iTunes - First Impressions

So you've heard all compressed formats then I take it?

 

FYI, Media player 9 does tagging... and i don't have an ipod.

So i suppose my question is now...

"If I dont own an ipod, are there any benefits/reasons to change from media player 9 (XP) to iTunes?"
:tempted:

 

Yes, itunes is nicer to use.

The best copies seem to be 'track copy' whereby the cd is just copied bit for bit, nothing changed what so ever.

If you import cds into itunes in AIFF format nothing is lost, hense why the songs weigh in around 50 megs each.

Paul, you do love compressed music and that is to be applauded, however they do sound inferior, they have to, most of the information is missing there is simply no getting away from this fact.

 

SWEEPING GENERALISATION ALERT

Compressed music also includes LOSSLESS compression, that is if you were to analyse the sound in an editor, you'd find they were not only exactly the same, but also sounded the same.

I dont love compressed music, but I am not influenced in any way by audiophiles who havent really got the first idea what they are talking about (WRT to compression), you could say.

I dont appear to be missing any quality or enjoyment from my lossy compressed musepack audio, even through uber revealing gear. The difference is far more subtle than you are ever likely to admit.

 

Depends what uber revealing kit you are listening through.

The long and short of it is, for people like me who use regular compression techniques (because really I can't be arsed with it) there are massive differences in sound, always for the worse.

I do have the 'first clue BTW'

Compression by its nature means you lose the highs and the lows, and through headphones on an ipod or what ever this is not generally a problem, it is more than a problem through my HIFI and as such I won't generally do it (Although new stuff from epitonic gets put through the HIFI to get an idea)

 

Garyi,

Using lossless compression, as Paul says, there is no difference between the product of the compressed file and the larger uncompressed original audio.

As such, if you play a CD through your computer, and then play the same CD compressed using something like monkey audio, then the resultant sound should be the same.

FWIW I use compressed files very rarely, as I can hear the difference between compressed audio played through my PC and the original CD played from my CD player. This is because my soundcard is sh*te :MILD:

I have used the vast majority of the most common audio players for the PC, and of the lot I prefer Winamp, this is closely followed by iTunes. Media player as such offers no benefits over iTunes in terms of the management of your audio, however iTunes is simpler, more efficient, and looks a lot nicer.

Winamp5 however wins overall.

Ultimately if there was one "best" player, wouldn't we all use it

 

What you are saying is an oxe-moron (sorry about the spelling)

Lossless compression?

What the hell does that mean. How can you chuck out half the information and lose nothing?

If this format is so miraculous why is it not the main stream?

You could call it, compression without loss, no loss compression, call it what you will but fundamentally it comes down to one thing. The information that was there before is no longer there.

Its like saying a CD has as much bandwidth as analogue, it dosn't, so don't fool yourself (as Zappa might say)


YOu say on thew one hand it makes no difference, then you are saying it does because you can hear it on your PC, this makes no sense.

PLay back these two items on a quilty peice of HIFI and you will hear the difference, just a surely as you wil hear that Vinyl sounds better than CD.

 

quote:
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Originally posted by jimmymcfarrell
Compressed music formats should be banned. All compression formats sound horrible in my humble opinion.
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quote:
So you've heard all compressed formats then I take it?

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Just for your benefit I'll rephrase myself: (emphasis on the "IN MY HUMBLE OPINION" - you know, each to their own mate), all compressed music formats THAT IVE HAD THE UNFORTUNATE EXPERIENCE OF LISTENING TO, sound horrible. Come on, the word compression doesnt exactly scream hifi, does it?!?!?

 

Lossless compression is a means by which the original file is reduced in size, in such a way that by running through the reverse process produces a file identical to the original.

Zip files are a perfect example of lossless compression. Try zipping a word file, and then unzipping it. I bet you a fiver you can't find any missing information

I have no idea why it is not mainstream, probably because the reduction in size is around 20-30% rather than tenfold. A CD will take up around 400MB on disk rather than 80odd.

At this point your argument becomes an oxymoron D), I said I cannot hear the difference on MY computer, that is not to say that I haven't heard the difference on a different computer. I have a friend who has a home studio, he has nearly 3 grands worth of computer audio hardware, and I can most definitely hear the difference on that.

I agree, you can hear the difference between CD and lossy compression, and there may be a difference between lossless compression and CD, but it is not something I have ever been able to hear myself.

 

quote:

Try zipping a word file, and then unzipping it. I bet you a fiver you can't find any missing information
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Erm... I reckon music is a bit more sensitive to being messed around with than a word file. Music contains freqs. that you cannot hear, but are essential to the atmosphere of the music, and which are lost during compression. This is blatantly not the case with a word doc.
Surley its like saying "write something on a piece of paper, and put it through the wash - you'll still be able to read it, but not as well. Now try putting a cassette in the wash, it may still work, but you'll lose a hell of the detail of the recording.
That sums up compressed music for me, it sounds like its been through the wash!

 

You are missing the point entirely, with lossless compression, you are not losing data, when you compress and decompress a word document, the original is the same as the second. There are quite a lot of proven mathematical concepts behind it, and a lot of research available on the internet relating to the process behind compressing and decompressing a digital source so that the data is the same before and after compression.

Take for example executable files, the system interprets those instructions as a sequence of 1s and 0s, if compression was to change that in any way at all, you couldn't compress an executable file, ever, as the information wouldn't essentially be junk.

The same goes for the music, ignoring frequencies and taking the original source as a purely binary data source, which is what CD is, there is no ethereal "other information", just ones and zeroes. You can then compress this in exactly the same manner as an application, reconstituting the file then produces the same audio as the original. This is the difference between something like MP3 and monkey audio. With MP3, the encoder deliberately eliminates certain frequencies and combinations of frequencies to reduce the size of the resultant output. With monkey audio as an example again, the holy grail is sound quality, and the encoder will not reduce the file size at the expense of losing some of the original detail.

I can't be bothered going into how compression like this works as it is far beyond the scope of this forum.

 

I get what yer saying, so what stuff uses lossless compression then, what formats? And can you get it on any portables, cos thats probably the most usefull use of compressed music IMO.

 

si_c is correct. Lossless compression is exactly that, compression that doesn't lose anything. As he said, a ZIP file on a computer is a perfect example of that. So is a .GIF image file. When you uncompress a losslessly compressed file what you get back is 100% identical to the original.

.MP3 music files and .JPEG image files OTOH are an example of "lossy" compression meaning that they throw out some of the data and when the file is uncompressed what you get back is not 100% identical to the original allthough clever algorithms make it pretty close. Lossy compression is only feasible on things like images and music where something that's very close but not identical to the original is often good enough. Computer files like executables, documents etc can only be compressed losslessly because even a single bit changed could make the file totally useless.

The simplest example of lossless compression is called "Run Length Encoding" and is particularly suitable for image files where there's a lot of redundancy. For example, if the first 30 pixels of an image file were black instead of having 30 bytes of 0 (to indicate black) you could reduce that to one byte of value 0 (for black) and a 2nd byte of value 30 indicating how many successive black pixels there were - a saving of 28 bytes over the original. Follow that pattern all the way through and on an image file of large areas of the same colour you'll get a very good compression ratio.

There are many more much more complex lossless compression algorithms and something as simple as RLE probably wouldn't work terribly well with music but they all have one thing in common, what comes out when you uncompress he file is 100% identical to the original file, every single time. The essence of lossless compression is that you don't lose any information, you just store it more efficiently.

The disadvantage with lossless compression is that compression ratios are much lower, on average you might be able to make a file half its original size (depending on content) - a 1:2 ratio. Lossy compression like JPEG and MP3 can have compression ratios of 1:10 or even 1:20 without significant degradation for many applications. Since most people who use MP3 are quite happy with its performance I can't see many people taking to something like Monkey which would use far more memory/disk space and not give them any (in their opinion) noticable benefit.

Michael.

 

Take a look here for some information

http://www.firstpr.com.au/audiocomp/lossless/

It really isn't effective for portables as the files are quite large, there may be one out there, but I haven't seen one as yet.

 

MLP or Meridian Lossless Packing is the format mandated by the DVD forum for use in 5.1 dvd-a's (titter) at high bitrates in fact without MLP davd-A(snigger) wouldn;t be have enough memory to accomodate these high bit rates. SACD is also losslessly packed, although they don;t advertise the fact so much.

cheers


julian

 

Interesting - I've just ripped a copy-protected CD that I own - Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells 2003 with iTunes. It's worked pefectly with no problems whatsover. I was expecting copy-protected CDs to really cause grief.

Proves the point even more that copy-protection isn't really that effective after all

 

I think you all may seem to be losing the plot over this. Compressed music is essentially (to me anyway) a way of storing music easily so you can listen to it when you dont want to listen to originals. Who wants to carry round a CD wallet when they're on the bus to work, not me, £200 worth of CD's in each wallet makes me feel a little worried about losing them. Who wants to stick an original in the car CD player, for it to get scratched, broken, stolen whatever? Unless you are paying ABSOLUTE attention to the music, you wont really hear much of a difference. Some of you need to lighten up a bit, if you don't mind my saying.

 

Well said, Mutant - certainly that's the reason I use compressed music formats. Some CDs I have are now very difficult to get hold of, as they are either out of the catalogues or only sold in certain countries or regions - e.g. Australia or SE Asia. I'd much rather loose a £1 MiniDisc (that I can re-record from the orginal CD if lost) than a £15 CD that is probably irreplaceable.

 

nsherin, do you know what the largest minidisc size is for audio use? I ask because my player does not support MDLP, and i wondered if there were any larger MD's than 80 minutes?

 

i've noticed that Apple seem to be givving the finger to copy protection

A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step: EAC glitches out, Sonic Stage won't even look at it, and i can't even extract it with SoundForge! but iTunes ripped it first time


i'm liking Apple more & more with every day