Why buying crappy compressed music when you can buy uncompressed ALAC/FLAC, even in 24bits, from other online shops?

Mastered for iTunes=tuned to sound good in their earphones? I would avoid that!

No increase in bit depth, no increase in sample rate, no reduction in compression ratio - still 256kbps VBR. They claim improvement since the compressed file is generated from a 24bit 96KHz master and that it is tweaked for the "intended listening enviroment" i.e. iPods etc.

I agree with mbee, it certainly shouldn't be used as the basis of a home music library.

Perhaps the marketing logo should be "Mastered for iPods".

Puncher wrote:

No increase in bit depth, no increase in sample rate, no reduction in compression ratio - still 256kbps VBR

I tried to find the technical details ... thanks for digging that out ... a little disappointing

elephant wrote:

Puncher wrote:

No increase in bit depth, no increase in sample rate, no reduction in compression ratio - still 256kbps VBR

I tried to find the technical details ... thanks for digging that out ... a little disappointing

See

Puncher wrote:

elephant wrote:

Puncher wrote:

No increase in bit depth, no increase in sample rate, no reduction in compression ratio - still 256kbps VBR

I tried to find the technical details ... thanks for digging that out ... a little disappointing

 See link

Actually, having read that again, although it doesn't claim that the new files are 24bit depth it does imply that they are. My only concern here is that if they really are I'd expect them to shout about it a bit more.

Puncher wrote:

Perhaps the marketing logo should be "Mastered for iPods".

"Mastered for deaf" maybe?

Just a quote from the Apple document linked here :

"Further, to ensure that your audience is hearing your intended sound, Apple
recommends listening to your masters on the devices your audience will be using. While
this doesn’t have to be done in real time, you should be confident that the sound will
hold up when heard on its intended listening device and in its intended environment."

So... That means that if producers listen to Apple recommendations, we will get tracks tweaked to sound good on iPod + Monster Beats headphones, or Tokai docks...I hope they will not listen to that kind of cr*p. They already killed dynamic range by putting the volume to the max on some mainstream recordings, just because owners of poor "hifi" stuff thought "wow, the volume is higher on that recording! Well done!", now they want to go even further...

Great... Owners of BL5's, you can sell everything!

The good thing is that they explain the problem of dynamic range and ask to avoid clipping...

We will see what comes to the iTunes store, but as this document is aimed at artists/producers, they are now requesting high quality files, which they don't have now. That's why they are not marketing "mastered for iTunes" to customers. Let's see if they will sell ALAC 24/96, or just something compressed that "should sound better".

And if you want to check how good your "Mastered for iPods" is, convert it to a WAV file; or so page 8 advises.

 "However, if you want to do a more detailed examination.....decode the AAC data to uncompressed LPCM and store it to a WAV file."

Why not just stick with a WAV file?

I didn't saw it first, but THERE IS ALREADY THE "MASTERED FOR ITUNES" store on the iTunes store...

And...

It sells 16bit aac 256...

Adios iTunes, hello qobuz (for those who didn't know, Qobuz not only offers Studio Masters quality, they also have a functional "cloud" that allows you to listen to all your purchased songs in streaming/download from an iDevice, you don't have to synchronise with iTunes if you're on the go and want a song that you didn't synchronise)!

A reasonable