[Ti] iTunes 4.6...

[b]

Peter Krug paused, thought it over, and spoke thusly:

>The worst thing about iTunes, IMHO, is that the intended sound 
>quality of music will be lost on the listeners as they reduce 
>bitrates to try to cram more music on computers and devices.
>
>Peter

I agree, sort of... exept, who is 'they'?

The sound quality issue has nothing to do with iTunes, Apple, or any 
company, at all. It has to do with the format: mp3, and the users who 
choose to use mp3s.

Ex:  Mp3: Bit rate: 256Kbits/s, stereo, LP time: 52.2 minutes, mp3 
Size in MB: 95.9

<cough> uncompressed, as it left the studio (10 MB per stereo 
minute): Size: 522 MB

Difference: The mp3 contains exactly 18.4% of the original material. 
"Compressed" means the same thing here, as it does in digital photo 
manipulation. 'Repetitive' info is weeded out. Loss of quality, plain 
and simple. Anyone (like myself), who might have done serious 'time' 
in recording studios, can hear the 'trainwreck' in the mids, and 
upper mids, that is prevalent in mp3s. Less 'definition' Similar 
frequencies forced into narrower bands. it's a mess.

Using iTunes, or the iPod, there's nothing stopping anyone from 
sampling their CDs at 44.1 khz, in .wav, or .aiff formats. And with 
the newer, larger drive, iPods... well, if I ever get one of the 30 
or newer 40s, that'll be it for mp3s, it'll be back to good old 
10MB/stereo minute. Even the 5GB iPod should hold 150-200 songs at 
full bandwidth.

~flipper