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Musical Discussions
Topic: Devil in the details

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Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-13-2014
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A new company have made available Barenboim with Staatskapelle Berlin Bruckner 1-3 

 http://www.peralmusic.com/ 

There is a video in there with Barenboim presentation, stupid from my perspective but it is what it is.

http://www.peralmusic.com/recordings 

I am not a huge fun of Barenboim Bruckner but I wonder if someone heard it. They do all business via iTines - I have no idea what it is and I wish they would not do it.

Posted by Romy the Cat on 05-14-2014
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Yep, as expected - the music industry idiots did vandalized everything that was possible. I am sure that the cretin-consultant who is responsible has a long list of diplomas, would tall you stories how many years he spent in MIT and will behave like he is bellybutton of universe. Oh, well...

http://www.abruckner.com/editorsnote/news/universalanddaniel/

Posted by Goetz on 05-24-2014
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The interview with Daniel Barenboim gives some more information about his intentions of Peralmusic label:

http://www.peralmusic.com/writings

For us the question is still pending in which format these downloads are being offered.
Lossless format or MP 3 scrap ?

Posted by steverino on 05-24-2014
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RE Peralmusic soundfiles

This is something that a Jacob Ganz wrote for NPR (my underlining):

"I spoke again with Bob Ludwig, the mastering engineer quoted in the story, who has submitted "Mastered for iTunes" tracks to Apple. He says the company is simply providing mastering engineers with tools that allow them to see how songs mastered at 24 bits will clip (that is, distort audibly) when they go through the standardized AAC encoding process. That's been difficult to do in the past. Seeing the places where all lossy encoders creates clipping in the music gives engineers a reference for how to adjust the master recordings to avoid that distortion. The uncompressed files are then submitted to iTunes, which creates lossless versions before encoding the songs as 256 kpbs AAC files for sale in the iTunes store. (Through the testing process, Apple has even been submitting its encoded AAC files to mastering engineers to make sure the process hasn't created any unforeseen errors.)

Why is this significant? Because the fact that Apple retains the lossless versions of the high-quality studio masters means that iTunes, at any time it decides to, can begin selling higher-quality encodes, or even lossless files. If this story is, at bottom, about how the demands of consumers shift the balance between convenience and quality, then this new development is Apple's effort to allow humans to correct flaws in a very useful but imperfect technology. It does not mean that the company is locking its users into an inferior format."


If I am misparsing this gobbledygook please let me know. But the plain sense of it is that audio masterers have to remaster their finished product in order for it not to audibly clip in Itunes. So what is sent to Apple as a "lossless" file has already been altered in quite significant ways, all of which are invisible to the consumer. Nonetheless the consumer will be assured that this is the "lossless" file used to generate the Apple lossy file. Are we beginning to notice a pattern with the formerly estimable Mr Ludwig? Anyway your link says that the Bruckner soundfiles are Not preprocessed for ITunes. I guess you have to buy them to find out if they audibly clip.

Here is another quote from Jordan Kahn at 9to5mac:

"When Apple started pushing its “Mastered for iTunes” section of albums “specially tuned for higher fidelity sound,” it also published a white paper detailing new guidelines asking publishers to submit high-resolution 24-bit/96kHz files instead of the original CD masters for inclusion in the section. Many were under the impression that the 100 or so albums in the new section are sonically closer to the original CD source in comparison to your average AAC encode from iTunes. According to British mastering engineer Ian Shepherd, “null testing” proves that is simply not true. In fact, he proves a “vanilla” iTunes AAC encoding with default settings sounds closer to the original CD than songs that were specifically Mastered for iTunes. "

What this suggests is that we have gotten to the point where "lossless file" is a completely meaningless term.

Posted by rowuk on 05-25-2014
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There are a couple of things that come to mind here:
IF there is a danger of clipping and 0dB has to be moved down, we have two things happening: a resampling downwards which will have its toll on sound as well as the new file being less loud - a direct comparison will ALWAYS favor the louder version (when there is no clipping) even if they were otherwise identical - which they are not anymore.
So, at the end of the day, you don't know anything until you have listened to the result instead of analysing the technical process with its many variables. This was also true of vinyl. You didn't really know anything until the disc was on the record player.
Lossless is not "meaningless" in my book, it simply has no relation to the sonic result. The chance of it being "audibly" better than a lossy version is still very great. I think it is more like an argument if McDonalds or BurgerKing burgers taste better.........

Posted by steverino on 05-25-2014
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Rowuk,

 I am not comparing lossless to lossy although the last quoted passage above does give food for thought. My point was that the performers, engineers etc produce a mastertape. Then the mastertape is altered not to improve it but to make it easier to create a lossy version. However, these manipulations occur "off camera" and prior to sending the "altered for Itunes" lossless version to ITunes or wherever. So both the "ITunes lossless" and the lossy soundfiles are different than the mastertape in ways that are invisible to the customer but are in all probability quite audible. Therefore the true comparison is between the altered "lossless" soundfile sent to Itunes and the original unaltered mastertape soundfile. However people will be assured that the altered degraded "lossless" file is in fact the real lossless soundfile. At least in the vinyl era no one called the vinyl mastering "the mastertape" but that's where we are headed now.

Posted by rowuk on 05-25-2014
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Steverino,I think Apples idea is that the engineers ultimately will master with the lower level "0dB" and that would be the base for all future releases. Then even the CD is a certain amount of dB below the full possible bit depth resolution.
IF the engineers record with more headroom, then ultimately they will not need to reduce the level of anything for iTunes. I think however, that they are more likely to normalize whatever they have in the Mastering process to a predefined "Mastered for iTunes" level. That means regardless of what the finished pre-master was, it wil become hamburger after normalization. Probably better than lossless, but still lossy compared to the pre master - assuming intelligent mixing.............
Still, at the end of the day, at least Apple is thinking about this stuff instead of leaving the status quo at 128kbit MP3 level. Now that the rules of the game are published, it is up to the recording engineers to consider distribution during the recording process.

Posted by steverino on 05-25-2014
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I am not questioning Apple's motives. I assume they are doing this for one reason: to have better sounding Lossy versions. Makes perfect sense for them. You are edging closer to my point that the term "lossless" will soon be meaningless unless we read the footnotes. There will be several "lossless" versions in all probability. However, the rampant angry obfuscations of masterers such as Mr Ludwig (whose work in the past I respected) is an indication that nothing good is planned for these manipulations. The natural direction will be to make a mastertape that sounds like Apple lossy and then you know exactly how it will sound to most people. Either that or you will get a Pristine ambient "lossless" version. Your choice.

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