On 24 Apr 2012, at 19:08, Stefan Schreiber <st...@mail.telepac.pt> wrote:
> (Or: surround is < maybe > not dead if you cram 3 matrixed channels into 2 > channels of Apple- compressed AAC iTunes files - which is actually a worse > solution than we already had in the 80s. :-D ) I do appreciate polemic, as long as it sticks with the truth... In the 80s we had lousy vinyl, and nobody was saying anything about AAC-compressed, besides raising the question if maybe even AAC compressed files might be able to carry the signal. The talk was about UHJ stereo compatible digital distribution, which in no way implies lossy compression. Apple, to stick with that topic, doesn't create a file format like ALAC and CAF for it not to be used, but they are not going to use them, unless there's a meaningful purpose to do so. For plain stereo delivery of random popular music, anything beyond 320kpbs AAC is pretty much wasted bandwidth and storage. This changes if one starts matrixing things, or moves into classical or other types of acoustic music with wide dynamics, but that is a minority of what iTunes customers buy, and even such productions have massively been affected by the "loudness war" in final mastering. The reason UHJ-Stereo is such a good thing is not because it's perfect, but because it's a small step in the right direction, while the rest of the industry seems to be busy making random big steps in arbitrary, mostly wrong directions. IMO it's more important to do a little, and do it right, than do a lot, and do it wrong. UHJ, planar 1st order is little compared to 3rd order periphonic, but it's the right direction. 7.1 or 10.2 or whatever the heck Dolby and Co. cook up may be a lot, it may be superficially impressive (particularly when the critical ear is distracted by the dominant eye during movies), but it's the wrong path, and thus utterly uninteresting. Ronald _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
