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Apple is working on a new digital music format

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Re: Apple is working on a new digital music format

#51

Post by ssharp »

dandelany wrote: post #18

Here's something I've always wanted: A consumer music file format that preserves all of the underlying tracks ('stems') so that they can be adjusted while you listen to the song. Imagine listening to a recording and going "ooh, that bassline", and then turning up the bassist and turning down everything else to hear it better. Or easily "remixing" while you listen by eg. applying a filter to only the drums. You could…

This could be interesting. Especially for artists using the Apple toolchain, namely Logic. It seems like a lot of stuff could then be duplicated on the desktop / mobile to give interested listeners control over various song elements.

I don't know how many people would actually be interested in that, though. It would be targeting a segment of music listeners that are extremely engaged with their music. I don't know if that market is really big enough to overcome the growing preference for streaming services.

Re: Apple is working on a new digital music format

#52

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

startupfounder wrote: post #10

Apple should buy Pono, Neil Young & Jon Hamm's music "high-resolution" 24-bit 192kHz audio company and have Neil play some real Rock & Roll at Apple events.

Neil Young was born in 1945 and has been rocking since 1960 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Young

If his ears can still tell the difference between "high-resolution" audio and MP3 320, then it is a miracle of geriatric audiological medicine. Seriously, medicine should get on that, there's something unknown to science going on there.

Re: Apple is working on a new digital music format

#53

Post by imaginenore »

johnchristopher wrote: post #46
imaginenore wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of formats like that. Midi, old tracker ones (s3m, xm, mod). But very few artists are willing to publish the "source code" of their work.

What about rock bands and other recording music with their instruments rather than through samplers ?

I'm pretty sure they are recorded separately in a studio. At least the high end bands.

Re: Apple is working on a new digital music format

#54

Post by squeaky-clean »

rustynails wrote: post #11
Nicholas_C wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet money that it will be.

Some potential ideas - pay per listen, local cache - embedded lyrics, photos - extra sound bytes (exclusive to track owners) - optional videos - asynchronous Comms with the band: FAQs. News, interviews, etc There are many things you can do that link purchased content with other content. Adding lyrics that appear in realtime would also be handy. My ideas are now patented. Pay me 5% of all future sales please... Isn't…

I'm pretty sure mp3/aac can already store lyrics in the metadata. Most of the songs on my iPod have lyrics with them that show up while playing, though they don't sync with the music, it's just the full text. And these are songs from other sources like Bandcamp or CDs, so it's not some iTunes/Apple specific feature.

Re: Apple is working on a new digital music format

#55

Post by colanderman »

Pxtl wrote: post #31

The way Bono talks about it it really sounds like bringing back DRM, since he's focused on career songwriters in his little quote. Maybe improving the way albums and additional metadata are bundled for the non-audio content. Hopefully the audio files themselves will remain as-is. One thing that disappoints me is the way folders have stayed un-typed in OSes. I've always wished that the Reiser concept of "a file that c…

"a file that contains files"

How does this differ from a ZIP file? (Keep in mind all modern OSes support treating ZIP files like directories.)

Re: Apple is working on a new digital music format

#56

Post by mikeash »

tmuir wrote: post #47
startupfounder wrote: post #10

Apple should buy Pono, Neil Young & Jon Hamm's music "high-resolution" 24-bit 192kHz audio company and have Neil play some real Rock & Roll at Apple events.

I'm a huge Neil Young fan, but Pono is bound to fail. Throughout the evolution of widely adopted audio formats, the sound quality has always decreased. The average listener doesn't care about fidelity. They can't tell the difference. They care about convenience. Cassette tapes were better than vinyl records, because they were more portable. CDs were better than tapes, because you could skip tracks. Mp3s were better t…

The sound got worse when going from tapes to CDs?

Re: Apple is working on a new digital music format

#57

Post by kevincennis »

johnchristopher wrote: post #48
jaimebuelta wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds cool, but it will be a disaster. Does anyone remember the "ultra boost" button on the old Walkman to raise the bass to insane levels? Or all the equalizer voodoo, where people will "tune" moving levels and buttons forming shapes? The sad truth is that audio engineers are way better than anyone else in mixing the music and making it shine. The better approach is not to mess with that and just trust them. The…

I'd agree with you if those audio engineers hadn't participated in the loudness war for the three last decades.

For what it's worth, most engineers want absolutely nothing to do with the loudness wars. These are people who've made a career on developing their ears, and the harmonic distortion from limiting the fuck out of a recording sounds even worse to them than it does to the general public.

The problem is that record labels have bought into the idea that a record needs to be outrageously loud in order to compete on radio. And the labels are the ones paying the mastering engineers.

Re: Apple is working on a new digital music format

#58

Post by Pxtl »

colanderman wrote: post #55
Pxtl wrote: post #31

The way Bono talks about it it really sounds like bringing back DRM, since he's focused on career songwriters in his little quote. Maybe improving the way albums and additional metadata are bundled for the non-audio content. Hopefully the audio files themselves will remain as-is. One thing that disappoints me is the way folders have stayed un-typed in OSes. I've always wished that the Reiser concept of "a file that c…

"a file that contains files" How does this differ from a ZIP file? (Keep in mind all modern OSes support treating ZIP files like directories.)

First, because folders are far more performant for accessing child objects. That's mostly an implementation detail, but a big one - there are tremendous optimizations made on the filesystem that are not accessible for something like ZIP. Particularly relevant to bulk searching/listing - the intent in ReiserFS is that ID3, EXIF tags and the like would move into sub-files.

Second (and this is more a problem in Windows where the 3-letter extension is more important) the OS needs to know which tools it can associate with which type. If a file is a .zip, then it's a .zip and it can use zip tools. If it's not a .zip, it can use the file's own tools (like if it's some kind of music archive). But not both.

Re: Apple is working on a new digital music format

#59

Post by gillianseed »

tonysuper wrote: post #26

This might be proprietary, but Apple's other major codec is open.[1] Hopefully this will be as well. [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless

It was proprietary was most of it's existence and was not opened until 2011, which in turn was likely as a result of everyone using FLAC instead.

I have no doubt this new codec will be proprietary, and only if it fails to gain any traction is there a chance of it becoming open.

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