It is a new ad to counter the ridiculous MS 'to the cloud' TV spots. We've been drawing those Internet cloud illustrations in Visio and the like for 10 years or more. The marketing folks are just now latching on to it as a buzz word.
While the Beatles occupy an undeniably important place in the history of music, not to mention a place in my heart, they also account for a decreasing percentage of people who care. The majority of people under age 35 (or so) would probably consider that a completely forgettable day. (Apologies to folks my age and older that I had to point that out.) But since we know that Steve DOES, in fact, care, I guess it's still a possibility.
While "a day you'll never forget" is ridiculous overhype for pretty much anything they may announce tomorrow, that doesn't change the fact that the Beatles coming to iTunes would be huge. It would make the mainstream news and make a lot of money for Apple (and the Beatles).
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
Lossless is lossy relative to analog.
I hate when people make these kinds of stupid statements, it's just a way people use to try and make a personal preference sound like a fact. Digital audio isn't "lossy" compared to analog, if anything ANY recording is going to be "lossy" compared to the original performance.
My apologies if you were being sarcastic, hard to tell with posts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TalkingNewMedia
"Tomorrow is just another day" is the last line in Gone With the Wind.
i guess they will announce that you can stream your music library. all your BOUGHT songs will be there in their cool datacenter and everything is magical and modern.
we will forget, that apple is now controling IF we hear something, and when the bloody internet line collapses, we will ALSO not hear our songs. it's actually a step backwards, but hey - it FEELS so futuristic and modern! and it is from apple!
Yeah, having your music backed up on the cloud would be a step backwards... oh wait.... no it wouldn't.
Your iPod will still have storage space, and your music will still be on your hard drive, so you can still listen to your music the way you do now.
What this would allow you to do is listen to your music at work or a friends house (sans iPod or copying the files to another computer), play additional music you don't have room for on your iPhone/iPod/Macbook Air, and presumably re-download your music should you somehow lose it.
I find it humorous that you think the English language is somehow more precise than the jumbled hodge podge of other languages and messy rules-with-exceptions that it actually is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody
I think you are missing the point.
First, English is a rapidly evolving language, a pastiche of many other languages, and mostly a dog's breakfast of random rules and structures.
Secondly, advertisements need to be current and will always be on the bleeding edge of new grammar, new terminology and new ways of speaking as opposed to conforming to what the Oxford English Dictionary said was good a few years ago.
Finally, the main point of using grammatically incorrect language in advertising is to get people to turn their heads, and to talk about the language being used, which is exactly what it has achieved given that we are sitting here having a discussion about the advertisement.
I think you guys are missing the point of Pembroke's complaint. Maybe he shouldn't have framed it as solely a grammer problem.
The headline really is atrocious: there's a beat missing between the sentence and the dangling clause, and the punctuation and capitalization do nothing to 'heal' the dissonance. We can see the American ad-writing fetish for incomplete sentences treated as sentences carried way too far here, to the point of awkwardness, and Apple should be called out for it.
It should have been something like:
Tomorrow is just another day.
One you'll never forget.
The 'One' carries more weight rythmically and doesn't carry any relative-pronoun baggage like the 'That' has, which is what is causing the syntactic tension. (With the break they have here, the pronoun should be 'which,' but that would never fly.)
Getting 'people to turn their heads' by wrenching syntax is ok, but it shouldn't be done gracelessly or amateurishly. Pembroke is right. Apple's usual classiness in their PR took a break for a minute.
Except that the "he's pointing at 3:00 London time" thing is completely coincidental and silly.
I found this snippet on another website:
"Originally, the album cover showed The Beatles spelling out the word "Help" using the semaphore system of communicating with flags, which was usually used by ships. The photographer didn't like the pose, so he had them hold the flags in a way that looked good, but didn't spell anything."
Now it spells "Jobs." How deep does the rabbit hole go?
That's a beautiful song and one of my all-time favourites, but I think this suggestion really makes no sense.
"Another Day" is a song about a depressed young woman and evokes feelings of suicide or despair more than anything. I think it an unlikely tie-in to an Apple event that won't (presumably) be about suicide or specifically (we hope) aimed at young women or women who were young in the 1960's.
The times on the clocks are also the times that the announcement is being made so there is no reason to make up "extra" explanations (like the Help! album cover) for their appearance in the ad. That's a classic case of providing an answer to a question that wasn't asked, which is a type of reasoning more prevalent in conspiracy theories than factual situations.
I grew up with the Beatles and have as high opinion of them as anyone, but the idea that Apple is making a world-wide announcement, carefully timed (apparently), around the stock markets opening times in various countries, and that it's all about the Beatles catalogue is just not likely at all.
The Beatles are just not that important. They broke up before most current employees at Apple were even born, and the only consumers that remember seeing them play live would be so old now, they probably missed the computer revolution altogether.
The headline really is atrocious: there's a beat missing between the sentence and the dangling clause, and the punctuation and capitalization do nothing to 'heal' the dissonance.
Go to apple.com. The version there is animated so there IS a beat between the two. (And for the record, I don't like your alternative as much as their version.)
Yeah, having your music backed up on the cloud would be a step backwards... oh wait.... no it wouldn't.
Your iPod will still have storage space, and your music will still be on your hard drive, so you can still listen to your music the way you do now.
What this would allow you to do is listen to your music at work or a friends house (sans iPod or copying the files to another computer), play additional music you don't have room for on your iPhone/iPod/Macbook Air, and presumably re-download your music should you somehow lose it.
It would totally be a bad thing...
i'm sorry, but i still think it would be a bad thing because i am sure that one day this will be the ONLY way to operate itunes. i don't like this "forced to do" thing.
i also don't like the idea that someone else is probably judging what part of your mp3 library is bought the correct way, and what other part might be given by your friends and therefore not a 100% legal on your mac.
ask yourself: how many songs do you have in your itunes? and how many have you BOUGHT in the itunes store or ripped from your own cds? how many of your mp3s are "inbetween"? if you can say 0 then you can positively look into the cool cloud itunes. if there is some amound of songs that are not bought from itunes and not ripped, you might probably google how people the record industry treats people for listening to such songs.
so don't be surprised if one day you can not listen to your cool apple cloud music library. this is a really great step forward, isn't it?
I still think those expecting to be able to put their own music into the cloud are dreaming. This will be for iTunes purchased media only.
Storage cost is irrelevant since Apple only needs to store one copy of the digital asset for millions of users, this isn't your own personal web disk...
I doubt they'll charge for bandwidth eithier. It'll either be free for all purchased content or it will come along via a MobileMe subscription.
Either way... No you are not going to be able to stream music which you ripped from a CD or downloaded from Amazon or downloaded from TPB.
Sure... I hope I'm wrong and Apple allows all this and more, but I'd put very long odds on it.
One of the technologies from Lala was recognising the song you'd ripped from a CD, but instead of uploading it it makes that song available from its own library. So still just one copy of the digital asset stored in the cloud.
Not sure if that's feasible from a licensing standpoint, but it is somethng Lala did (for streaming).
Well i, like i'm sure many others do, rely on Apple Video tutorials. When i watch keynotes i never really pay attention to the detail. I just want to know what's new.
Why watch keynotes then? Just read the headlines after the (or during for that matter) event. If you don't want details then whats the point of watching?
I hate when people make these kinds of stupid statements, it's just a way people use to try and make a personal preference sound like a fact. Digital audio isn't "lossy" compared to analog, if anything ANY recording is going to be "lossy" compared to the original performance..
Um... digital IS lossy compared to analog. Digital samples - there are points, however miniscule, that are left out. Analog does not sample. Or if you want to use sampling as an example, the analog sample rate is infinity.
Yes, analog may cut out frequencies, but it doesn't cut out actual parts. Digital does.
Imagine 48k. There are small parts in between each of those sample that digital does NOT record. Analog doesn't do that. It samples everything.
(I'm NOT arguing which sounds better - that may have been an argument 10 years ago, but notsomuch today.)
Go to apple.com. The version there is animated so there IS a beat between the two. (And for the record, I don't like your alternative as much as their version.)
Aha. It does work as a two-bar animation. So now I have to agree that I like it better than my alternative, which was too literary anyway. Apple PR redeemed!
Digital samples - there are points, however miniscule, that are left out.
No, no, no. Right there, you just showed a profound misunderstanding of how digital recording works. People just think it's like a digital photo where there are little samples/pixels that are small enough that you hopefully can't see them but that's not the case at all, some sort of stairstep waveform or connecting the dots.
The limitation of sampling is that the sample rate dictates the highest frequency that can be recorded (and analog has that same limitation). There are no "points left out", if a frequency is less than half the sampling frequency (22 if you're recording at 44.1) then that frequency is captured. Nothing missing from that frequency, period. The only thing that is gained or lost from higher or lower sampling rates is the ability to record higher frequencies - the lower frequencies that are recorded don't improve in quality at all from a higher sample rate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mobycat
the analog sample rate is infinity.
Come on, aside from the fact that it makes no sense, something with a sample rate of "infinity" would be able to record infinitely high frequencies, and that's not the case at all with analog recording.
There are no "parts between the samples", that's just an assumption that comes from speaking about a technology with no understanding of it.
If you really want to understand how digital recording works, there are plenty of good books on the subject. But if you're not going to really understand it, please don't spread misinformation, there's enough garbage "info" about digital audio online already.
No, no, no. Right there, you just showed a profound misunderstanding of how digital recording works. People just think it's like a digital photo where there are little samples/pixels that are small enough that you hopefully can't see them but that's not the case at all, some sort of stairstep waveform or connecting the dots.
The limitation of sampling is that the sample rate dictates the highest frequency that can be recorded (and analog has that same limitation). There are no "points left out", if a frequency is less than half the sampling frequency (22 if you're recording at 44.1) then that frequency is captured. Nothing missing from that frequency, period. The only thing that is gained or lost from higher or lower sampling rates is the ability to record higher frequencies - the lower frequencies that are recorded don't improve in quality at all from a higher sample rate.
Come on, aside from the fact that it makes no sense, something with a sample rate of "infinity" would be able to record infinitely high frequencies, and that's not the case at all with analog recording.
There are no "parts between the samples", that's just an assumption that comes from speaking about a technology with no understanding of it.
If you really want to understand how digital recording works, there are plenty of good books on the subject. But if you're not going to really understand it, please don't spread misinformation, there's enough garbage "info" about digital audio online already.
We're talking about two different things.
Sound frequencies of sounds - the wave (like 20kHz, etc)
Sampling frequency - how often a recording is made per unit of time.
Yes, digital and analog both cut out sound frequencies - either high end or low end or wherever in between.
However, digital samples say at 48k - analog doesn't. Analog is a continuous sample - hence "infinity." It doesn't drop anything. Digital does. That's lossy.
And if you don't think there is anything between the samples in 48k, please explain why DVD Audio samples at 96k and above...
Yes, it is a pipe dream, as MP3 has not ruined the hearing of a generation. And I find it amusing that you placed Apple Lossless with MP3. Apple Lossless is lossless, just like FLAC or WAV. Apple Lossless sounds exactly the same as FLAC or WAV.
MP3 didn't ruin our hearing, it ruined what was there to be heard. But it was only the 2nd or third wave.
The history of audio recording was going for better and better for decades, culminating in fragile LP's and reel-to-reel tape played thru analog tubes on huge heat throwing amps.
Then we got the downscaling of audio quality to serve lower-maintenance more mass markets. 8-Tracks and cassettes were NOT designed to advance the cause of "all the music" at your fingertips - but even cassettes kept improving, added Dolby, etc.
The Rubicon was truly crossed, tho', with the audio CD, deliberately crippled from any frequency below 20 HZ and harmonics/sonics above 20 K - we don't directly "hear" those ranges, but they add a lot to the timbre, warmth, depth and ambiance. And the sampling and bit rates of CD's are nothing for a true audiophile to write home about either. But America (and the world) just wasn't ready to run out and buy a few billion new SACD or DVD-Audio players. So they died on the vine.
So the more ultimate digital mp3/aac formats just degraded an already degraded format - and the public - including me, alas - has embraced the many conveniences gained in the trade-off. And now, even while computing speed and memory and the net have made great strides, we're stuck with a device infrastructure based on these.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryszard
1. iTunes serves it's music in AAC format, not MP3, which is much better quality for a given file size.
According to what I've read, the superiority of AAC is only clear at lower rates - especially 128K and below. I rip my albums in 320K mp3 format because it's more universal, and occasionally in lossless.
Quote:
Originally Posted by i386
It definitely would be nice if Apple gave the end-user the choice to download loseless versions in 16bit 44.1khz (or 24bit at higher sampling rate if we are dreaming! :-) )
It would. And you're dreaming.
Meanwhile, apropos of whatever, since I don't replace working equipment that often, really glad I waited for 1080p before jumping to HDTV, and still haven't picked my "box" solution, e.g., AppleTV, the Boxee Box, etc.
Seriously, PLEASE get a good book on sampling theory. To anyone who actually understands it you sound like the guy who said the internet is a series of tubes.
Digital and analog both have limitations on the high and low end of what frequencies are recorded. But there is nothing cut out "in between". The notion that analog is continuous and digital somehow isn't shows that you haven't the foggiest idea how digital recording works. You basically are assuming that digital recording/playback is just spitting out the graph of the waveform to the speakers when in reality it is putting out a signal that is just as continuous as what went in (and just as "continuous" as an analog signal).
And I DID explain why DVD audio uses a higher sampling rate - it is to record higher frequencies (96k can record up to 48 instead of 22). That is the only advantage to higher sampling rates. It does NOT improve the quality of how the lower frequencies sound. At all. You won't hear a difference, you won't see a difference if you compare the two on a scope. Because at the lower frequencies there is no difference - sampling more often does nothing more than give you redundant information and makes no difference in the actual sound.
Why watch keynotes then? Just read the headlines after the (or during for that matter) event. If you don't want details then whats the point of watching?
I didn't say I didn't want details, I just don't pay that much attention during the keynote. I go to the website and then absorb, if it interests me, after the event. My choice.
While "a day you'll never forget" is ridiculous overhype for pretty much anything they may announce tomorrow, that doesn't change the fact that the Beatles coming to iTunes would be huge. It would make the mainstream news and make a lot of money for Apple (and the Beatles).
"Huge" and "a lot of money" are relative terms. Relative to anything I'll ever see in a lifetime, you are undeniably correct. But relative to the amount of revenue and profits that Apple makes already from current products, serving up Beatles on iTunes will be "in the noise" as far as Apple is concerned.
Now, would it make headline news? Certainly, as does everything Apple announces these days, whether it deserves it or not.
Would it be "unforgettable"? Unclear. If others here are correct, the Beatles actually have a following even with youngsters. Prior to hearing that my hunch would have suggested that if this event was about the Beatles becoming available on iTunes and you took a poll to get folks opinions, there would be two distinct reactions:
(1) holy cow, finally the Beatles on iTunes! This is an unforgettable day!
(2) what's so unforgettable about THAT!?!?!? You've got to be kidding me.
And I thought that the second reaction would outnumber the first by a significant factor. (FWIW, I would be in the first category.) But now, I'm not so sure.
Comments
The announcement will be that for one day only, there will NOT be an iTunes update
While the Beatles occupy an undeniably important place in the history of music, not to mention a place in my heart, they also account for a decreasing percentage of people who care. The majority of people under age 35 (or so) would probably consider that a completely forgettable day. (Apologies to folks my age and older that I had to point that out.) But since we know that Steve DOES, in fact, care, I guess it's still a possibility.
While "a day you'll never forget" is ridiculous overhype for pretty much anything they may announce tomorrow, that doesn't change the fact that the Beatles coming to iTunes would be huge. It would make the mainstream news and make a lot of money for Apple (and the Beatles).
Lossless is lossy relative to analog.
I hate when people make these kinds of stupid statements, it's just a way people use to try and make a personal preference sound like a fact. Digital audio isn't "lossy" compared to analog, if anything ANY recording is going to be "lossy" compared to the original performance.
My apologies if you were being sarcastic, hard to tell with posts.
"Tomorrow is just another day" is the last line in Gone With the Wind.
Actually "Tomorrow is another day".
i guess they will announce that you can stream your music library. all your BOUGHT songs will be there in their cool datacenter and everything is magical and modern.
we will forget, that apple is now controling IF we hear something, and when the bloody internet line collapses, we will ALSO not hear our songs. it's actually a step backwards, but hey - it FEELS so futuristic and modern! and it is from apple!
Yeah, having your music backed up on the cloud would be a step backwards... oh wait.... no it wouldn't.
Your iPod will still have storage space, and your music will still be on your hard drive, so you can still listen to your music the way you do now.
What this would allow you to do is listen to your music at work or a friends house (sans iPod or copying the files to another computer), play additional music you don't have room for on your iPhone/iPod/Macbook Air, and presumably re-download your music should you somehow lose it.
It would totally be a bad thing...
I find it humorous that you think the English language is somehow more precise than the jumbled hodge podge of other languages and messy rules-with-exceptions that it actually is.
I think you are missing the point.
First, English is a rapidly evolving language, a pastiche of many other languages, and mostly a dog's breakfast of random rules and structures.
Secondly, advertisements need to be current and will always be on the bleeding edge of new grammar, new terminology and new ways of speaking as opposed to conforming to what the Oxford English Dictionary said was good a few years ago.
Finally, the main point of using grammatically incorrect language in advertising is to get people to turn their heads, and to talk about the language being used, which is exactly what it has achieved given that we are sitting here having a discussion about the advertisement.
I think you guys are missing the point of Pembroke's complaint. Maybe he shouldn't have framed it as solely a grammer problem.
The headline really is atrocious: there's a beat missing between the sentence and the dangling clause, and the punctuation and capitalization do nothing to 'heal' the dissonance. We can see the American ad-writing fetish for incomplete sentences treated as sentences carried way too far here, to the point of awkwardness, and Apple should be called out for it.
It should have been something like:
Tomorrow is just another day.
One you'll never forget.
The 'One' carries more weight rythmically and doesn't carry any relative-pronoun baggage like the 'That' has, which is what is causing the syntactic tension. (With the break they have here, the pronoun should be 'which,' but that would never fly.)
Getting 'people to turn their heads' by wrenching syntax is ok, but it shouldn't be done gracelessly or amateurishly. Pembroke is right. Apple's usual classiness in their PR took a break for a minute.
Except that the "he's pointing at 3:00 London time" thing is completely coincidental and silly.
I found this snippet on another website:
"Originally, the album cover showed The Beatles spelling out the word "Help" using the semaphore system of communicating with flags, which was usually used by ships. The photographer didn't like the pose, so he had them hold the flags in a way that looked good, but didn't spell anything."
Now it spells "Jobs." How deep does the rabbit hole go?
That's a beautiful song and one of my all-time favourites, but I think this suggestion really makes no sense.
"Another Day" is a song about a depressed young woman and evokes feelings of suicide or despair more than anything. I think it an unlikely tie-in to an Apple event that won't (presumably) be about suicide or specifically (we hope) aimed at young women or women who were young in the 1960's.
The times on the clocks are also the times that the announcement is being made so there is no reason to make up "extra" explanations (like the Help! album cover) for their appearance in the ad. That's a classic case of providing an answer to a question that wasn't asked, which is a type of reasoning more prevalent in conspiracy theories than factual situations.
I grew up with the Beatles and have as high opinion of them as anyone, but the idea that Apple is making a world-wide announcement, carefully timed (apparently), around the stock markets opening times in various countries, and that it's all about the Beatles catalogue is just not likely at all.
The Beatles are just not that important. They broke up before most current employees at Apple were even born, and the only consumers that remember seeing them play live would be so old now, they probably missed the computer revolution altogether.
You're no fun.
Insane Apple announcement forensics FTW!
Now it spells "Jobs." How deep does the rabbit hole go?
Hehe! I'm just loving it.
The headline really is atrocious: there's a beat missing between the sentence and the dangling clause, and the punctuation and capitalization do nothing to 'heal' the dissonance.
Go to apple.com. The version there is animated so there IS a beat between the two. (And for the record, I don't like your alternative as much as their version.)
Yeah, having your music backed up on the cloud would be a step backwards... oh wait.... no it wouldn't.
Your iPod will still have storage space, and your music will still be on your hard drive, so you can still listen to your music the way you do now.
What this would allow you to do is listen to your music at work or a friends house (sans iPod or copying the files to another computer), play additional music you don't have room for on your iPhone/iPod/Macbook Air, and presumably re-download your music should you somehow lose it.
It would totally be a bad thing...
i'm sorry, but i still think it would be a bad thing because i am sure that one day this will be the ONLY way to operate itunes. i don't like this "forced to do" thing.
i also don't like the idea that someone else is probably judging what part of your mp3 library is bought the correct way, and what other part might be given by your friends and therefore not a 100% legal on your mac.
ask yourself: how many songs do you have in your itunes? and how many have you BOUGHT in the itunes store or ripped from your own cds? how many of your mp3s are "inbetween"? if you can say 0 then you can positively look into the cool cloud itunes. if there is some amound of songs that are not bought from itunes and not ripped, you might probably google how people the record industry treats people for listening to such songs.
so don't be surprised if one day you can not listen to your cool apple cloud music library. this is a really great step forward, isn't it?
I still think those expecting to be able to put their own music into the cloud are dreaming. This will be for iTunes purchased media only.
Storage cost is irrelevant since Apple only needs to store one copy of the digital asset for millions of users, this isn't your own personal web disk...
I doubt they'll charge for bandwidth eithier. It'll either be free for all purchased content or it will come along via a MobileMe subscription.
Either way... No you are not going to be able to stream music which you ripped from a CD or downloaded from Amazon or downloaded from TPB.
Sure... I hope I'm wrong and Apple allows all this and more, but I'd put very long odds on it.
One of the technologies from Lala was recognising the song you'd ripped from a CD, but instead of uploading it it makes that song available from its own library. So still just one copy of the digital asset stored in the cloud.
Not sure if that's feasible from a licensing standpoint, but it is somethng Lala did (for streaming).
Well i, like i'm sure many others do, rely on Apple Video tutorials. When i watch keynotes i never really pay attention to the detail. I just want to know what's new.
Why watch keynotes then? Just read the headlines after the (or during for that matter) event. If you don't want details then whats the point of watching?
I hate when people make these kinds of stupid statements, it's just a way people use to try and make a personal preference sound like a fact. Digital audio isn't "lossy" compared to analog, if anything ANY recording is going to be "lossy" compared to the original performance..
Um... digital IS lossy compared to analog. Digital samples - there are points, however miniscule, that are left out. Analog does not sample. Or if you want to use sampling as an example, the analog sample rate is infinity.
Yes, analog may cut out frequencies, but it doesn't cut out actual parts. Digital does.
Imagine 48k. There are small parts in between each of those sample that digital does NOT record. Analog doesn't do that. It samples everything.
(I'm NOT arguing which sounds better - that may have been an argument 10 years ago, but notsomuch today.)
Go to apple.com. The version there is animated so there IS a beat between the two. (And for the record, I don't like your alternative as much as their version.)
Aha. It does work as a two-bar animation. So now I have to agree that I like it better than my alternative, which was too literary anyway. Apple PR redeemed!
Pembroke? What say you?
Digital samples - there are points, however miniscule, that are left out.
No, no, no. Right there, you just showed a profound misunderstanding of how digital recording works. People just think it's like a digital photo where there are little samples/pixels that are small enough that you hopefully can't see them but that's not the case at all, some sort of stairstep waveform or connecting the dots.
The limitation of sampling is that the sample rate dictates the highest frequency that can be recorded (and analog has that same limitation). There are no "points left out", if a frequency is less than half the sampling frequency (22 if you're recording at 44.1) then that frequency is captured. Nothing missing from that frequency, period. The only thing that is gained or lost from higher or lower sampling rates is the ability to record higher frequencies - the lower frequencies that are recorded don't improve in quality at all from a higher sample rate.
the analog sample rate is infinity.
Come on, aside from the fact that it makes no sense, something with a sample rate of "infinity" would be able to record infinitely high frequencies, and that's not the case at all with analog recording.
There are no "parts between the samples", that's just an assumption that comes from speaking about a technology with no understanding of it.
If you really want to understand how digital recording works, there are plenty of good books on the subject. But if you're not going to really understand it, please don't spread misinformation, there's enough garbage "info" about digital audio online already.
No, no, no. Right there, you just showed a profound misunderstanding of how digital recording works. People just think it's like a digital photo where there are little samples/pixels that are small enough that you hopefully can't see them but that's not the case at all, some sort of stairstep waveform or connecting the dots.
The limitation of sampling is that the sample rate dictates the highest frequency that can be recorded (and analog has that same limitation). There are no "points left out", if a frequency is less than half the sampling frequency (22 if you're recording at 44.1) then that frequency is captured. Nothing missing from that frequency, period. The only thing that is gained or lost from higher or lower sampling rates is the ability to record higher frequencies - the lower frequencies that are recorded don't improve in quality at all from a higher sample rate.
Come on, aside from the fact that it makes no sense, something with a sample rate of "infinity" would be able to record infinitely high frequencies, and that's not the case at all with analog recording.
There are no "parts between the samples", that's just an assumption that comes from speaking about a technology with no understanding of it.
If you really want to understand how digital recording works, there are plenty of good books on the subject. But if you're not going to really understand it, please don't spread misinformation, there's enough garbage "info" about digital audio online already.
We're talking about two different things.
Sound frequencies of sounds - the wave (like 20kHz, etc)
Sampling frequency - how often a recording is made per unit of time.
Yes, digital and analog both cut out sound frequencies - either high end or low end or wherever in between.
However, digital samples say at 48k - analog doesn't. Analog is a continuous sample - hence "infinity." It doesn't drop anything. Digital does. That's lossy.
And if you don't think there is anything between the samples in 48k, please explain why DVD Audio samples at 96k and above...
Yes, it is a pipe dream, as MP3 has not ruined the hearing of a generation. And I find it amusing that you placed Apple Lossless with MP3. Apple Lossless is lossless, just like FLAC or WAV. Apple Lossless sounds exactly the same as FLAC or WAV.
MP3 didn't ruin our hearing, it ruined what was there to be heard. But it was only the 2nd or third wave.
The history of audio recording was going for better and better for decades, culminating in fragile LP's and reel-to-reel tape played thru analog tubes on huge heat throwing amps.
Then we got the downscaling of audio quality to serve lower-maintenance more mass markets. 8-Tracks and cassettes were NOT designed to advance the cause of "all the music" at your fingertips - but even cassettes kept improving, added Dolby, etc.
The Rubicon was truly crossed, tho', with the audio CD, deliberately crippled from any frequency below 20 HZ and harmonics/sonics above 20 K - we don't directly "hear" those ranges, but they add a lot to the timbre, warmth, depth and ambiance. And the sampling and bit rates of CD's are nothing for a true audiophile to write home about either. But America (and the world) just wasn't ready to run out and buy a few billion new SACD or DVD-Audio players. So they died on the vine.
So the more ultimate digital mp3/aac formats just degraded an already degraded format - and the public - including me, alas - has embraced the many conveniences gained in the trade-off. And now, even while computing speed and memory and the net have made great strides, we're stuck with a device infrastructure based on these.
1. iTunes serves it's music in AAC format, not MP3, which is much better quality for a given file size.
According to what I've read, the superiority of AAC is only clear at lower rates - especially 128K and below. I rip my albums in 320K mp3 format because it's more universal, and occasionally in lossless.
It definitely would be nice if Apple gave the end-user the choice to download loseless versions in 16bit 44.1khz (or 24bit at higher sampling rate if we are dreaming! :-) )
It would. And you're dreaming.
Meanwhile, apropos of whatever, since I don't replace working equipment that often, really glad I waited for 1080p before jumping to HDTV, and still haven't picked my "box" solution, e.g., AppleTV, the Boxee Box, etc.
Digital and analog both have limitations on the high and low end of what frequencies are recorded. But there is nothing cut out "in between". The notion that analog is continuous and digital somehow isn't shows that you haven't the foggiest idea how digital recording works. You basically are assuming that digital recording/playback is just spitting out the graph of the waveform to the speakers when in reality it is putting out a signal that is just as continuous as what went in (and just as "continuous" as an analog signal).
And I DID explain why DVD audio uses a higher sampling rate - it is to record higher frequencies (96k can record up to 48 instead of 22). That is the only advantage to higher sampling rates. It does NOT improve the quality of how the lower frequencies sound. At all. You won't hear a difference, you won't see a difference if you compare the two on a scope. Because at the lower frequencies there is no difference - sampling more often does nothing more than give you redundant information and makes no difference in the actual sound.
Why watch keynotes then? Just read the headlines after the (or during for that matter) event. If you don't want details then whats the point of watching?
I didn't say I didn't want details, I just don't pay that much attention during the keynote. I go to the website and then absorb, if it interests me, after the event. My choice.
While "a day you'll never forget" is ridiculous overhype for pretty much anything they may announce tomorrow, that doesn't change the fact that the Beatles coming to iTunes would be huge. It would make the mainstream news and make a lot of money for Apple (and the Beatles).
"Huge" and "a lot of money" are relative terms. Relative to anything I'll ever see in a lifetime, you are undeniably correct. But relative to the amount of revenue and profits that Apple makes already from current products, serving up Beatles on iTunes will be "in the noise" as far as Apple is concerned.
Now, would it make headline news? Certainly, as does everything Apple announces these days, whether it deserves it or not.
Would it be "unforgettable"? Unclear. If others here are correct, the Beatles actually have a following even with youngsters. Prior to hearing that my hunch would have suggested that if this event was about the Beatles becoming available on iTunes and you took a poll to get folks opinions, there would be two distinct reactions:
(1) holy cow, finally the Beatles on iTunes! This is an unforgettable day!
(2) what's so unforgettable about THAT!?!?!? You've got to be kidding me.
And I thought that the second reaction would outnumber the first by a significant factor. (FWIW, I would be in the first category.) But now, I'm not so sure.
Thompson