Music download quality from iTunes and others may improve

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 23 February 2011 08:03

Your IT - Entertainment

Music companies routinely downgrade the quality of recordings before releasing them to online retailers such as Apple's iTunes Store. But that could be about to change - at a price.

Let's make one thing clear from the start: we're talking about how true the purchased audio file is to the original recording, not about the quality of the music itself. So no cheap shots about your least favourite artists, OK?

Finished recordings are in a 24-bit format, but they are downsampled to 16-bit before CD mastering or release to digital music stores. There is no further loss in quality with CDs, but conversion to MP3 or AAC trades off quality for file size. (Lossless compression formats exist, but are rarely used commercially.)

According to a CNN report, Jimmy Iovine - the chairman of the Interscope-Geffen-A&M record label within Universal Music - said his label is working with Universal, Apple and other digital download services to switch to using 24-bit audio.

The snag is that many devices - including iPods and iPhones - do not support 24-bit audio. That's arguably a plus for manufacturers, as it gives consumers yet another reason to replace their hardware.

But would customers be able to hear the difference? If the bit rate of the delivered tracks remained the same, almost certainly not. If bit rates were increased, then the relatively low quality of the typical pair of earphones could mask the improvement.

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