[raulendymion]

68 pages about crApple and this st..pid phone. People, have mercy.

 

[west0ne]

What are you sick about?? AAC audio quality is not discernible from CD quality in blind tests. Are we out of our minds? Apple Music files quality is awesome! All you have is placebo in your mind that you need to listen to CD lossless) Please do yourself a favour and participate in correct organized and volume matched blind tests. You will see for yourself that THERE ARE NO DISCERNIBLE DIFFERENCES ANYMORE!!!!

Like you I generally can't tell the difference but the mere fact that we and apparently many, many others can't doesn't make AAC lossless and if a person wants lossless and is willing to pay extra for it then that is their choice. At the same time we may not think there is any real difference there are a lot of people who 'can' hear the difference so are willing to pay the extra.

 

[shigzeo]

  68 pages about crApple and this st..pid phone. People, have mercy.

68 pages of crApple in a thread devoted to the iPhone. The only problem here is your reading comprehension. I've not marched into a thread about a product I revile just to speak up about it... at least not since I grew out of a stupid sense of entitlement.

 

[SparkOnShore]

Like you I generally can't tell the difference but the mere fact that we and apparently many, many others can't doesn't make AAC lossless and if a person wants lossless and is willing to pay extra for it then that is their choice. At the same time we may not think there is any real difference there are a lot of people who 'can' hear the difference so are willing to pay the extra.

I admire your kindness and I appreciate your posts for that! To tell you the truth I don't believe that they can hear a difference. Tell them to do an honest and volume matched blind test with same settings between files. No one has heard any difference in the history of blind tests. Many have even been choosing the lossy as a lossless!!! They just want to believe that they are "audiophiles" and that they belong to an elite of audio)) So they just declare that they want to listen to hi res!!! But when time comes to really pick the hi res file blindly, no one can hear any real difference.

I am not implying that there are no differences at all. There are for sure. But they are not distinguishable by 95% of human ears as well as generally not influencing music's presentation.

 

[west0ne]

@SparkOnShore - there are probably other things you have to consider when comparing Hi-Res, Lossless & Lossy. As you go into higher-end equipment it may well be possible that some of the differences become more apparent (I certainly don't have anything that high-end). Also some of the Hi-Res stuff out there may be coming from different masters or may not have been subjected to any adulteration so there can be differences. One thing that is undeniable is that there can be a massive difference between the quality of headphones and that really does affect the presentation of the music, similarly the quality  of a DAC and Amp can have a very noticeable effect.

 

[zhenya]

   
I'm not ashamed to admit that my comments were probably naive, I was only thinking of myself as a consumer. I just feel that Apple forcing the use of their own subscription service for which they take a cut, in a system that is completely locked down preventing the consumer from using other sources and in taking into account that they provide a very similar music subscription service of their own at the same list price but without taking the 30% hit somehow doesn't feel like it is good for the consumer. I know they have their rules and that those rules have been in place for a long time but times move on, markets change and different players come and go in the market; providing a directly competing service and then giving yourself the financial competitive edge doesn't feel like it does the consumer good. I think my view would be different if Apple didn't actually provide their own competing music subscription service.
 
I accept that there is a clear definition in law (regional variances apply) of anti-competitive behaviour but as a consumer I can see that this behaviour can stifle real-world competition for end users.
 
To be honest the locked down, closed system was one of the reasons why I moved away from the iPhone, I liked the hardware but not the control, it somehow never felt like 'my' phone.

​Perhaps it would help to make a comparison to the physical world. If I own a store selling all sorts of products, why should I allow your product to take space on my shelves, let alone get prime retail space with a display right as you walk in the front door, for free? If you want to leverage the value of my store, my customers, you are going to have to pay me for that privilege. If I happen to see that you have a successful product, and have the wherewithal to develop my own competing product it is completely within my right to move your display to a slightly less conspicuous spot while moving my new product to the prime location. This is basic business. My store, my rules. You don't like it, shop elsewhere.

 

[west0ne]

​Perhaps it would help to make a comparison to the physical world. If I own a store selling all sorts of products, why should I allow your product to take space on my shelves, let alone get prime retail space with a display right as you walk in the front door, for free? If you want to leverage the value of my store, my customers, you are going to have to pay me for that privilege. If I happen to see that you have a successful product, and have the wherewithal to develop my own competing product it is completely within my right to move your display to a slightly less conspicuous spot while moving my new product to the prime location. This is basic business. My store, my rules. You don't like it, shop elsewhere.

I know where you're coming from but in this analogy you have locked me in the store and if I want to get out and take my business elsewhere it is going to cost me several hundred pounds/dollars. I get that Apple don't have the dominant market share in mobile handets but it is a tough decision getting out because once you're in you have spent a lot on the device, accessories and apps, all of which are proprietary to Apple.

 

[zhenya]

I know where you're coming from but in this analogy you have locked me in the store and if I want to get out and take my business elsewhere it is going to cost me several hundred pounds/dollars. I get that Apple don't have the dominant market share in mobile handets but it is a tough decision getting out because once you're in you have spent a lot on the device, accessories and apps, all of which are proprietary to Apple.

 
The only reason this seems off in this scenario is because we have this feeling in the purchase of software that a purchase is 'permanent'. In the physical world, once we are done with a product, we don't have any assumption that if we want to move from one brand of furniture to the next that the old furniture owes us something. The value was in its use. It may have some nominal value after the fact (and Apple hardware will typically retain much more than non-Apple hardware) but most people don't make most of their purchasing decisions - especially on things at the cost of an app - based on how much long-term value it will retain. It is purchased to use.

 

[arftech]

  CD quality is not that big of an ask. I cancelled apple music this summer because I was sick of lossy streaming. An extra $10 a month is worth listening to lossless music.

It absolutely is worth it!  I cannot fathom the idea of going back to Apple Music or Spotify for what I perceive as low quality.  My ears just can't take it and I hope the rumors aren't true that Apple and Tidal will merge.  If this happens Apple will probably kill off Tidal for what it is known for.
 
Enjoy The Music!

 

[Roen]

I admire your kindness and I appreciate your posts for that! To tell you the truth I don't believe that they can hear a difference. Tell them to do an honest and volume matched blind test with same settings between files. No one has heard any difference in the history of blind tests. Many have even been choosing the lossy as a lossless!!! They just want to believe that they are "audiophiles" and that they belong to an elite of audio)) So they just declare that they want to listen to hi res!!! But when time comes to really pick the hi res file blindly, no one can hear any real difference.

I am not implying that there are no differences at all. There are for sure. But they are not distinguishable by 95% of human ears as well as generally not influencing music's presentation.

I can tell the difference between FLAC and 320 MP3 using my DAC and monitoring IEMs. I suppose I'll have to try AAC now as well.

It's all in the acceleration of change of pitch of voices it's where it's most prominent. FLAC will be more gradual than 320 kbps.

 

[SparkOnShore]

I can tell the difference between FLAC and 320 MP3 using my DAC and monitoring IEMs. I suppose I'll have to try AAC now as well.

It's all in the acceleration of change of pitch of voices it's where it's most prominent. FLAC will be more gradual than 320 kbps.

Good for you!! Me and many others cannot!! Maybe your hearing is better than ours!

My ears do not complain with a little less gradual acceleration of changes of pitch of voices!...I still enjoy and love my music, which I have to point out it's not classical...

 

[west0ne]

 
It absolutely is worth it!  I cannot fathom the idea of going back to Apple Music or Spotify for what I perceive as low quality.  My ears just can't take it and I hope the rumors aren't true that Apple and Tidal will merge.  If this happens Apple will probably kill off Tidal for what it is known for.
 
Enjoy The Music!

One would hope that if Apple were to buy Tidal it would be to give them access to lossless streaming as opposed to killing off competition, however with Apple pushing wireless and in particular AAC over bluetooth there seems little incentive for them to buy a streaming service whose performance exceeds their preferred, self imposed audio standards.

 

[west0ne]

Good for you!! Me and many others cannot!! Maybe your hearing is better than ours!

My ears do not complain with a little less gradual acceleration of changes of pitch of voices!...I still enjoy and love my music, which I have to point out it's not classical...

It's an argument not worth getting into. Whenever this comes up on a forum or places like Reddit there seems to be a fairly even split of those who say they can and those who say they can't hear the difference; the argument then generally turns to ABX and blind testing and so it goes on. The same seems to be happening with 16/44 and Hi-Res.
 
I would say that if you are happy with MP3/OGG/AAC then don't worry about what others think and keep on paying the lesser subscription fees. Enjoy the music that you want to enjoy.

 

[RugbyPlayer]

Saying there are no discernible differences is not only naive, it is an outright lie. I can literally show, and play for you EXACTLY the differences that exist between aac/flac/mp3. It isnt that difficult, free audio software can take mathematical differences in the analog waveforms created by the digital formats, and completely isolate those difference for you to hear exactly what is missing in a compressed file

 

[RugbyPlayer]

yeah thi

 
​Perhaps it would help to make a comparison to the physical world. If I own a store selling all sorts of products, why should I allow your product to take space on my shelves, let alone get prime retail space with a display right as you walk in the front door, for free? If you want to leverage the value of my store, my customers, you are going to have to pay me for that privilege. If I happen to see that you have a successful product, and have the wherewithal to develop my own competing product it is completely within my right to move your display to a slightly less conspicuous spot while moving my new product to the prime location. This is basic business. My store, my rules. You don't like it, shop elsewhere.

yeah no, bogus comparison. In fact, that store only has products to sell because THEY PURCHASE IT FROM THEIR VENDORS. I cant own a store like best buy, and charge other companies to put their products in it, it litearlly does not work that way. And your defense of the play store, which is in fact, one of the most anti-competitive market places on the planet, is absolutely absurd.