The quest for higher quality digital music
Whether it's Apple's Mastered for iTunes or Neil Young's campaign for 'high resolution' audio, digital music quality is improving but whether ordinary listeners can tell the difference remains in debate.
Olympic farewell: the Games will be Blur’s final encore
7:00AM BST 09 Aug 2012
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On Sunday, Blur will headline a Hyde Park concert marking the end of the
London Olympics. For fans who want to remind themselves of Blur's heydey,
the band's back catalogue has been reissued in the Mastered
for iTunes format, a new initiative from Apple
that promises higher quality digital downloads. Blur's seven studio albums
should sound better than ever.
The music downloading era kicked off with MP3, a data compression format that
reduced the file size of audio tracks to make them small enough to download
over the internet while retaining as much of the original recording as
possible.
The algorithms behind MP3, Apple's AAC, and other compression formats are
designed to remove frequencies that most people won't be able to hear
anyway. But they are still 'lossy' compression formats, however, in which
some quality is sacrificed so that file sizes stay small.
Mastered for iTunes is driven by a series of guidelines from Apple to help
producers make their tracks sound as good as possible before submitting
them. One key recommendation is maintaining the highest possible dynamic
range and resisting the modern trend for making the quiet parts louder. The
theory is simple: start with the highest quality audio before compression
and you should get a better sounding file afterwards.
There are three terms to understand when discussing digital audio: bit depth
is the number of bits of information recorded each time the music is
sampled; the sample rate is the number of times the information is sampled
each second; and the bit rate describes the amount of data transmitted per
second. The sampling rate needs to be greater than double the highest
frequency being sampled.
A compact disc has a bit depth of 16, a sample rate of 44.1kHz and a bit rate
of 1.4Mbps. Apple wants record labels to supply 24-bit, 96KHz files, which
encompass a dynamic range beyond the hearing capability of the human ear.
The aim is to compress those files to CD quality while retaining as much
detail as possible. The end result, according to Apple, is an improved
256kbps AAC file.
It's worth noting that, Apple will retain that original high quality master, making it possible to provide even higher quality downloads later on as algorithms, download speeds and storage capacities improve. That option could prove to be a compelling reason for people to continue to subscribe to iTunes Match, the service that stores your music on Apple's iCloud service and lets you access it on all your devices.
And so Blur's catalogue, downloaded from iTunes, will sound better than ever, as will albums by Paul McCartney, John Coltrane, Nirvana and others whose work has been reissued in the new format.
One record label that has embraced Mastered for iTunes is LSO Live, the London Symphony Orchestra's record label. James Mallinson, LSO Live's producer, says Apple has "come up with algorithms that seem to do a better job of keeping the right stuff than anybody else has."
Mallinson says that although the human ear can't hear much above 22KHz - and that level declines with age - it doesn't follow that frequencies above that level can be removed from a recording without an impact.
He argues: "The missing high frequencies affect the way you perceive the lower frequencies. In other words, the ear is a much more complex organ than people thought it was. That's one of the problems with CD: there was a complete cut-off at 22k. That's not enough for your ear. Even though you can't hear a 22k sine wave, you need those higher frequencies there."
Mallinson adds: "One of the things which Mastered for iTunes has done is find a way of incorporating those higher partials into the file which ends up on iTunes."
Sampling theory is an extraordinarily complicated field - just mention the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem to an expert and prepare to be bewildered for an hour or so. There is widespread disagreement on how much can be removed from a piece of music without affecting quality, how much compression affects quality and how much is the result of the playback equipment, the listener's position or even their mood. You'll even find some who question the concept of 'better' or 'worse' audio quality itself.
Neil Young, the rock star, has been campaigning loudly for music to be released in even higher quality. He wants 24-bit, 192KHz files to be available. It's worth remembering that Young is something of an obsessive: he once wired up his house to be the left speaker and the barn as his right speaker so that he could listen to music from a boat in the middle of his lake.
Chris Montgomery, the creator of the Ogg Vorbis compression format, is dismissive of Young's campaign. Earlier this year, he wrote: "There are a few real problems with the audio quality and 'experience' of digitally distributed music today. 24/192 solves none of them."
In a very thorough article, Montogomery argued that 192kHz offered no benefits over files with lower sample rates and that 24-bit files could be useful in recording and mastering but offered no advantages in playback. The added frequencies are simply inaudible to the human ear. Numerous tests, Montgomery argues, have shown that listeners cannot reliably discriminate between audio played back at 16-bit, 44.1kHz and audio played at a supposedly 'high definition' quality.
But Montgomery isn't saying that audio quality can't improve. He sees 'lossless' formats as an answer to badly encoded audio files and is encouraged by the possibility that Mastered for iTunes will encourage music producers to deliver better masters. He wrote: "What remains to be seen is whether or not Apple and the others actually 'get it' or if this is merely a hook for selling consumers yet another, more expensive copy of music they already own."
High-end audio manufacturer Linn, which has been selling 24-bit, 192Khz files
of its own recordings for a while and earlier this year added albums from
Universal records to its store.
Gilad Tiefenbrun, Linn's managing director, says the company, which had never really liked CD players, is embracing high quality downloads. He says: "Once you increase the headroom - the potential of the sound - there is the incentive for audio engineers to up their game. The quality of our recordings over the last few years has improved exponentially."
Where digital audio files were once mostly listened to through earbuds on MP3 players or on cheap computer speakers, they are now a mainstay of the living room. Linn's range of network music players, though not cheap, are designed to play your music and connect to your television, Blu-ray player or even stream from iPlayer.
Tiefenbrun says: "It's about getting high quality sound from the myriad sound sources in the modern home."
Tiefenbrun believes that the future will be multi-format. "You can have MP3 for your portable stuff," he says, but at home, where storage space is less of a problem, why not have higher quality files? He adds: "We're at the beginning of a journey that is pretty much unstoppable now."
For Blur fans who have worn out their vinyl copy of 1993's Modern Life Is Rubbish, digital downloads might soon be able to offer an experience that is just as good. Modern Life might not be that bad after all.
Stuff says
Sleek, compact and with an excellent sound, Kiko looks like a winner for style victims and streaming fanatics alike
Review continues after the break...
Great little system - doesn't need wi-fi anyway, just use Homeplugs
and you get better performance, no drop-outs even with high res music
streaming!
It's worth noting that, Apple will retain that original high quality master, making it possible to provide even higher quality downloads later on as algorithms, download speeds and storage capacities improve. That option could prove to be a compelling reason for people to continue to subscribe to iTunes Match, the service that stores your music on Apple's iCloud service and lets you access it on all your devices.
And so Blur's catalogue, downloaded from iTunes, will sound better than ever, as will albums by Paul McCartney, John Coltrane, Nirvana and others whose work has been reissued in the new format.
One record label that has embraced Mastered for iTunes is LSO Live, the London Symphony Orchestra's record label. James Mallinson, LSO Live's producer, says Apple has "come up with algorithms that seem to do a better job of keeping the right stuff than anybody else has."
Mallinson says that although the human ear can't hear much above 22KHz - and that level declines with age - it doesn't follow that frequencies above that level can be removed from a recording without an impact.
He argues: "The missing high frequencies affect the way you perceive the lower frequencies. In other words, the ear is a much more complex organ than people thought it was. That's one of the problems with CD: there was a complete cut-off at 22k. That's not enough for your ear. Even though you can't hear a 22k sine wave, you need those higher frequencies there."
Mallinson adds: "One of the things which Mastered for iTunes has done is find a way of incorporating those higher partials into the file which ends up on iTunes."
Sampling theory is an extraordinarily complicated field - just mention the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem to an expert and prepare to be bewildered for an hour or so. There is widespread disagreement on how much can be removed from a piece of music without affecting quality, how much compression affects quality and how much is the result of the playback equipment, the listener's position or even their mood. You'll even find some who question the concept of 'better' or 'worse' audio quality itself.
Neil Young, the rock star, has been campaigning loudly for music to be released in even higher quality. He wants 24-bit, 192KHz files to be available. It's worth remembering that Young is something of an obsessive: he once wired up his house to be the left speaker and the barn as his right speaker so that he could listen to music from a boat in the middle of his lake.
Chris Montgomery, the creator of the Ogg Vorbis compression format, is dismissive of Young's campaign. Earlier this year, he wrote: "There are a few real problems with the audio quality and 'experience' of digitally distributed music today. 24/192 solves none of them."
In a very thorough article, Montogomery argued that 192kHz offered no benefits over files with lower sample rates and that 24-bit files could be useful in recording and mastering but offered no advantages in playback. The added frequencies are simply inaudible to the human ear. Numerous tests, Montgomery argues, have shown that listeners cannot reliably discriminate between audio played back at 16-bit, 44.1kHz and audio played at a supposedly 'high definition' quality.
But Montgomery isn't saying that audio quality can't improve. He sees 'lossless' formats as an answer to badly encoded audio files and is encouraged by the possibility that Mastered for iTunes will encourage music producers to deliver better masters. He wrote: "What remains to be seen is whether or not Apple and the others actually 'get it' or if this is merely a hook for selling consumers yet another, more expensive copy of music they already own."
What quality of digital music do you prefer?
Gilad Tiefenbrun, Linn's managing director, says the company, which had never really liked CD players, is embracing high quality downloads. He says: "Once you increase the headroom - the potential of the sound - there is the incentive for audio engineers to up their game. The quality of our recordings over the last few years has improved exponentially."
Where digital audio files were once mostly listened to through earbuds on MP3 players or on cheap computer speakers, they are now a mainstay of the living room. Linn's range of network music players, though not cheap, are designed to play your music and connect to your television, Blu-ray player or even stream from iPlayer.
Tiefenbrun says: "It's about getting high quality sound from the myriad sound sources in the modern home."
Tiefenbrun believes that the future will be multi-format. "You can have MP3 for your portable stuff," he says, but at home, where storage space is less of a problem, why not have higher quality files? He adds: "We're at the beginning of a journey that is pretty much unstoppable now."
For Blur fans who have worn out their vinyl copy of 1993's Modern Life Is Rubbish, digital downloads might soon be able to offer an experience that is just as good. Modern Life might not be that bad after all.
Linn Kiko Review
Stuff says
Sleek, compact and with an excellent sound, Kiko looks like a winner for style victims and streaming fanatics alikeLinn Kiko – introduction
Up to now, Linn’s DS music streamers have been more about function than form – all that changes with the ultra-compact Kiko, a £2500 ‘just add computer’ solution complete with curvaceous styling, active speakers, a choice of six colours and slick setup wizard. Even better, it also sounds the business.Linn Kiko – design and build
The Kiko main unit is half the width of regular hi-fi components, can be used standing on end, and the ‘wing’ cross section makes its metal casework pretty distinctive. And you can have it in a choice of black, white, silver, ‘champagne’ or light or dark blueLinn Kiko – controls
Apart from a power rocker on the side panel (or the top if you use it on end) Kiko has no controls whatsoever. You operate it either with the slimline silver handset, which has buttons labeled with slightly obscure pictograms (you’ll get used to them) or preferably using Linn’s Kinsky software on computer or iOS/Android handset.Linn Kiko – display
Yes, the front panel will show you a Linn logo when it fires up, and volume numbers, but beyond that all you get are those pictograms again. To play music on your networked computer or handheld you’ll either need the Kinsky app or Songcast, which lets you ‘play to’ Kiko.Linn Kiko – speakers
Each speaker drive unit is driven by a separate amplifier within the Kiko unit for the best possible amp/speaker matching. It really makes a difference, too – this might be a dinky little system, but it delivers awesome sound from punchy bass to smooth, involving treble whether you’re playing hard rock or Linn-label jazz. Ni-i-ice.Review continues after the break...
Linn Kiko – connectivity
As well as playing all the music stored on your local network the little Kiko can also access web services such as Spotify via AirPlay on an iDevice or Songcast. It’s easily incorporated into your existing system, too, thanks to digital audio inputs and HDMI ins and outs for video. The only disappointment is that it has to be wired to your router – there’s no Wi-Fi.Linn Kiko – verdict
With foolproof installation and set-up, thanks to clever design and a neat installation wizard, plus the fact it comes complete with speakers, we can see Kiko selling the streaming idea to a lot of new customers. But we really would have liked a proper front-panel display to enable it to be used without computer or tablet control.Comments