Headline FeedsE-Commerce Times Talkback
|
|
See Full StoryLast week, Apple's iTunes Music Store sold five times as many songs as the newly reborn Napster service. According to SoundScan, iTunes accounted for about 80 percent of all legally downloaded music files during the week. And at an analyst meeting Wednesday night, Apple CEO Steve Jobs commented that his company is now "the Microsoft of music stores." While that may be hyperbole at this point, it is not a throwaway statement. Let's stop thinking about Apple as a niche seller of sleekly designed computers for a moment. Let's take a step into the world of what could be.
Re: First iTunes, Then the World?
Posted by: mpelletier 2003-11-11 12:16:15 In reply to: Stephanie Losi
Let's not forget that AAC is the audio component of the MPEG 4 video standard. It would have been better to call the music files mp4 rather than AAC, but this extension is already being used for MPEG 4 in general. AAC is not a proprietary Apple format like many people seem to believe and is as close to an open standaed as mp3 is. Having said that I believe the DRM is a proprietary Apple solution and, last I looked, open source DRM is still being developed.
Thanks
Thanks
It seems that the author of this article did not do research well before writing the fact about AAC. iTune is not the only player that support AAC in the market. Philips, Panasonic, Compaq, and GoVideo also support this format as well.
According to the first paragraph under the topic of "AAC or Bust", it is not just "some people" that claim the quality of AAC is superior than MP3. In fact, it is definitely better than MP3 in every angle. According to the result of AAC subjective tests at MPEG site, it says "Section 10.6 presents the answer to this. Overall, all AAC profiles at 128 kbps give significantly better performance than do MPEG-1 Layer II at 192 kbps or Layer III at 128 kbps. Therefore the goal of high audio quality at 64 kbps per channel for MPEG-2 AAC has been achieved. Both AAC Main Profile and Low Complexity Profile provide quality at 96 kbps that is comparable to MPEG-1 Layer II at 192 kbps, and therefore give a 2 to 1 compression advantage. In addition, AAC Main Profile at 96 kbps gives better results than MPEG-1 Layer III at 128 kbps." Furthermore, the blind tests have already been conducted and demonstrated that AAC is superior than MP3. You can find the result at http://audio.ciara.us/test and http://ff123.net.
In my opinion, it is not the problem of Apple to advertise how good AAC is. However, it is the issue that when the industries will manufacture hardware that support AAC, or when AAC has become popular among users. Many audiophiles have recognised this format long time ago. More than 50% of those who recognises more than one audio lossy format, which is MP3, they prefer other formats including AC3, AAC, OGG, and MPC. If there is just one brand starting to produce hardware that support, those users will eventually buy the hardware.
According to the first paragraph under the topic of "AAC or Bust", it is not just "some people" that claim the quality of AAC is superior than MP3. In fact, it is definitely better than MP3 in every angle. According to the result of AAC subjective tests at MPEG site, it says "Section 10.6 presents the answer to this. Overall, all AAC profiles at 128 kbps give significantly better performance than do MPEG-1 Layer II at 192 kbps or Layer III at 128 kbps. Therefore the goal of high audio quality at 64 kbps per channel for MPEG-2 AAC has been achieved. Both AAC Main Profile and Low Complexity Profile provide quality at 96 kbps that is comparable to MPEG-1 Layer II at 192 kbps, and therefore give a 2 to 1 compression advantage. In addition, AAC Main Profile at 96 kbps gives better results than MPEG-1 Layer III at 128 kbps." Furthermore, the blind tests have already been conducted and demonstrated that AAC is superior than MP3. You can find the result at http://audio.ciara.us/test and http://ff123.net.
In my opinion, it is not the problem of Apple to advertise how good AAC is. However, it is the issue that when the industries will manufacture hardware that support AAC, or when AAC has become popular among users. Many audiophiles have recognised this format long time ago. More than 50% of those who recognises more than one audio lossy format, which is MP3, they prefer other formats including AC3, AAC, OGG, and MPC. If there is just one brand starting to produce hardware that support, those users will eventually buy the hardware.
