zoetmb

AnotherBrick said:

seanismorris said:

AnotherBrick said:

There is one sentence that will prevent me from buying a HomePod: “Apple's HomePod is a fantastic home speaker. It connects solely over Wi-Fi and streams Apple Music natively, but nothing else.”

A device which claims to be an audiophile grade speaker that only plays mp3 quality music and cannot accept other sources unless that source has AirPlay, which probably eliminates turntables for people who are vinyl purists, absolutely killed my interest in the device. I wanted something that could play the highest quality bit rate for digital and could play my high end vinyl collection as well.

Below is Apple’s response to these complaints (via cultofmac).  I wouldn’t know not being an audiophile, but it sounds like you’re fighting Father Time in a digital world.  Nothing wrong with that, but it sounds like you won’t be interested in most new products...

“Mastered for iTunes is all about the quality of the source,” Apple says. “24-bit audio has a remarkably wide dynamic range which is preserved during encoding to AAC and these files are virtually indistinguishable from the original. Some of the best audio engineers in the business have a hard time telling them apart even on high-end audio equipment. Experts may be able to tell you that they are different in some subtle ways, but they can’t necessarily tell you which one they like better. This isn’t about AAC vs. CD or vinyl. It’s about creating the best possible master for the unique characteristics of each medium.”

Apple talks up its “powerful and practical software tools” designed for pro musicians.

“We want the music to sound as close as possible to the way it did in the studio or in the concert hall, preserving your vision and intention,” Apple says. “We want artists and sound engineers to be thoroughly satisfied and proud of the results they can now achieve in our format. So we have worked very hard to provide both the monitoring and quality assessment tools, plus an end-to-end mastering and encoding process that delivers the best possible audio for today’s digital world.”

AAC is a lossy format. Despite what the article says, it is NOT a 24 bit format either. Lossy means you are losing some of the audio quality when compared to the same music in a lossless file format, even if both formats are digital.  Apple shouldn't charge high end prices for mid level performance equipment, especially ones that require you to jump through hoops to use your existing but high quality music. The connection to a HomePod is wireless ethernet, in all but the poorest of wireless systems you should be able to stream ALAC or FLAC files versions which would mean at least CD quality bitrate (16 bit) lossless versions of songs and could have a frequency  and data rate up to 24 bit with a higher frequency response. ALAC IS an Apple format, and it has been around for years, so Apple already has a format they could use. The physical means of getting the music TO the  HomePod, wifi, isn't the problem. It's the restrictions of what you can (easily) stream and the loss of fidelity inherent in an AAC format. Bluetooth would struggle and probably drop out trying to stream ALAC at least for now, but wifi has no problem unless you are an extremely very heavy wifi streaming user. 300 mb is many times more than enough bandwidth for the highest digital music format and most routers are at least that, and 1 gb routers are pretty common now as well.

You will hear people talk fondly of tube based systems sounding better (usually described as 'warmer') than a discrete based amplifier system. I won't argue with them, but I know I cannot hear the difference. I can hear the difference in AAC and either ALAC or FLAC. If you can't then don't buy a super high end system, you won't notice the improvement. But that doesn't mean that the improvement isn't there. But to me, even if it's all in my mind (another thing people will say when you bring up quality) and not reality, a high quality vinyl disc sounds better than the same album on a CD, and much much better than any streaming service, whether its Pandora, Spotify or Apple Music. I have heard of, but never personally listened to, Tidal music which is supposed to be (if you pay for the upper tier of their service) CD quality streaming music. I don't know if you can get Tidal on an iPhone or iPad but I know I can get it on my iMac, so I could stream it to an HomePod, but with the other physical and software limitations, which I think were artificial and not inherent in what Apple said they were trying to do, I'm not interested in going to the trouble.

And my experience is just the opposite:  I can readily tell the difference between a solid state and tube amp.  In fact, I recently bought the re-creation of the Dyna 70 amp and the sound blew me away as compared to both my Crown power amp (vintage 1975) and my Pioneer A/V receiver, which in spite of being certified by George Martin's studios, sounds like absolute crap for music.  

IMO (as an ex-recording engineer), AAC sounds pretty damned good.   While it might be theoretically lossy, in practice, there's almost no difference and this can be proven by taking the original master and then taking the resulting file and playing it out-of-phase with the original in perfect sync.   If the compression is perfect, you'll hear nothing - just silence.   I saw a demo of this some years ago in regards to Dolby Digital whose compression algorithm was very similar to AAC.   And all we heard was every once in a while a slight momentary "sss" sound.     And by the way, the bit rate (as in 16 bit, 24 bit, 48 bit) DOES NOT determine the frequency response, only the sampling rate does.   The Nyquist theorem dictates that the sampling rate must be twice the highest frequency you wish to record/reproduce.  44.1Khz was chosen for CD so that a CD can reproduce up to 22Khz which is beyond the range of most adult hearing.  The bit rate determines how many different levels one can have while quantizing the analog signal.  The more bits, the lower the quantization error.  16 bit permits 65,535 different level points.  24 bit permits 1.67 million.  

I have a high-end (but not esoteric) sound system and for years I transferred vinyl to CD-R for radio use and my experience is that it was the rare album that sounded better on vinyl than it did on commercial CD (except in the early days of CD, when much of the mastering was horrible and the filters in use were poor).   There have been numerous times when I've played a commercial CD of an old album and thought, "this sounds like crap - the LP was better", but then I pull out the LP and it sounds worse.   Memory is a very tricky thing.    I can also tell you that in a blind A-B test, you would not be able to tell the difference between the analog vinyl and the CD-R copy of that vinyl and if you can't tell the difference, then the digitization isn't doing any harm to the audio.   And in terms of new music on vinyl, 95% comes from a digital master, so those who buy new vinyl "because it's analog" are fooling themselves.  

But having said all that, unless I had to move into a studio (or prison), I wouldn't use a Home Pod (or any similar device) anyway.   While it's fine for passive listening the way one might listen to a table radio, it doesn't come close to a full-fledged system (in spite of sounding damned good for its size) and I don't understand why we have essentially and mostly returned to mono.    Plus, I don't want a device that spies on me.   But I'm an old fogey and almost the only time I stream is when I'm bike riding and I suppose eventually when I buy my next car.   At home, it's all physical media.  

The reality is that most people don't give a crap and even if they did and in spite of what Mobird says, most people are not listening on high quality audio systems (and IMO, Home Pod is far from a quality audio system).   So based on the systems most people have, IMO (as an ex-recording engineer), there will be no perceptible difference.  But for those who do have better systems, the question is what is Apple's process?   Is it higher bit rate, higher resolution, uncompressed?   For all we know, it could be nothing more than a slightly higher bit rate and some EQ and compression algorithm that someone at Apple decided sounded good.   IMO, most of today's recordings out of ProTools sound like crap anyway - artificial and tremendously over-level compressed so everything sounds too loud without dynamic range and excessively harsh.  

The other issue in these discussions is what is the source file, especially for older recordings.   Because the source file used is going to be the highest quality one can achieve.  If one takes a CD Redbook 44.1/16 recording and remasters it to 96/24, it doesn't improve the quality one bit (sic).   And we've learned recently that the big fire at Universal some years ago and an earlier fire at Atlantic has destroyed thousands of multitrack and 2-track masters of classic recordings, so we can never get back to original quality again for those albums.   Only existing current duplicating masters can be used and in the cases where those no longer exist, new masters will be made from CD's.  

AAC is already pretty good.   I wonder if in a blind A-B test, very many people could tell the difference between AAC and whatever Apple is now doing or Tidal. 

mpantone said:

rogifan_new said:

Again, let’s see how well it does. My guess is it will have some success but I don’t see many people dropping their current card for it. Or adding it as another card. I am curious to see how Apple markets it and how much marketing they do for it. I guarantee you most of my family and friends don’t even know it’s coming. 

Many people have multiple credit cards and use them depending on the circumstances. I have six credit cards, all of them no annual fee. I pay them off every month so the interest rates are irrelevant to me:

I agree.  When I'm at a supermarket and I see some people pull out their wallets, you can see that they have 20+ credit cards.   Personally, I'm down to a debit and three credit cards, one of which is an airline affinity card.   One of those cards is the new "Payboo" card from B&H Photo.   B&H is a very large photo/electronics dealer in NYC that is also an Apple authorized dealer.  Their credit card has a very high interest rate (which doesn't concern me because like you, I always pay it off within the month), but it gives you back the equivalent of sales tax.  So in NYC, that's a rebate of 8.875% which is obviously much greater than Apple's 3% rebate on Apple hardware ordered from them.    However, I'm not sure you can turn that rebate into cash - I think it stays on the card as a credit and the card is only good at B&H.   But obviously on a purchase like a MacBook Pro, that's a very nice savings, especially considering that a "point" on rewards cards is generally only worth about 7/10 of a cent.

But I could see myself using the Apple Card for most other things, especially the things that I put on the debit card today in order to save the 1% or 2%.  

A late-2018 report indicated that Americans hold $423.8 billion in revolving credit card debt and $949 billion in total credit card debt.  The average household owes $6721 in revolving debt.    Anyone who is paying 18-24% on such money is out of their minds, but I suppose many feel no recourse and do it anyway, paying the minimum payment each month.    That total credit card debt is small compared to other kinds of debt (mortgages: $9.24 trillion, auto loans: $1.28 trillion, student loans: $1.49 trillion), but it's still a big number. 

kimberly said:

maestro64 said:

tenthousandthings said:

The fact my wife and I can’t use the same card account lowers its appeal to us. We will still get it because Apple but it sucks we will have two separate bills and our spending won’t be merged in the analytics.

The latter is the bigger problem, in my view. We had talked about only having this one card. We could do it — we only have two now. But the main reason to do it would be to consolidate all of the good Apple analytics in one place. I trust Apple to do a good job with that, and to protect my data. Without that simplicity factor, though, we will opt to keep one of our existing cards, at least until Apple gives us a way to link the two accounts.

That is because you and your wife may get divorce and Apple does not want her account tied to your's, where have you been didn't you know you're not allow to know what your wife spend money on.

That response is straight from the lunatic fringe

Maybe, but as an old guy who has been through a divorce (and it was a very friendly divorce), I do advise all my married friends to have separate bank accounts or separate bank accounts in addition to one joint account, especially if both people are bringing home a paycheck.   .  

The iPhone being less than 50% of Apple's business isn't a bad thing, it's a positive.   Too much dependency on a single product line is a bad business strategy.   Apple's income being more diverse is a strong positive and the fact that it's more split between hardware and services is even greater positive as it protects Apple against downturns in the economy and if any strong competitors appear.   

How many articles were there in recent years stating that Apple was no longer a computer company, but an "iPhone" company.   That was a weakness, not a strength.  

I'm certainly no genius, but even I can see that a more diverse Apple business is better for Apple and for Apple's customers.  Mac revenue is up 5% year over year, and that's is a great thing, because Mac was becoming such a small part of Apple, I had concerns over how much attention Apple would give it going forward.  iPad is up 15.5%, Services are up 15.9% and Wearables/Home Accessories is up an outstanding 36.5%.   Considering the world economy is not in great shape and that Chinese consumers seem to be spending less across the board, I think Apple is doing great in spite of the fact that they won't beat last fiscal's record revenue and earnings.   Not every year can be a record year. 

And while iPhone revenue was less than 50% in Q3, it's still 61.7% fiscal year-to-date, so this is much ado about nothing.