights management (DRM) scheme, but by the nature of the container, it is thought that DRM could be applied to ALAC much the same way it can with other files in QuickTime containers.
Apple claims that audio files compressed with its lossless codec will use up “about half the storage space” that the uncompressed data would require. Testers using a selection of music have found that compressed files are about 40% to 60% the size of the originals depending on the kind of music, similar to other lossless formats. Furthermore, the speed at which it can be decoded makes it useful for a limited-power device such as the iPod.[2]
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Summarizing The Content I Pasted Above:
Yeah, I know that was pretty “techie” but here’s the gist. AAC is leaps and bounds above MP3 in so many ways! AAC is a great codec to use in the iTunes Music Store. Small file sizes, increased quality and flexibility. However, Apple Lossless is true lossless audio. Meaning, you don’t lose the quality. Apple Lossless is just like AIFF or WAV but where those two file formats turn a 3 minute song into 30 megabytes, Apple Lossless has the same quality as those file formats but brings it down to only 10 megabytes. Less space = more songs stored on your iPhone / iPod but without losing the quality like you would with with MP3 or AAC.
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Why All of This is Important:
Apple only gives you AAC 256kbps music when you purchase from them. Brian Transeau will spend weeks, months and years on an album perfecting each chord, bit, byte and second. He plays back these songs over and over in the original quality and he plays it back on monitors (both large speakers and in-ear monitors) and then he sends that music to the record company to distribute.
AAC 256kbps is “adequate” for most music. I think it’s offensive to your ears and to Brian’s passion and creativity to buy music from Amazon or iTunes in that lousy file format and lousy compression.
My suggestion. Buy BT’s album at your record store. In iTunes, choose “Apple Lossless” as the default Import method and enjoy Brian’s the music the way its meant to be heard.
I had purchased every BT album on iTunes, then when I bought my $600 earphones, I went to Amazon and bought the physical CDs. I reimported all of them in Apple Lossless and the benefits were incomparable! Every song, note, sound was detailed and real. The music came to life and so I began doing this for all of the music that I truly loved at 128 / 256 kbps. Now, 25% of my music is encoded in Apple Lossless. The file sizes are larger than AAC (10 megabytes compared to 4 megabytes) but it’s very much worth it.
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My Advice:
Buy Brian’s physical album (Amazon Link), purchase the SE115 from Shure and enjoy music the way it was meant to be heard. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by buying Apple’s crappy quality. This isn’t Smash Mouth (no offense), this is Brian Transeau. He’s been working since 2006 on this album and it’ss meant to be heard the best way possible.
Further Reading: Macrumors.com Forums “AAC versus Apple Lossless” LINK
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Finally, here are some videos and Photos I shot of Brian’s last three performances in the bay area (San Francisco Area). He performed at iPhoneDevCamp and RubySkye.