30 
Neil Young already thinks that piracy is the new radio, but he was apparently working on a new high-quality audio iPod-like device with Steve Jobs too.
Talking at AllThingsD’s Dive Into Media Conference, Young said that he was working on a new device that downloads and stores music at the highest resolution possible, and that he’d been working with Jobs on the project, which since his death has fallen flat.
Young talked about a device that downloaded music over night, as individual songs would take around 30 minutes to download. I don’t know whether it’s just my jaded ears, but I’m pretty sure the vast majority of us wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the audio quality of CDs or high bitrate MP3s and the audio masters that Young wants us to listen to. We’ve been been spoilt by devices that hold thousands of songs in good enough quality and tunes that take just seconds to download; I don’t really want to go back to waiting ages for a single song to download and the highly limited number of songs you could carry with you of yesteryear.
Still, there will always be audiophiles; apparently Steve Jobs, the other father of the iPod, even listened to vinyl over MP3s. [Reuters via The Guardian]
Image credit: Steve Jobs and Neil Young from Shutterstock
Why Does Neil Young Need Six High-Resolution Internet Music Stores?
Neil Young: Piracy Is The New Radio
Neil Young Unveils His New Pono Music Player
I Would love this! At the moment I purchase albums online available as 96k/24bit files or I rip my records at that quality. I convert them to Apple Lossless codec and sync them onto my ipod. The problem is that the max data rate of the ipod means that you have to convert them to 16bit files instead. For some music the difference is very subtle, but for other albums or songs the difference is very noticeable. Its worth noting that I have a portable headphone amp and decent IEM’s and that with cheap headphones alone, you probably wont notice the difference. Its a niche market, but i would love an ipod that could handle higher data rates!
There are two ways they could do this: adding more analogue depth (i.e. more bits), or adding more samples (i.e. more Hz). Or both, I suppose.
While the former is a good idea, the latter is simply stupid. 96KHz is nonsense: the only way it’s going to make a difference, is if your DAC is especially crap. If you’re an audiophile, it won’t be; if you aren’t, you’re not going to care about 96KHz anyway.
Also, this would only make sense if the source material went through a high-resolution ADC when it was recorded in the first place, which, because of the above reason, it almost certainly didn’t.
At the moment you are only able to play back music files below a data rate of about 1500kbps. The average bit rate you might get from 24 bit music (I care more about the bit depth than sample rate) results in files above that, they typically can average about 3000kbps. Apple would have to either let me output the files to my portable DAC/amp so that it can do the conversion at that data rate, OR have a decent DAC inside the ipod with a sound chip to support the output etc.
My DAC has a Wolfson WM8740 inside, pretty decent. 96Khz is not nonsense, the sample rate is only capable of reproducing frequencies HALF or the rate, so a 44,100 Hz rate can only reproduce sounds up to 22,050Hz. Now, most people’s hearing is not capable of going beyond that frequency, however, i have read several blind tests (not audiophile tests, but ones carried out for science journals) that show that for many of their subjects, despite not being able to hear the sound directly, they could usually identify when the frequency level has been capped at 22,000 hz. Whether or not these frequencies really make a song sound better or not, i would not say, however when your goal is to try and have as faithful a recording as possible, it makes sense to try and capture as much detail.
I can enjoy my hi-res audio files on itunes, but when i have to play them back on my ipod, i have to transcode them. The main problem is that i have to have 2 sets of albums on my itunes and also that the thing i miss the most is the bit depth,not the sample rate.
Why does your reason above mean that the source material did not go through a high resolution ADC when it was recorded?
Really? Any links to double-blind tests that suggest an individual can tell the difference between lossy and lossless (let alone 96KHz vs 44,1KHz)?
In reality any reasearch ever done has proved that (basically) no one can tell the diffrence and the people that thik they can are almost certainly incorrect.
If you tell someone something is better or through contect imply that it is, most people think it is.
While it’s possible that some people could actually hear sounds beyond 22KHz, when recording music you can very safely assume that anything in that region of the spectrum is pure noise. And you have to get rid of it, because even if you can’t hear those ultrasounds, during the conversion to digital there will be some aliasing, so the noise propagates to the lower frequency bands. So in fact, even when you record at 96KHz you need a low-pass at 20-22Khz, or you get a lot of noise. That, or you need an exceptionally good anti-aliasing filter, which is expensive.
I don’t know how the big recording studios operate, but the small ones that I know never bother recording at more than 48KHz, because nobody would be able to tell the difference and at the end of the day it’s more trouble to record, and more data to handle.
The only reason to do that would be if your ADC or if your DAC can’t handle steep filter slopes. But unless they’re very cheap, they can do that. And if you record at 48KHz (as opposed to 44.1) it doesn’t have to be that steep anyway.
Keep on rockin’ in the free world
They could easily support this on the iPod/iTunes with a firmware/software update, but I assume that the sound reproduction hardware would not be up to the task. You’d also need something better then those crappy earbuds.
I’m going to throw this out there…
Most people have terrible headphones.
I’m listening to an MP3 on my Etymotics and it sounds a helluva lot better than a CD (and probably better than DVDA would) on sucky headphones.
Obviously if this device were ever to be made (I doubt it) it would have to come with headphones to match it’s audio capabilities, which in turn would have to match the file formats.
Sweet, I hope they make this so I can finally put my Beats Solo to good use, their awesome power and clarity are just wasted on normal crappy iPods. I want to hear music how the artist intended.
Sarcasm?
And this lifetime Neil Young fan’s heart just broke.
Neil and Big Business.
/wipes tears
Neil is obviously bored shitless.