Comments on: Apple to Linn Records: you can’t use Apple lossless

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:22:37 +0000

Thanks GEo. I’m just quoting what Martin Dalgleish told me; I’m not surprised by what you say though since the Linn website was already confused about the difference between AAC and ALAC.

Tim

By: GEo

GEo — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:11:46 +0000

There is no such thing like AAC lossless… there is an “MPEG-4 Audio Lossless Coding (ALS)” codec that has nothing to do with AAC…

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 17:49:26 +0000

The great thing about Linn’s approach is that you have the choice. You can save money and buy the lower-res or lossy-compressed formats, whatever you prefer.

Tim

By: Morris

Morris — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 14:20:29 +0000

Well, higher resolutions are certainly useful during mixing and editing, there’s no discussion about that.

But, they have a function during just listening as well. Resolutions higher than 14bit are invaluable when you want to listen to the sound of insects on the launch pad during take off of the Space Shuttle or people whispering in the mosh-pit during a metal concert.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 13:53:01 +0000

Re “higher than cd quality” – cd stores audio data in an uncompressed (non-lossy) 16-bit format. Linn’s best downloads are in an uncompressed 24-bit format, which means theoretically higher quality.

There is plenty of debate over whether the differences are likely to be audible, and even over whether either format is audibly superior to lossy-compressed MP3 or AAC at a high bitrate.

Even if you don’t think there are audible differences, there are still benefits to the higher resolution formats. In particular, you can apply digital processing with less risk of audible degradation.

Tim

By: Aars

Aars — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 13:27:20 +0000

no offense, really.. but what does “higher than cd quality” mean exactly?

By: Morris

Morris — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 13:07:00 +0000

It may be because Apple is introducing FLAC in OS X “Leopard” this spring (fact) and intends to deprecate Apple Lossless in favor of it (speculation).

There is some speculation that Apple created Apple Lossless because FLAC couldn’t do what they needed at the time. Several years later, FLAC does satisfy their wishes, hence the upcoming introduction.

By: Brennan

Brennan — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 20:19:21 +0000

Thanks for shining a light on this! Very interesting article.