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RE: Turns Out, Mastered for iTunes May Be Nothing New

There's a huge thread on the Gearslutz Mastering Forum. My conclusion is that this the Mastering for iTunes program is marketing hype. Compressing CD quality (or higher music) into 256 kbps AAC is like trying to put 5 or 10 pounds of music into a 2 pound bag. Using the best possible procedures may get you the full 2 pounds instead of 1 3/4 pounds.

If iTunes sold music encoded with ALAC at the same price then this issue simply wouldn't arise. Anyone who cared about sound quality could just download the ALAC version. If they wanted to store their entire library in a portable device they could use their computer to compress to lossy. It makes no sense to encode downloads in a lossy format today with bandwidth so cheap. The only possible reason for using lossy encoding today is for streaming applications over wireless networks (or to people who live in the third world when it comes to Internet connectivity).



Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar


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  • RE: Turns Out, Mastered for iTunes May Be Nothing New - Tony Lauck 07:11:32 03/20/12 (0)

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