High definition iTunes music in the horizon

[Emre Üçöz]

things will get interesting...wait till WWDC in June...

http://www.macrumors.com/2014/04/10/high-definition-itunes-music-downloads/

 

[amirm]

The odds are against them doing this but would be good if they did.

 

[Steve Williams]

why are the odds against them

 

[Emre Üçöz]

It seems that Apple already has a sizeable amount of its catalogue in 24 bit.

 

[Steve Williams]

I thought their entire catalog was 24 bit

 

[amirm]

Because in big companies you get laughed at when you want to serve the small, high-end ("top of the pyramid") market. The revenues from it become round off errors when you are doing $1B+ in business.

It takes a leader who has a personal interest to override his team. I had to do that many times in my group at Microsoft. I would push for enthusiast features and the team would routinely refuse to implement them unless I stomped my feet. And only some of the time I would get that outcome! To wit, when I left, the company completely disbanded all of the groups that were focused on such things.

One of the groups I ran was the "Plus" package for Windows. It did something like $10 to $20M in revenue. I received a complaint from the division CFO that said why we are wasting time on such revenue and that the 20 people who were working on that should work on the larger windows group. So we killed the project and the team. If that had been a separate company, it would have been quite successful.

 

[asindc]

Because in big companies you get laughed at when you want to serve the small, high-end ("top of the pyramid") market. The revenues from it become round off errors when you are doing $1B+ in business.

It takes a leader who has a personal interest to override his team. I had to do that many times in my group at Microsoft. I would push for enthusiast features and the team would routinely refuse to implement them unless I stomped my feet. And only some of the time I would get that outcome! To wit, when I left, the company completely disbanded all of the groups that were focused on such things.

One of the groups I ran was the "Plus" package for Windows. It did something like $10 to $20M in revenue. I received a complaint from the division CFO that said why we are wasting time on such revenue and that the 20 people who were working on that should work on the larger windows group. So we killed the project and the team. If that had been a separate company, it would have been quite successful.

I guess that this is an example of why Microsoft has all but abandoned HDCD.

As far as hi-rez (true hi-rez, not some upsampled BS) on iTunes is concerned, I'll believe it when I see it, though I really hope it happens.

 

[dallasjustice]

Apple would need to consider the legal liability beforehand. Mass tort lawyers will swarm if they release a bunch of upsamples.

 

[amirm]

I guess that this is an example of why Microsoft has all but abandoned HDCD.

That happened under my watch so the answer is no . We acquired Pacific Microsonics because they had developed signal processing for reducing artifacts in computer speakers. The HDCD technology was already at the end of the road. High-resolution formats courtesy of DVD Audio and SACD were launched and no one had interest in trying to make a backward compatible 20 bit CD format. The business was losing money and would have closed its doors had we not acquired it. Since we were not in the business of making the hardware, we sold that off to another company.

 

[oceancall]

But songs will sound the same to our ears. We can hardly hear the difference between 256 kbps and 320 kbps songs. This will be the same case.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

But songs will sound the same to our ears. We can hardly hear the difference between 256 kbps and 320 kbps songs. This will be the same case.

Uh oh...pass the popcorn.

 

[JackD201]

Funny thing but slightly off topic. I was flipping through my iTunes last night trying to get sleepy having had too much coffee during the day. When I scrolled to the right, there were a number of songs in the sampling rate column listed at 48. Titles didn't jibe with my Hi-Rez downloads so I looked deeper. Hmmmmm. Checked the dates added. Most were from '08 and '09. Couldn't be a Hi-Rez download. These were tagged 256 bitrate. Now very sure. Checked if I had the CDs and unknowingly ripped them to 256 at 48 even if I'd never seen options to do these on any panels. Nope. All were what were once known as iTunes+. Now some weird stuff from the same period. A number of low bitrate files from the same period. I mean down in the 100s. Seems there was a whole lot of variance at the time.

iTunes used to be only my BGM collection so I've never ever been critical of what I downloaded. The music is for the car or for parties. It's also for scouting. I like an album enough, I buy the CD or if available decently pressed the LP. Now it is also the database for my PCM music player. Today I've already moved my folder to an external drive since laptop drives can't hold enough real Hi-Rez files. That brings me to the belief that Apple will adopt Hi-Rez to help push hardware sales the way RAW support for iPhoto did to middle of the road photographers.

 

[amirm]

So... Did they announce this at WDC? I assume not?