"Sad" and "worried." Where does this seemingly automatic hand-wringing come from?
There is an alternate assumption available to you, backed up by Tim Cook's statements about amazing products in the pipeline. Jobs and Ive and who knows how many others at Apple invented a factory for invention itself. Or a think tank for invention, if you prefer that wording.
Maybe all the focus on Steve Jobs and his "disruptive" style has obscured the fact that the Jobs vision is acquirable, transferable and widely shared to begin with. It isn't disruption that Apple does, except as collateral damage, perhaps. What they do is creation, based on what would be great, or insanely great.
This has been an endemic feature of Silicon Valley, at least the countercultural subset that Apple and the Macintosh comes from. It's the Right Path that the invention of digital technology affords, and it's what is now institutionalized at Apple. It was a discovery that grew out the alternate realities explorered in the sixties, and it won't, or can't, be undiscovered.
The other path, the Left Path, is the one that Microsoft and IBM took, the one that we should have worried about more all these years. That path knows nothing about insanely great, but only rises to a certain level of competence. (But notice that MS is now trying to be great, for the first time, with their new emphasis on interface.)
What I'm saying in this ramble is that it is not legitimate to assume that the source for inspired products has dried up with Steve gone. He helped, maybe more than anyone else, to uncork a genie that can't be put back in the bottle. That genie is the networked computer for everyone, whether in portable form, or on the desk, or on your wall in the form of of a TV. And the mandate that it has to be so great that everyone wants one.
Recall the Apple University, where these discoveries are probably in the opening syllabus, and quell your doubts.
I'm not sure that this is true. Steve Jobs was a person with highly unique qualities. I do think it's an overstatement to say that innovation at Apple is dead. I don't think it's an overstatement to express concern that this may happen. I can't hink of any other CEO that has had the impact that Steve had over so many different industries. It's possible that he was able to create an environment where this will continue on, but it's also a distinct possiblity that it won't. I don't see too many higher ups at Apple that have gone on to revolutionize industries in the way Steve's team at Apple did. Time will tell, of course, but I don't think it's crazy to wonder if Apple has the structure in place to continue on as they have in the past.
HD audio already exists in the form of SACD and DVD-A. But it barely exists, marketwise. Consumers don't care so much about quality as quantity and ease of use or "good enough". The iPod made music easy to listen to again, like in the days of cassette. It also improved on cassettes in many other ways. That's why it was successful.
What Young wants is never going to be mainstream. I'm sure Jobs may have looked into making music better, but was challenged with how to package and sell it to millions, not thousands.
I wouldn't mind an iPod HD, but I can't use my CDs as source material. I need properly remastered music that is available and even SACD and DVD-A don't have enough titles to serve everyone.
Besides, I don't think the music industry wants people sharing higher quality music, either.
No I haven't. I conducted controlled tests which satisfied me that there was no audible difference between the output from my ipod and that from my CD player. Given the vastly greater convenience inherent in the former, using it was a no brainer.
On my iPhone, my music is all 128k AAC. I can sometimes hear the difference, but I'm usually out in an urban setting, with the music turned down enough so I can hear the M23 before it takes me out. At home, my collection is all ALAC. It can't add fidelity to a poorly mixed, pumped and clumped album. But once you listen to, for example, the first minute of Pat Methany's Last Train Home in both formats on a decent system, you will hear the difference forever, and on any other album where there is one.
I'm not talking the proverbial $7K (or $70K) system. The industry has raised the level of mediocrity so far that a $700 system (an Onkyo receiver, set of Polk speakers, and nearly any CD/DVD/BD player over $100 as one example) can easily give you a level of quality that a several grand system would only approach 20 years ago.
I was involved with building an FM station in the '70s. We committed to building the best sounding station we could within the limitations of the medium. Average listeners, not audiophiles, began calling as soon as we were on the air. Folks at home listening on decent stereos commented about how other stations would begin to annoy them after an hour, even if they were playing great music, but that they could listen to us all day. Listeners in their cars or in office settings complained that we often sounded "too soft." All commented that they were hearing things in familiar music they hadn't noticed before (no, not more cowbell). Why? We were applying the least compression, equalization, and limiting we could. People couldn't tell us why, but they heard the difference. And the more they listened, the more they heard.
There are a lot of smoke and mirrors in audio, but there is a level of quality most people will hear once one or two examples are pointed out. That level is much higher than many are willing to acknowledge.
As long as there is enough bass to make your ears bleed, the masses will be okie dokie.
Sad, but a reality.
I mean come on, CD's were a quantum leap over vinyl and cassettes and then Napster and iTunes started what I call the "compression era". We haven't progressed since.
I long for the days when details could still be heard in recordings.
As long as there is enough bass to make your ears bleed, the masses will be okie dokie.
Sad, but a reality.
I mean come on, CD's were a quantum leap over vinyl and cassettes and then Napster and iTunes started what I call the "compression era". We haven't progressed since.
I long for the days when details could still be heard in recordings.
The file size of iTunes Store music has more than doubled since it first appeared on the scene, and the AAC files are quite good.
Crappy MP3s are still downloaded illegally though.
Most Canadians have triple digit IQ's but not this man. I am embarrassed to be Canadian after hearing his ignorant ramblings. He obviously doesn't understand the relationship between frequency response, sampling rate and encoding bit depth. He seems to be stuck on the file size as his main yardstick.
There is a market for very large file music and that market has an IQ inversely proportional to their preferred file size and the thickness of their wallet.
If Neil Young is serious about this, I wish him the best of luck. However, I think his efforts would be best directed at solving problems that come long before the music has been digitized to a format for the consumer to buy.
To wit,
Now, really? No matter what format you put that particular song into, it's still going to sound bad. The audio level has been pushed ("compressed") to the point where it is clipping and running out of headroom. I know that many people don't care, and that quite a few may not see a problem with the above image.
Still, there is no point in offering any better digital format when stuff like this exists. It would be a far better idea to make sure the process leading up to the finished product is doing as well as it can.
Psychology plays a huge part. That's why drug trials use double-blind tests and include a placebo.
In the 1980, the Canadian stereo magazine, Audio Scene, did double-blind listening tests that compared several power amplifiers. Once all the equipment was properly grounded, the golden-ears audiophiles could not tell the difference.
<snip>
So, I, too, would be interested in any double-blind listening tests that compare different digital formats. It's important that the tests be double-blind (i.e., not even the experimenter who is turning the knobs and pressing the buttons knows which audio format he is listening to).
I know I tried to reverse-bias a listening test between a Denon receiver driving its own internal amp vs. driving an Aragon, telling my wife that the Denon was much newer & fancier, and she listened for a minute and said so actually thought the Aragon sounded better. I was hoping it was just me, frankly. but it just sounded much better - smoother, better imaging. Same exact setup other than the extra interconnects from the Denon to the Aragon - I was switching speakers between amps.
My wife is not an audiophile and I was trying to bias her towards the Denon. Non-scientific, definitely, and not your double-blind double-blind case anyway.
Obviously there are items where there is no difference. Special power cords seem dubious considering the poor quality of your line voltage. Power conditioners theoretically make sense, though I haven't ever tried one myself... when you hear clicks and noises coming over the line when your fridge / AC / vacuum / etc. turn on, that's all on the line, so removing that seems pretty logical. On the other hand, there are differences in speakers - which makes sense considering the differences in cabinets, driver materials, crossovers, etc., there are differences in amps (listen to an electrostat driven with an A-B amp vs. tube amp). But in the end, pick the sound you prefer.
But for what was being discussed, take a good picture (RAW) then down-convert it to a compressed format - think JPEG. I'm sure you're not arguing that there's no difference between that and the original when you have them side by side? There are cases where the compression is less harmful/obvious, but many places (hard edges, high detail) where it's clear that JPEG throws away details - better still, reduce it to 16-bit instead of 24-bit depth to complete the analogy. You will see the difference. Throwing away a huge amount of the music signal is no different. (And the differences in video output was pretty large between different cards - ringing was very visible depending on card and cable not so many years back...)
But let's assume anyone who thinks they can hear any difference is just crazy. So what? Let us download the higher quality sound, you don't have to, OK?
Why buy iTunes tracks/albums when you can purchase CD's from Amazon for less and at full red-book (or better) quality?
Just rip at Apple Lossless.
It amazes me how people clamour for HDTV and 3DTV whilst happily listening to the enfeebled noise Mp3 or other lossy/data reduction algorithms deliver.
As for 24/192 files. If anyone knows of double blind listening tests that clearly show people can hear the difference between them and 16/44.1, please post a link.
I am still waiting for someone to show they can hear the difference between 223kbps AAC and the original source, let alone higher resolution originals.
Mostly agreed. I bought a standalone CD-R some years ago that's capable of 96/24. I was very excited about both live recording and copying LPs in 96/24. Could not perceive any difference whatsoever.
Furthermore, I make CD copies of old vinyl albums for broadcast use when the vinyl is not available on CD. In spite of all the vinyl lovers who hate digital audio, no one can ever tell the difference between the vinyl playing back and the CD copy of the vinyl playing back, so if 44.1/16 bit red book digital recordidng is screwing up the original analog recording, no one can tell.
In addition, I frequently think when I hear a CD remastering of an LP that I had owned that the CD sounds inferior. Then I go back and listen to the LP. 98% of the time, it sounds worse, usually far worse. I think what many people are actually comparing is their hearing when they were young and listening to LPs with their hearing now listening to CDs or downloads.
However, I do agree that compressed MP3 is not very good. But it is good enough for most people. Remember that even during the LP age, while there were hi-fi buffs who listened to LPs on quality sound systems, the masses listenend on junk and treated their records like crap.
The biggest problem with today's recordings is not that they're digital and not that most people listen on compressed MP3. The biggest problem is that because everyone wants their recording to be "the loudest", the recording is compressed as hell with no dynamic range. Digital recordings have a theoretical dynamic range of 96db and LPs had a theoretical dynamic range of about 35db and most recordings today have a dynamic range of only 10-15db. They're also mastered with the meter "slammed" so that there's ridiculous levels of digital distortion which, unlike harmonic distortion, is really annoying to the ear. Clean that up and all recordings, file compressed or not, will sound better.
But having said all that, I doubt very much that Neil Young was seriously working with Jobs on a higher quality format (unless that was Apple "uncompressed"). Maybe he spoke to Steve about it and Steve was "polite". For years, Apple has placed precedence on convenience over quality and with all their success, I don't see that changing anytime soon. Apple's lack of support for Blu-ray is another indication of that. As for Young, MP3 quality is certainly less than optimal, but it's most certainly NOT only 5% of what's heard in the recording studio. And as with almost every musician I've ever met, he almost definitely has severe hearing loss due to a lifetime of touring so I can't believe that he can tell the difference regardless of his claims.
In addition, the market has rejected every attempt at producing higher quality audio. SACD and DVD-Audio were market failures. Except in recording studios, no one was interested in 96/24 or higher resolutions. Except for enthusiasts, BD-Audio has gotten a big yawn. While LP sales increased 33% last year, it's still less than 2% of the market.
And I say all that as an ex-recording engineer who loves high-quality sound and still has 400 LPs and 500 CDs in my living room played back through a large sound system.
The file size of iTunes Store music has more than doubled since it first appeared on the scene, and the AAC files are quite good.
AAC files are indeed good enough for the average listener, but it wouldn't be a bad thing if there were higher quality files available to purchase as an option for those who prefer to have their audio uncompressed. Then people will have a choice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pendergast
Crappy MP3s are still downloaded illegally though.
I'm sure that they are, but I suppose thats somebody can just take all of those crappy MP3's and auto-convert them to much higher quality AAC's if and when they sign up for iTunes Match.
No I haven't. I conducted controlled tests which satisfied me that there was no audible difference between the output from my ipod and that from my CD player. Given the vastly greater convenience inherent in the former, using it was a no brainer...
Do you also think movies in DD5.1 sound as good as those in DTS-HD?
As long as there is enough bass to make your ears bleed, the masses will be okie dokie.
Sad, but a reality.
I mean come on, CD's were a quantum leap over vinyl and cassettes and then Napster and iTunes started what I call the "compression era". We haven't progressed since.
I long for the days when details could still be heard in recordings.
SACD is only dead if we stop buying them! I for one still do. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours sounds amazing on SACD.
Enjoy trying to transfer your digital file to another system - you're breaking the law.
Which other system do you mean? If somebody buys something on iTunes, they own it for life too, and it can be played on any of the machines that the person owns.
Comments
Just use .flac?
Show me the players that play .flac 24/192.
Flac is a play format just like DivX and Xvid. For audio the open source Apple Loose less is far more interesting then Flac.
I do and I do.
Then you wasted your money.
Mind if I group you two together?
"Sad" and "worried." Where does this seemingly automatic hand-wringing come from?
There is an alternate assumption available to you, backed up by Tim Cook's statements about amazing products in the pipeline. Jobs and Ive and who knows how many others at Apple invented a factory for invention itself. Or a think tank for invention, if you prefer that wording.
Maybe all the focus on Steve Jobs and his "disruptive" style has obscured the fact that the Jobs vision is acquirable, transferable and widely shared to begin with. It isn't disruption that Apple does, except as collateral damage, perhaps. What they do is creation, based on what would be great, or insanely great.
This has been an endemic feature of Silicon Valley, at least the countercultural subset that Apple and the Macintosh comes from. It's the Right Path that the invention of digital technology affords, and it's what is now institutionalized at Apple. It was a discovery that grew out the alternate realities explorered in the sixties, and it won't, or can't, be undiscovered.
The other path, the Left Path, is the one that Microsoft and IBM took, the one that we should have worried about more all these years. That path knows nothing about insanely great, but only rises to a certain level of competence. (But notice that MS is now trying to be great, for the first time, with their new emphasis on interface.)
What I'm saying in this ramble is that it is not legitimate to assume that the source for inspired products has dried up with Steve gone. He helped, maybe more than anyone else, to uncork a genie that can't be put back in the bottle. That genie is the networked computer for everyone, whether in portable form, or on the desk, or on your wall in the form of of a TV. And the mandate that it has to be so great that everyone wants one.
Recall the Apple University, where these discoveries are probably in the opening syllabus, and quell your doubts.
I'm not sure that this is true. Steve Jobs was a person with highly unique qualities. I do think it's an overstatement to say that innovation at Apple is dead. I don't think it's an overstatement to express concern that this may happen. I can't hink of any other CEO that has had the impact that Steve had over so many different industries. It's possible that he was able to create an environment where this will continue on, but it's also a distinct possiblity that it won't. I don't see too many higher ups at Apple that have gone on to revolutionize industries in the way Steve's team at Apple did. Time will tell, of course, but I don't think it's crazy to wonder if Apple has the structure in place to continue on as they have in the past.
What Young wants is never going to be mainstream. I'm sure Jobs may have looked into making music better, but was challenged with how to package and sell it to millions, not thousands.
I wouldn't mind an iPod HD, but I can't use my CDs as source material. I need properly remastered music that is available and even SACD and DVD-A don't have enough titles to serve everyone.
Besides, I don't think the music industry wants people sharing higher quality music, either.
Then you wasted your money.
No I haven't. I conducted controlled tests which satisfied me that there was no audible difference between the output from my ipod and that from my CD player. Given the vastly greater convenience inherent in the former, using it was a no brainer.
Not that I think much of any HiFi magazine, but Stereophile happen to have reviewed the same model of iPod I use: http://www.stereophile.com/budgetcom...934/index.html
The iPod's measured behavior is better than many CD players...
.?John Atkinson
I'm not talking the proverbial $7K (or $70K) system. The industry has raised the level of mediocrity so far that a $700 system (an Onkyo receiver, set of Polk speakers, and nearly any CD/DVD/BD player over $100 as one example) can easily give you a level of quality that a several grand system would only approach 20 years ago.
I was involved with building an FM station in the '70s. We committed to building the best sounding station we could within the limitations of the medium. Average listeners, not audiophiles, began calling as soon as we were on the air. Folks at home listening on decent stereos commented about how other stations would begin to annoy them after an hour, even if they were playing great music, but that they could listen to us all day. Listeners in their cars or in office settings complained that we often sounded "too soft." All commented that they were hearing things in familiar music they hadn't noticed before (no, not more cowbell). Why? We were applying the least compression, equalization, and limiting we could. People couldn't tell us why, but they heard the difference. And the more they listened, the more they heard.
There are a lot of smoke and mirrors in audio, but there is a level of quality most people will hear once one or two examples are pointed out. That level is much higher than many are willing to acknowledge.
And, of course, YMMV.
As long as there is enough bass to make your ears bleed, the masses will be okie dokie.
Sad, but a reality.
I mean come on, CD's were a quantum leap over vinyl and cassettes and then Napster and iTunes started what I call the "compression era". We haven't progressed since.
I long for the days when details could still be heard in recordings.
Consumers could care less about 24/192.
As long as there is enough bass to make your ears bleed, the masses will be okie dokie.
Sad, but a reality.
I mean come on, CD's were a quantum leap over vinyl and cassettes and then Napster and iTunes started what I call the "compression era". We haven't progressed since.
I long for the days when details could still be heard in recordings.
The file size of iTunes Store music has more than doubled since it first appeared on the scene, and the AAC files are quite good.
Crappy MP3s are still downloaded illegally though.
There is a market for very large file music and that market has an IQ inversely proportional to their preferred file size and the thickness of their wallet.
To wit,
Now, really? No matter what format you put that particular song into, it's still going to sound bad. The audio level has been pushed ("compressed") to the point where it is clipping and running out of headroom. I know that many people don't care, and that quite a few may not see a problem with the above image.
Still, there is no point in offering any better digital format when stuff like this exists. It would be a far better idea to make sure the process leading up to the finished product is doing as well as it can.
+1
Psychology plays a huge part. That's why drug trials use double-blind tests and include a placebo.
In the 1980, the Canadian stereo magazine, Audio Scene, did double-blind listening tests that compared several power amplifiers. Once all the equipment was properly grounded, the golden-ears audiophiles could not tell the difference.
<snip>
So, I, too, would be interested in any double-blind listening tests that compare different digital formats. It's important that the tests be double-blind (i.e., not even the experimenter who is turning the knobs and pressing the buttons knows which audio format he is listening to).
I know I tried to reverse-bias a listening test between a Denon receiver driving its own internal amp vs. driving an Aragon, telling my wife that the Denon was much newer & fancier, and she listened for a minute and said so actually thought the Aragon sounded better. I was hoping it was just me, frankly. but it just sounded much better - smoother, better imaging. Same exact setup other than the extra interconnects from the Denon to the Aragon - I was switching speakers between amps.
My wife is not an audiophile and I was trying to bias her towards the Denon. Non-scientific, definitely, and not your double-blind double-blind case anyway.
Obviously there are items where there is no difference. Special power cords seem dubious considering the poor quality of your line voltage. Power conditioners theoretically make sense, though I haven't ever tried one myself... when you hear clicks and noises coming over the line when your fridge / AC / vacuum / etc. turn on, that's all on the line, so removing that seems pretty logical. On the other hand, there are differences in speakers - which makes sense considering the differences in cabinets, driver materials, crossovers, etc., there are differences in amps (listen to an electrostat driven with an A-B amp vs. tube amp). But in the end, pick the sound you prefer.
But for what was being discussed, take a good picture (RAW) then down-convert it to a compressed format - think JPEG. I'm sure you're not arguing that there's no difference between that and the original when you have them side by side? There are cases where the compression is less harmful/obvious, but many places (hard edges, high detail) where it's clear that JPEG throws away details - better still, reduce it to 16-bit instead of 24-bit depth to complete the analogy. You will see the difference. Throwing away a huge amount of the music signal is no different. (And the differences in video output was pretty large between different cards - ringing was very visible depending on card and cable not so many years back...)
But let's assume anyone who thinks they can hear any difference is just crazy. So what? Let us download the higher quality sound, you don't have to, OK?
Just rip at Apple Lossless.
It amazes me how people clamour for HDTV and 3DTV whilst happily listening to the enfeebled noise Mp3 or other lossy/data reduction algorithms deliver.
So how was Neil going to do this. does he have an electrical engineering degree with expertise in signal processing?
Haven't seen much of his efforts at producing a viable electric car.
http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=71135
As for 24/192 files. If anyone knows of double blind listening tests that clearly show people can hear the difference between them and 16/44.1, please post a link.
I am still waiting for someone to show they can hear the difference between 223kbps AAC and the original source, let alone higher resolution originals.
Mostly agreed. I bought a standalone CD-R some years ago that's capable of 96/24. I was very excited about both live recording and copying LPs in 96/24. Could not perceive any difference whatsoever.
Furthermore, I make CD copies of old vinyl albums for broadcast use when the vinyl is not available on CD. In spite of all the vinyl lovers who hate digital audio, no one can ever tell the difference between the vinyl playing back and the CD copy of the vinyl playing back, so if 44.1/16 bit red book digital recordidng is screwing up the original analog recording, no one can tell.
In addition, I frequently think when I hear a CD remastering of an LP that I had owned that the CD sounds inferior. Then I go back and listen to the LP. 98% of the time, it sounds worse, usually far worse. I think what many people are actually comparing is their hearing when they were young and listening to LPs with their hearing now listening to CDs or downloads.
However, I do agree that compressed MP3 is not very good. But it is good enough for most people. Remember that even during the LP age, while there were hi-fi buffs who listened to LPs on quality sound systems, the masses listenend on junk and treated their records like crap.
The biggest problem with today's recordings is not that they're digital and not that most people listen on compressed MP3. The biggest problem is that because everyone wants their recording to be "the loudest", the recording is compressed as hell with no dynamic range. Digital recordings have a theoretical dynamic range of 96db and LPs had a theoretical dynamic range of about 35db and most recordings today have a dynamic range of only 10-15db. They're also mastered with the meter "slammed" so that there's ridiculous levels of digital distortion which, unlike harmonic distortion, is really annoying to the ear. Clean that up and all recordings, file compressed or not, will sound better.
But having said all that, I doubt very much that Neil Young was seriously working with Jobs on a higher quality format (unless that was Apple "uncompressed"). Maybe he spoke to Steve about it and Steve was "polite". For years, Apple has placed precedence on convenience over quality and with all their success, I don't see that changing anytime soon. Apple's lack of support for Blu-ray is another indication of that. As for Young, MP3 quality is certainly less than optimal, but it's most certainly NOT only 5% of what's heard in the recording studio. And as with almost every musician I've ever met, he almost definitely has severe hearing loss due to a lifetime of touring so I can't believe that he can tell the difference regardless of his claims.
In addition, the market has rejected every attempt at producing higher quality audio. SACD and DVD-Audio were market failures. Except in recording studios, no one was interested in 96/24 or higher resolutions. Except for enthusiasts, BD-Audio has gotten a big yawn. While LP sales increased 33% last year, it's still less than 2% of the market.
And I say all that as an ex-recording engineer who loves high-quality sound and still has 400 LPs and 500 CDs in my living room played back through a large sound system.
The file size of iTunes Store music has more than doubled since it first appeared on the scene, and the AAC files are quite good.
AAC files are indeed good enough for the average listener, but it wouldn't be a bad thing if there were higher quality files available to purchase as an option for those who prefer to have their audio uncompressed. Then people will have a choice.
Crappy MP3s are still downloaded illegally though.
I'm sure that they are, but I suppose thats somebody can just take all of those crappy MP3's and auto-convert them to much higher quality AAC's if and when they sign up for iTunes Match.
will i be able to hear the difference in my apple headphones? or do i need a $7000 stereo system to hear it?
That and $1000 Monster Cables, $200 wooden knobs for your receiver and a crystal pyramid hat to wear.
No I haven't. I conducted controlled tests which satisfied me that there was no audible difference between the output from my ipod and that from my CD player. Given the vastly greater convenience inherent in the former, using it was a no brainer...
Do you also think movies in DD5.1 sound as good as those in DTS-HD?
Why buy iTunes tracks/albums when you can purchase CD's from Amazon for less and at full red-book (or better) quality?
CDs are crap, they're only 16 bit and they're a physical item that is a lot less inconvenient to use than a digital file that can be downloaded.
24 bit files should be offered for download.
Consumers could care less about 24/192.
As long as there is enough bass to make your ears bleed, the masses will be okie dokie.
Sad, but a reality.
I mean come on, CD's were a quantum leap over vinyl and cassettes and then Napster and iTunes started what I call the "compression era". We haven't progressed since.
I long for the days when details could still be heard in recordings.
SACD is only dead if we stop buying them! I for one still do. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours sounds amazing on SACD.
CDs are crap, they're only 16 bit and they're a physical item that is a lot less inconvenient to use than a digital file that can be downloaded.
24 bit files should be offered for download.
Enjoy trying to transfer your digital file to another system - you're breaking the law.
A physical CD is mine. I can do whatever the hell I want with it, play it in any player I want, legally sell it to someone else etc. etc.
Convenience and lethargy will be the death of us all.
Enjoy trying to transfer your digital file to another system - you're breaking the law.
Which other system do you mean? If somebody buys something on iTunes, they own it for life too, and it can be played on any of the machines that the person owns.