A High Resolution iPod in the future? (1 Viewer)

[Lee Scoggins]

I wonder if we might see a hirez iPod in our future...

Hard drive space is coming down constantly in price and 120GB drives are commonly available...maybe they can shrink these things into an iPod for a premium priced version aimed at audiophiles or well-to-do geeks.

Just imagine being able to download DVDA and SACD tracks. I would pay $0.50 extra per track for higher resolution. Maybe iTunes could experiment with DVD Audio tracks to start...

What do you think?

Do you think Apple at some point in the future will do this given the overwhelming success of the iPod/iTunes phenomena?

Maybe I'm just a dreaming audiophile.

By the way, www.positive-feedback.com Issue #10 is now up and an iPod review follow-up is included. This device is getting high marks for sound quality from the audiophile community...

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Even with the existing compression, high-res stereo would take to 75 times as much space as MP3s. A typical album would take 3GB or more space. 3GB of download bandwidth for an album?

Plus, iTunes security has been breached. They'd come up with new encryption, but fear would remain.

High-res downloads aren't going to happen in this decade.

My (realistic) opinion.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

3GB of download bandwidth for an album?

I suspect that people would do one track at a time and this would be no problem if you had broadband or DSL speed.

 

[RolandDeschain]

Plus, iTunes security has been breached. They'd come up with new encryption, but fear would remain.

This is 100% FALSE

iTunes security has not been anywhere near "breached." All that happened is that someone -- any 3rd year CS student could have -- figured out that at some point encypted audio data needs to be decrypted before it is sent to the sound card. All this "patch" does is intercept the audio stream after it's already been decrypted and writes out the raw AAC to a file which without header information is unusable by anyone.

A nifty excercise to be sure, but ultimately pointless since it relies on an exact calling address within Apple's QT DLL. Once this DLL is patched by Apple, this hack goes away.

Once again, the DRM of the AAC files delivered by the iTunes music store was in no way compromised. Spreading things like this is FUD plain & simple.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Roland,

Regardless of whether or not the encryption was broken, the fact is that iTunes was once secure, and now it is not.

Once Apple patches it, there will be new hacks...the war will escalate.

 

[RolandDeschain]

the fact is that iTunes was once secure, and now it is not.

No, that is NOT a fact. You still don't seem to understand that what this person did has No bearing whatsoever on iTunes or the files. Simply running a file through his "patch" does LESS than if you were to burn the AAC file to a CD-R and then re-rip it as an MP3.

There is nobody stealing anything from iTunes because of this academic exercise, and as I already explained, the resulting files are useless.

iTunes is as secure as it ever was. It's amazing how many people take the media's explanation of things hook, line, & sinker without ever questioning it or doing any research of their own.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

No, that is NOT a fact. You still don't seem to understand that what this person did has No bearing whatsoever on iTunes or the files. Simply running a file through his "patch" does LESS than if you were to burn the AAC file to a CD-R and then re-rip it as an MP3.

There is nobody stealing anything from iTunes because of this academic exercise, and as I already explained, the resulting files are useless.

It transcodes encrypted AAC to unencrypted AAC with no generation loss. You really think nobody will come up with a way to make valid headers and make these files usable?

 

[Marc Colella]

back on topic...

I think Hi-rez on iPods would be a waste of time for a number of reasons:

- Uses up too much HD space. I know the size of these small HDs are getting bigger, but the size of the MP3s really clobbers that space in no time. 3GBs for a CD? Way too much space.

- Way too long to download. High Speed internet connection is nice, but it would still take too long with files of this size. Plus, many high-speed ISPs have download caps. My download cap is 10GBs/month, and I get charged for each GB over the limit. Downloading 3 hi-rez albums would cost me ALOT more than just paying for the songs.

- The difference in sound quality wouldn't be worth it. The iPod (and most other MP3 players) aren't audiophile type equipment. They have their limitations, and you would also need to upgrade to some pretty expensive headphones ($200+). Not to mention that outside noise would ruin alot of the advanteges. I use my iPod while commuting on the train everyday - and no matter how loud I play it, I can still hear the trains, people talking, cell phones, pagers, and notebooks. The noise would offset any detail you would hear.

- I know ripping DVD-A is possible, but how hard/easy is it to rip SACD?

IMO, MP3s at 256Kbps or 320Kbps would be the best balance between portability/speed/space and sound quality.

Ripping uncompressed CD-Audio should be good enough for audiophiles - but I still cant see people downloading 700MBs for 1 album worth.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Ripping uncompressed CD-Audio should be good enough for audiophiles - but I still cant see people downloading 700MBs for 1 album worth.

I see your point Marc, but I am trying to envision the future where 120GB or 200GB drives get real small and broadband speed increases. At that point, I think hirez is doable. By the way, I am about to get an iPod to hold uncompressed CD wav files from my ThinkPad.

 

[Marc Colella]

By the way, I am about to get an iPod to hold uncompressed CD wav files from my ThinkPad.

Cool.

I assume you'll be getting the 40GB model... if you plan on having them uncompressed.

I only have last years 5 GB model, but even with higher bitrates, it's holding 650+ songs. I'll probably upgrade next year and dump of the old one to my brother.

Gotta have the latest toys.

 

[Brian-W]

I have an 20GB iPod and have found a compromise for 'high quality' audio:

- all my MP3s are fixed bit rate, 320kps
- songs that have compression issues and artifacting, I store the uncompressed .wav file.

Works like a charm

 

[Lee Scoggins]

songs that have compression issues and artifacting, I store the uncompressed .wav file

That's seems to me to be a very good solution. We audiophiles may opt for fewer songs at WAV resolution.

 

[RolandDeschain]

Lee,

Keep in mind that your battery life will plummet if you use the iPod in that fashion. iPod has 64MB of flash memory in which it stores data from the hard drive. Normally this is perfect because the avergae MP3 or AAC file is ~ 5MB so it can read 10 songs off the disk and store them in flash, allowing the disc to power down.

If you are using it to listen to uncompressed 80MB files, then the iPod will have to keep the hard drive spinning constantly, decimating your battery life. I wouldn't expect to get more than 3 hours at a time using it that way.

Also, because the disc is spinning continuously, the iPod will be more prone to disc damage if it is knocked around or bumped at all while playing. Expect quite a few freeze-ups.

Regardless of what Stereophile says, the iPod was never intended to be used in that manner.

 

[Marc Colella]

Ronald makes an excellent point.

I totally forgot about the flash memory buffer.

Of course, down the road they could have a larger buffer - but the cost of flash memory still needs to come down considerably.

 

[Thomas Newton]

iPod has 64MB of flash memory in which it stores data from the hard drive.

Why on Earth would an iPod use flash memory for the buffer? More likely, the buffer is ordinary dynamic (loses its contents when the power goes off) RAM.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Definitely not flash, just RAM.

But, yeah, an iPod playing WAV has to work a lot harder (and more often)...battery life would definitely be affected in a big way; shock resistance may take a hit as well.

 

[RolandDeschain]

Flash, not flash, the principle is exactly the same. And the older models only have 32 MB of RAM, further exacerbating the situation.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

If you are using it to listen to uncompressed 80MB files, then the iPod will have to keep the hard drive spinning constantly, decimating your battery life. I wouldn't expect to get more than 3 hours at a time using it that way.

Good point Roland, but 3 hours is fine for me. MP3 quality just does not float my boat. Maybe you extend life a bit by having some MP3 tracks and some WAV.

I've heard WAV files on the iPod and they sound fine.

 

[cwhite]

If you want high resolution audio on the iPod, just use WAV or AIFF file format. It will dramatically cut down the amount of music(and probably battery life) you can get on the drive but it's high res. Just as a experiment, I ripped some CD tracks in WAV format while doing the rest in the AAC MP4 format and the difference is staggering. But I use the iPod either while driving or exercising so high res audio(in those realms) is not important as the music itself. Unfortunately, Apple does not put Line In ports on the iPod or its docking cradle where I can dump music from SACD or DVD-A.

 

[Justin Lane]

A high resolution Ipod would be neat, but I would first perfer more high-res portable DVD-A and SACD players. In the case of DVD-A, there are a few players available, but at this point they are too expensive to gain any mass acceptance. SACD has yet to put out a portable player. Having already invested in optical disc based Hi-res formats, I would like the opportunity to enjoy them in a portable setting before plunking down any more money on a new hi-res delivery medium and player.

J