Re: 5 Things AppleTV needs to be a MUST BUY by Apple Gazette

[Ashley Aitken]

Hi Charlton (et al.),

Thanks for your post.

On 07/04/2007, at 9:50 PM, Charlton Wilbur wrote:

>
> On Apr 7, 2007, at 5:32 AM, Ashley Aitken wrote:
>
>> Sure, if you look you can easily see compression in video, but I  
>> would say if you know what to listen for you can hear compression  
>> in audio just as easily.
>>
>> Me, I'm no poser, I don't know what to listen for, although I  
>> would like to know some day. To be able to perceive quality is, at  
>> least for me, an attractive attribute.
>
> There's an old joke -- a music lover is someone who listens to the  
> music; an audiophile is someone who listens to the stereo equipment.
>
> Artifacts of compression are pretty easy to hear, but the quality  
> of the recording is only one factor in the quality of the music,  
> and a not very important one at that.  All other things being  
> equal, yes, a well-encoded audio track is preferable to a poorly- 
> encoded one, but all other things are rarely equal.
> In the environments most people use iPods -- at the gym, commuting,  
> where it's mainly portable music -- there's no real benefit from  
> very high bit rate encoding, because the reproduction quality is so  
> low.  Lossless is great, but if the headphones and environment  
> you're listening in are not really good themselves, the environment  
> is introducing more noise than the audio compression.

Sure, I agree. I'm (pretty) happy with 128kbps music on my iPod  
(shuffle) for when I go to the gym or on a noisy plane (yes, I know I  
good get noise-cancelling headphones).

If I had the time and money I'd probably have better earphones for my  
iPod and encode at a higher rate. Unfortunately, iTunes only has  
automatic resampling(?) to 128kbps (I store all our music lossless).

>> And let his US$50+K true high fidelity audio system waste away in  
>> the corner of the room?  I think not.
>>
>> I think he would only ever listen to compressed tracks (perhaps  
>> even lossless only) on his iPod(s), and anything else only for  
>> product reviews.
>
> It wouldn't surprise me if he *had* a $50K audio system, but I  
> think you're ascribing a level of ridiculously stupid audio  
> snobbery to him, and I think he's smarter than that.

Sorry, that's a communication error on my part  (such a low bit- 
rate), I wasn't ascribing a level of ridiculously stupid audio  
snobbery on Mr Jobs (who obviously is ridiculously smart ;-).

I thought it was well known (at least in folklore) that he was a real  
audiophile (in the nicest sense of the term) and had a *good* hi-fi  
(so to speak).

There was also the story of him disregarding digital music (mp3s)  
because of the "something-or-other" being so poor (can't remember the  
audio term now, maybe jitter?).

And that being one of the reasons Apple initially missed the digital  
music trend (they eventually started ;-)

>> I think he probably has digitally remastered (whatever that means)  
>> copies of all the Beatles, Dylan, and the classical he listens to.
>>
>> I'd like to listen to music like that some day, as well.
>
> Why not do it now?  "Digitally remastered" is a marketing buzzword;  
> if you're listening to older music on CD, you're listening to  
> digitally remastered music.  All it means is that there was  
> formerly a master copy used for duplication, and that someone made  
> a new copy of it in digital format.  It has nothing at all to do  
> with audio quality; in fact, a lot of rock music fans find that the  
> sort of audio sweetening that record companies do when they  
> remaster albums has really hurt some older classic albums.

Thanks, I sort of understood that.

I did think though that there were some digital copies (CDs) made  
from something other than the original analogue master, and hence  
suffered from the degradation of the analogue copy.

Anyway, I was referring more to a quality sound system with quality  
sound source, and the former I am probably  more in need of that the  
latter.

For me, the big question, is whether to stick with a stereo system  
(purist) or go with the (now very popular) surround sounds systems  
(that, of course, are primarily for DVDs etc.)

Cheers,
Ashley.

--
Ashley Aitken
Perth, Western Australia
mrhatken at mac dot com
Skype Name: MrHatken (GMT + 8 Hours!)