"Four of AC/DC’s live albums and three compilation records are also available. The statement said the songs have been mastered for iTunes "with increased audio fidelity."


WTF

I've been listening to Back in Black and Highway to Hell on Grooveshark lately. First time in decades probably.


I swear, just the other day I thought: "these guys anticipated mp3 by 30 years" because it sounded just fantastic blaring out of my laptop speakers.


When I was a kid, the Back in Black record came out the same week I bought a big new stereo amp I had been saving for. Wham!



best,
mike

That was an album that was mixed to sound awesome on everything. I had it on tape when it first came out in 1980 or so and I'd listen to it on my dinky little stereo cassette/radio and it blew my little 7 year old head away. 

batsbrew


"Four of AC/DC’s live albums and three compilation records are also available. The statement said the songs have been mastered for iTunes "with increased audio fidelity."


WTF

I'm wondering who gets the worst listening experience - me listening to mp3's on studio monitors or the average AC/DC fan listening to a regular CD on an average sound system and average hifi speakers.

Or then the millions of people who made AC/DC rich by buying and playing their vinyls and playing them until they were worn out on consumer grade sound systems. 

Because, rock and roll was music for the masses, and I do honestly believe that the spirit of rock and roll dies a bit when it becomes a thing of audiophile elitism, and when people start putting on white gloves to carefully take the vinyl out of the sleeve to have it played back on a system worth thousands of dollars.


I'm inclined to believe that in many cases, the sound quality level for the average listener potentially improved w/ MP3s compared to what it was in the old days (cd era excluded). I'm sure it beats my crappy sony walkman and the tapes we used to trade.



EDIT - Reminds me that I bought a certain someone's album on iTunes and it doesn't sound too bad. (Though I'm sure you'd much rather have me listening to the original master in all its 24 bits glory). ;)

There are actually quite a number of "big name" mastering engineers who are completely and utterly clueless how lossy compression works.

Of course they think they know everything. And it would never occur to them to have a discussion with a lossy compression developer or a psychoacoustics expert to see how they might get the best possible results.

So instead they remaster and try to "correct" for things that don't actually happen. But hey, who knows, perhaps they'll get lucky in the process!

you might be right, rain.
get it..?
right as rain?

lol

anyway, i wished i could get the catalog on something better than 16 bit/44.1khz, because i CAN hear a difference.


for mp3, i rip my own at 320kbps, have for years.......

but even then, something always sounds missing to me.

it looses it's three dimensional quality.....


 
 even on crappy systems, i can hear it.



so, i guess the real question is, what the phook can a mastering engineer do, to the original sound of the tape, that optimizes it to sound better on the itunes format?

i call BS

can't be done.

at best, all they can do is ADD stuff that is not suppose to be there....

to make up for the GUTS and glory they loose in the 'lossless' compression scheme.


i mean, i listen to 24 bit audio all the time.....

and when i listen to mp3's right after that, i always go "WHOA!"

So it's now ABC/DSC?  (BS added.)

I'm all for an option to buy music as 24 bit wav files.  Ideally, I'd even like an option to buy the un-mastered mix, because mastering seems to cause more harm than good in many cases these days.

What, you don't like the wave to look like a solid sausage Rain?

(Me neither!)

drewfx1


There are actually quite a number of "big name" mastering engineers who are completely and utterly clueless how lossy compression works.

Of course they think they know everything. And it would never occur to them to have a discussion with a lossy compression developer or a psychoacoustics expert to see how they might get the best possible results.

So instead they remaster and try to "correct" for things that don't actually happen. But hey, who knows, perhaps they'll get lucky in the process!

I'm not arguing... but this can help:


http://www.sonnoxplugins....products/pro-codec.htmhttp://www.sonnoxplugins....products/pro-codec.htm