Not true. If this is true, it's VERY VERY uncool. I've got an mp3/cd player in my car and I love burning cds full of my own mp3's. It's like having a cd changer in my deck. If this is true, I'm going to be very unhappy. I guess I'll have to try it and see.
what you will have to do, is convert the AAC files to MP3, but I think the reason they say they wont sound as good, is because the AAC codec sounds better than the MP3 codec, so you will lose some quality.
more specifically, it's three copies of iTunes... i really don't know how the external HD thing would work.
Steve mentioned in the broadcast that i saw that you can "deauthorize" an old computer. so when you buy a new Mac, you copy all your files over, deauthorize the old machine and authorize the new.
also, from what I have seen, if you use Rendevous to share your library, you will have to authorize those other macs to use the songs as well(I have confirmed this, I bought 4 songs today that I have been looking for(I had crappy versions). and I had to authorize them to listen to them on my laptop using Rendevous
Well in the Fortune article they say you can send to unlimited songs to iPods(well limited by your financial means). Hard Drives should be the same. Since HDs don't have a CPU they cannot share the files illegally and if you dump the files on another Mac they won't play because of the authorization. Apple has covered most of the bases here. I'm sure more needs to be fleshed out however.
I think everyone's misunderstanding me. I mean I buy some tracks from apple. I need to get them to mp3's so that I can play them in my car. I could do that directly and suffer some quality loss I guess. Now that I think about it, converting it to an audio cd and then to mp3 from that cd would be the same. So the big question is: how much loss are we talking? Or is it even possible? If not, I'll have to do the aac -> audio cd -> mp3 and if the quality loss isn't commensurate with a typical lossy to lossy conversion, then I'm pissed. (n.b. I'm willing to deal with the typical lossy to lossy degradation. I'm not willing to deal with artificial loss.) Does that make more sense?
-t
ps - I'm not bitching about not being able to play aac files in my car. I'm not much of a bitcher.
edit: I know that iTunes won't prevent me from ripping any cd to mp3. I was just hoping that I would be able to do this with tracks I buy from Apple. Still holding out hope...
The original post does not deserve 30 posts. Here's 31 to clear everything up:
You can burn as many audio CDs as you want, period. iTunes converts any of your music files, no matter the file format, to AIFF files to make an audio CD. (All audio CDs are comprised of AIFF files., that's what makes them official CD Audio.)
The sharing limitations are such:
You can only burn the same playlist to CDs 10 times. You can burn the tracks as much as you want, this applies only to the playlist as defined in iTunes or the iPod.
You can only copy the downloaded AAC file from the iTunes Music Store (Love the name, BTW. Simple!) to three other computers. Once you burn it to a CD, it's not an AAC file, it's an AIFF file, so the that's probably a loophole. Audio CDs do not count as "computers" anyway and neither do iPods as I understand. This restriction is in the AAC file itself, a digital "signature" added to it, and it's just one reason why Apple chose to use AAC over MP3 or other formats. So you can speculate how it works, whether at the application level (iTunes or MusicMatch) or at the filesystem (external HD) level. I'm betting on the former.
I don't understand why this would be a problem for you, torifile. The Audio CD file is no longer the AAC file. AFAIK, it can't contain the metadata the AAC file can, therefore it can't contain the digital security measure. I could be wrong, this is just how I understand it.
I don't understand why this would be a problem for you, torifile. The Audio CD file is no longer the AAC file. AFAIK, it can't contain the metadata the AAC file can, therefore it can't contain the digital security measure. I could be wrong, this is just how I understand it.
My concern wasn't about the burning of the tracks to audio. I know that they'll be .aiff files. I was responding (somewhat prematurely, perhaps) to the quote from Forbes saying that there is a large degradation in sound quality should a track be ripped to mp3 from an audio cd track that was originally an .aac file. Whether or not this is true, or even possible (I don't see how it would be, but ....) I'm not sure. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
My concern wasn't about the burning of the tracks to audio. I know that they'll be .aiff files. I was responding (somewhat prematurely, perhaps) to the quote from Forbes saying that there is a large degradation in sound quality should a track be ripped to mp3 from an audio cd track that was originally an .aac file. Whether or not this is true, or even possible (I don't see how it would be, but ....) I'm not sure. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
You're obviously not understanding the concept of lossy compression. Once the original AIFF file on the CD is ripped to a AAC (M4A, whatever you want to call it ) audio file, quality is lost that cannot be regained if you are using that AAC audio file. Now, if you convert the compressed format to another lossy compression format (MP3) yet more quality is lost that cannot be regained, on top of the already lost quality. You get the same effect when you copy a compressed JPEG and compress it once more into JPEG. Even if you set it at the same quality level both times, the second compression will recompress the already compressed data (which has artifacts and such) and create yet more artifacts. The same thing happens when you go from one compressed lossy audio format to another; the quality that was lost and replaced with imprefections isn't magically regained only to be encoded once more. It just doesn't work that way.
That being said, I converted my entire library to AAC some time ago (it's pretty small.) It was mostly 192KBs MP3 to 128KB/s AAC. Your hearing is not as acute as your vision, I can hardly tell the difference.
I think everyone's misunderstanding me. I mean I buy some tracks from apple. I need to get them to mp3's so that I can play them in my car. I could do that directly and suffer some quality loss I guess. Now that I think about it, converting it to an audio cd and then to mp3 from that cd would be the same. So the big question is: how much loss are we talking? Or is it even possible? If not, I'll have to do the aac -> audio cd -> mp3 and if the quality loss isn't commensurate with a typical lossy to lossy conversion, then I'm pissed. (n.b. I'm willing to deal with the typical lossy to lossy degradation. I'm not willing to deal with artificial loss.) Does that make more sense?
-t
ps - I'm not bitching about not being able to play aac files in my car. I'm not much of a bitcher.
edit: I know that iTunes won't prevent me from ripping any cd to mp3. I was just hoping that I would be able to do this with tracks I buy from Apple. Still holding out hope...
Maybe I should clarify a bit here, too. When you convert a compressed AAC file to uncompressed AIFF, it's just like copying a compressed JPEG to the clipboard. The compression is duplicated exactly, in the case of the JPEG the bitmap that is the clipboard will duplicate the artifacts in the JPEG image just as you see them, it doesn't magically uncompress the image (like you would get with a zip or sit file.) Therefore when you convert the AAC file to AIFF, no quality is regained. It is exactly the same as the original AAC, only it takes up more space. When you convert the AIFF file to MP3, it is exactly the same as converting the original AAC file to MP3. In much the same way, a compressed JPEG will compress once more in exactly the same way a copy of that JPEG, saved as an uncompressed TIFF will (at the same quality setting, say 60.)
Converting all of your AAC files Audio CDs only to rip them again is a waste of blank CDs and time.
Maybe I should clarify a bit here, too. When you convert a compressed AAC file to uncompressed AIFF, it's just like copying a compressed JPEG to the clipboard. The compression is duplicated exactly, in the case of the JPEG the bitmap that is the clipboard will duplicate the artifacts in the JPEG image just as you see them, it doesn't magically uncompress the image (like you would get with a zip or sit file.) Therefore when you convert the AAC file to AIFF, no quality is regained. It is exactly the same as the original AAC, only it takes up more space. When you convert the AIFF file to MP3, it is exactly the same as converting the original AAC file to MP3. In much the same way, a compressed JPEG will compress once more in exactly the same way a copy of that JPEG, saved as an uncompressed TIFF will (at the same quality setting, say 60.)
Converting all of your AAC files Audio CDs only to rip them again is a waste of blank CDs and time.
I understand all that. I know that .aac is lossy and .mp3 is lossy and that you can't regain the original quality by converting it to .aiff and then to .mp3 (I'm not an idiot, you know ). What I'm griping about (and it's now full-blown griping by now) is the possibility that the .aac > audio cd > .mp3 conversion could result in a greater degradation in quality than it should.
If, for example, I were converting a .jpg that's at 90 quality from a .tiff and then converting that new .jpg to one that's 60 quality, I should get a new image that's 54 quality. Same thing with the .aac > .mp3 stuff. (Maybe not entirely accurate, but you get the point.)
What I'm saying is that we should take the analogy of .jpg quality settings and apply it to the music files. The overall .aac > audio cd > .mp3 conversion should only result in 54 quality files (using the numbers from the above example). Not anything less. If it is, as the forbes article suggests there would be, then we've got a problem. Does that make sense?
-t
ps - again, I need to convert any .aac files to mp3 files for my car to be able to play them. That's why I would go through all these machinations to get it to work.
Sorry, torifile I was responding to a post way back and hadn't seen your latest comments.
But what I don't understand is why you'd be going from AAC>AIFF>MP3 when you could much more easily go AAC>MP3 direct right from the iTunes menu.
And I doubt Apple has discovered some compression anamoly that makes MP3s burned from AAC sound "horrible". I'm sure your "54 quality" measurement should be about right.
np, tonton.
The only reason I would go through an audio cd would be if I wasn't allowed to make an mp3 directly from the .aac file. I'm an audible.com user and you can't convert audible files to mp3s and I'm thinking that Apple took a page from their book for this one. I guess I overreacted to the speculation from the Forbes quote earlier. I will just try it out and see. As pesi said, it is only $.99.
Converting MP3s to AAC doesn't really sound different to me... I mean, I'm not an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't think it'll be much different changing AAC to MP3. In fact, I'm going to try ripping a CD in AAC format and then changing it to MP3. And to be super mean, I'll convert it from 128 kilobit AAC to 192 kilobit MP3
Well, the tracks sound the same. 128 aac and 192 vbr mp3 (not the best encoding, I know), but to my grado sr-60 covered ears, they sound pretty close. Surely my Pathfinder's creaky chassis will cover up any imperfections. So, I apologize for my ranting. But, for once and for all, I understand that lossy compression cannot be reversed! And that lossy to lossy means more lossy.
Hopefully they'll soon add an MP3 option to the store - along with Windows compatability. Right now it's nice for hardcore Mac users, but it's very limited because it can only play on Macs or on Macintosh iPods.
Hopefully they'll soon add an MP3 option to the store - along with Windows compatability. Right now it's nice for hardcore Mac users, but it's very limited because it can only play on Macs or on Macintosh iPods.
That's not going to happen. The aac file format is protected so they can control it. There's no way record companies would allow Apple to distribute mp3s. And really, for mac users, the whole thing is seamless. I wouldn't know that it was an aac file unless I checked. It looks exactly the same to me.
Comments
Originally posted by torifile
Not true. If this is true, it's VERY VERY uncool. I've got an mp3/cd player in my car and I love burning cds full of my own mp3's. It's like having a cd changer in my deck. If this is true, I'm going to be very unhappy.
what you will have to do, is convert the AAC files to MP3, but I think the reason they say they wont sound as good, is because the AAC codec sounds better than the MP3 codec, so you will lose some quality.
Originally posted by pesi
more specifically, it's three copies of iTunes... i really don't know how the external HD thing would work.
Steve mentioned in the broadcast that i saw that you can "deauthorize" an old computer. so when you buy a new Mac, you copy all your files over, deauthorize the old machine and authorize the new.
also, from what I have seen, if you use Rendevous to share your library, you will have to authorize those other macs to use the songs as well(I have confirmed this, I bought 4 songs today that I have been looking for(I had crappy versions). and I had to authorize them to listen to them on my laptop using Rendevous
-t
ps - I'm not bitching about not being able to play aac files in my car. I'm not much of a bitcher.
edit: I know that iTunes won't prevent me from ripping any cd to mp3. I was just hoping that I would be able to do this with tracks I buy from Apple. Still holding out hope...
You can burn as many audio CDs as you want, period. iTunes converts any of your music files, no matter the file format, to AIFF files to make an audio CD. (All audio CDs are comprised of AIFF files., that's what makes them official CD Audio.)
The sharing limitations are such:
You can only burn the same playlist to CDs 10 times. You can burn the tracks as much as you want, this applies only to the playlist as defined in iTunes or the iPod.
You can only copy the downloaded AAC file from the iTunes Music Store (Love the name, BTW. Simple!) to three other computers. Once you burn it to a CD, it's not an AAC file, it's an AIFF file, so the that's probably a loophole. Audio CDs do not count as "computers" anyway and neither do iPods as I understand. This restriction is in the AAC file itself, a digital "signature" added to it, and it's just one reason why Apple chose to use AAC over MP3 or other formats. So you can speculate how it works, whether at the application level (iTunes or MusicMatch) or at the filesystem (external HD) level. I'm betting on the former.
I don't understand why this would be a problem for you, torifile. The Audio CD file is no longer the AAC file. AFAIK, it can't contain the metadata the AAC file can, therefore it can't contain the digital security measure. I could be wrong, this is just how I understand it.
Originally posted by BuonRotto
I don't understand why this would be a problem for you, torifile. The Audio CD file is no longer the AAC file. AFAIK, it can't contain the metadata the AAC file can, therefore it can't contain the digital security measure. I could be wrong, this is just how I understand it.
My concern wasn't about the burning of the tracks to audio. I know that they'll be .aiff files. I was responding (somewhat prematurely, perhaps) to the quote from Forbes saying that there is a large degradation in sound quality should a track be ripped to mp3 from an audio cd track that was originally an .aac file. Whether or not this is true, or even possible (I don't see how it would be, but ....) I'm not sure. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Originally posted by BuonRotto
You can only burn the same playlist to CDs 10 times.
this seems to be a big problem for some people, so here's some clarity.
You may not burn the same playlist 10 times in a row
now back to your regular scheduled forum whoring 8)
Originally posted by liquidh2o
this seems to be a big problem for some people, so here's some clarity.
You may not burn the same playlist 10 times in a row
now back to your regular scheduled forum whoring 8)
Originally posted by torifile
http://www.apple.com/music/store/
bottom of page
"burn unlimited CDs of individual songs, and burn unchanged playlists up to 10 times each."
move a song around, or create a new playlist, then re-create the old one.
Originally posted by torifile
My concern wasn't about the burning of the tracks to audio. I know that they'll be .aiff files. I was responding (somewhat prematurely, perhaps) to the quote from Forbes saying that there is a large degradation in sound quality should a track be ripped to mp3 from an audio cd track that was originally an .aac file. Whether or not this is true, or even possible (I don't see how it would be, but ....) I'm not sure. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
You're obviously not understanding the concept of lossy compression. Once the original AIFF file on the CD is ripped to a AAC (M4A, whatever you want to call it
That being said, I converted my entire library to AAC some time ago (it's pretty small.) It was mostly 192KBs MP3 to 128KB/s AAC. Your hearing is not as acute as your vision, I can hardly tell the difference.
Originally posted by torifile
I think everyone's misunderstanding me. I mean I buy some tracks from apple. I need to get them to mp3's so that I can play them in my car. I could do that directly and suffer some quality loss I guess. Now that I think about it, converting it to an audio cd and then to mp3 from that cd would be the same. So the big question is: how much loss are we talking? Or is it even possible? If not, I'll have to do the aac -> audio cd -> mp3 and if the quality loss isn't commensurate with a typical lossy to lossy conversion, then I'm pissed. (n.b. I'm willing to deal with the typical lossy to lossy degradation. I'm not willing to deal with artificial loss.) Does that make more sense?
-t
ps - I'm not bitching about not being able to play aac files in my car. I'm not much of a bitcher.
edit: I know that iTunes won't prevent me from ripping any cd to mp3. I was just hoping that I would be able to do this with tracks I buy from Apple. Still holding out hope...
Maybe I should clarify a bit here, too. When you convert a compressed AAC file to uncompressed AIFF, it's just like copying a compressed JPEG to the clipboard. The compression is duplicated exactly, in the case of the JPEG the bitmap that is the clipboard will duplicate the artifacts in the JPEG image just as you see them, it doesn't magically uncompress the image (like you would get with a zip or sit file.) Therefore when you convert the AAC file to AIFF, no quality is regained. It is exactly the same as the original AAC, only it takes up more space. When you convert the AIFF file to MP3, it is exactly the same as converting the original AAC file to MP3. In much the same way, a compressed JPEG will compress once more in exactly the same way a copy of that JPEG, saved as an uncompressed TIFF will (at the same quality setting, say 60.)
Converting all of your AAC files Audio CDs only to rip them again is a waste of blank CDs and time.
Originally posted by Spart
Maybe I should clarify a bit here, too. When you convert a compressed AAC file to uncompressed AIFF, it's just like copying a compressed JPEG to the clipboard. The compression is duplicated exactly, in the case of the JPEG the bitmap that is the clipboard will duplicate the artifacts in the JPEG image just as you see them, it doesn't magically uncompress the image (like you would get with a zip or sit file.) Therefore when you convert the AAC file to AIFF, no quality is regained. It is exactly the same as the original AAC, only it takes up more space. When you convert the AIFF file to MP3, it is exactly the same as converting the original AAC file to MP3. In much the same way, a compressed JPEG will compress once more in exactly the same way a copy of that JPEG, saved as an uncompressed TIFF will (at the same quality setting, say 60.)
Converting all of your AAC files Audio CDs only to rip them again is a waste of blank CDs and time.
I understand all that. I know that .aac is lossy and .mp3 is lossy and that you can't regain the original quality by converting it to .aiff and then to .mp3 (I'm not an idiot, you know
If, for example, I were converting a .jpg that's at 90 quality from a .tiff and then converting that new .jpg to one that's 60 quality, I should get a new image that's 54 quality. Same thing with the .aac > .mp3 stuff. (Maybe not entirely accurate, but you get the point.)
What I'm saying is that we should take the analogy of .jpg quality settings and apply it to the music files. The overall .aac > audio cd > .mp3 conversion should only result in 54 quality files (using the numbers from the above example). Not anything less. If it is, as the forbes article suggests there would be, then we've got a problem. Does that make sense?
-t
ps - again, I need to convert any .aac files to mp3 files for my car to be able to play them. That's why I would go through all these machinations to get it to work.
Originally posted by tonton
Sorry, torifile I was responding to a post way back and hadn't seen your latest comments.
But what I don't understand is why you'd be going from AAC>AIFF>MP3 when you could much more easily go AAC>MP3 direct right from the iTunes menu.
And I doubt Apple has discovered some compression anamoly that makes MP3s burned from AAC sound "horrible". I'm sure your "54 quality" measurement should be about right.
np, tonton.
The only reason I would go through an audio cd would be if I wasn't allowed to make an mp3 directly from the .aac file. I'm an audible.com user and you can't convert audible files to mp3s and I'm thinking that Apple took a page from their book for this one. I guess I overreacted to the speculation from the Forbes quote earlier. I will just try it out and see. As pesi said, it is only $.99.
Originally posted by torifile
I will just try it out and see. As pesi said, it is only $.99. [/B]
well, just make sure you let us all know how it turns out!
Trying the converting the audio tracks now.... Stay tuned.
Originally posted by Luca Rescigno
Hopefully they'll soon add an MP3 option to the store - along with Windows compatability. Right now it's nice for hardcore Mac users, but it's very limited because it can only play on Macs or on Macintosh iPods.
That's not going to happen. The aac file format is protected so they can control it. There's no way record companies would allow Apple to distribute mp3s. And really, for mac users, the whole thing is seamless. I wouldn't know that it was an aac file unless I checked. It looks exactly the same to me.