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Apple TV May Be Damaging High End for Audio/Videophiles

Friday, March 30th, 2007 at 12:10 PM - by

While the social impact of the iPod and portable music cannot be denied, Apple's less than high end music and video formats may be harming the high end audio and video markets, according to audio|video revolution.

Even though the iPod is the most important thing to happen to music since the CD, music from an iPod sounds significantly worse than it does from the CD. And yet music from an iPod seems to be the preferred source. Moreover, iTunes music isn't recorded in any of the advanced surround sound formats.

"For many consumers," Jerry Del Colliano wrote, "the little earphones that come with an iPod are just good enough, which is leaving the audiophile business, and in many ways the music business reeling in pain and failing to reach their next generation of clients. A generation Apple isn’t really reaching with a high performance solution either."

In terms of video resolution from movies bought from Apple, there is also a noticeable lack of the high-end experience. "f the likes of Music Giants are trying to sell higher resolution audio by the download – why can’t Apple? Where is the leadership in the world of surround sound when selling basically a wireless router with a video output and calling it HD?" Mr. Del Colliano asked.

Apple is a great leadership position. With sub-par audio and movies that aren't really high definition, Apple seems to be turning away from the level of excellence they are known for in their other products. The author concluded, "Apple has the power, money and background to lead in the world of high-end convergence. Now all they have to do is step to the plate and hit a home run."

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Mar 30, 2007 12:52 pm

Um, we've been over this all before. Until the US has high-speed networks into homes at affordable prices, highly compressed lossy formats are the only practical way to distribute audio and video. In my house, I rip CDs to a lossless format, and stream it to my DAC using the optical output on a mac mini. It sounds fantastic, but it takes up a lot of space and network bandwidth.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Mar 30, 2007 1:13 pm

Unbelievable. Rank this silliness right up there with iPods being singularly responsible for permanent hearing damage and increases in muggings.

"Good enough" is, in fact, good enough. But your "good enough" might not be mine. So freakin' what? People who want "better" sound will pay whatever it takes to get it. Those that don't, won't. How hard is that to figure out?

There will always be alarmists looking for the dark cloud attached to every silver lining. My iPod is half-full, even if theirs is half-empty.... Jeeeeezz

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Tiger said:

member since 17 Jun 2003 with 1018 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Mar 30, 2007 1:19 pm

Would they like some cheese to go with that really expensive whine????

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Engine Joe said:

member since 29 Jun 2004 with 413 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Mar 30, 2007 1:32 pm

This is one of the dumbest things I have ever read on this site. Good God.

Guest at 1:13pm has it dead right.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Mar 30, 2007 1:35 pm

I started to read the article and read this: "Apple, known in the computer world as the high-end solution with entry level computers that start at $2,500 (without a monitor)"

They lost all creditability right there. $2500 for entry level? I presume they meant USD and not SGP or MEX or AUS units that use a $ sign. The Mini is $1049 in Singapore, $949 in Australia. However, it is $4700 in Hong Kong.

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Engine Joe said:

member since 29 Jun 2004 with 413 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Mar 30, 2007 1:52 pm

They obviously are only looking at the Mac Pro for pricing...

I can't even believe TMO/iPO even reported on this article.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Mar 30, 2007 2:09 pm

Godammit somebody stop Apple from selling this second rate audio and video stuff! And somebody stop all these costumers who are buying them! This is what happens when you let people choose for themselves!

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Mar 30, 2007 2:14 pm

"music from an iPod sounds significantly worse than it does from the CD."

This is where Martellaro is completely wrong. If you encode at a decent rate, the quality is indistinguishable except with very high-end (ie rare & expensive) equipment.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Mar 30, 2007 2:39 pm

I agree that this is asinine. Audiophiles pay THOUSANDS of dollars for equipment, they are not even in the same league as iPod. Get over it.

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burrito said:

member since 07 Aug 2005 with 177 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Mar 30, 2007 3:19 pm

not to mention the fact that these audiophiles who pay THOUSANDS for top-notch gear generally only listen to classical or avant garde musc on LPs or other obscure formats like SACD, on which this music continues to be available. theorize all you want, but you are not gonna find an audiofile lamenting the fact that the avenged sevenfold record they downloaded off itunes is not high definition audio. just not going to happen.

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Biff said:

member since 08 Apr 2004 with 1479 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Mar 30, 2007 5:17 pm

I'm so worked up! All of these opinion pieces! Must post! So popular! Appeals to me! Yeah!

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Mar 30, 2007 7:47 pm

Yeah, yeah, it would be NICE if Apple started selling lossless audio tracks and HD movies (instead of the current 640x480). But bandwidth is still a big issue in the US in the latter case, and in the former, if Apple started selling lossless audio the music studios would use it as an excuse to demand that Apple jack up the price on songs.

Timing is everything. Give it a year or two.

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Mar 30, 2007 11:07 pm

Wow. You people are screwed. Get a chromosone count. Or better yet, go back to watching TV. Since WHEN should the consumer accept INFERIOR sound OR video? "Good enough" should be "Good enough"? Loser! All my life the goal of anybody that appreciates sound and vision has strived to afford better and better equipment to experience the best possible representation of "reality" that the times provide. It doesn't take "thousands" that the previous moron stated to have "audiophile" taste....whatever that is, in fact good stuff is cheaper than ever.

If you don't see the "dumbing down" of technical standards as potentially not a good thing, then you really are missing the point. Bandwidth is bandwidth, I think the point is that a company like Apple is strong and important enough to raise the bar above crappy MP3 sound. Leave it up to the customer to chew up as much of their own bandwidth if they want the best sound/video, and wait that much longer to download etc. but Apple could and should give us the 'Platinum' level of technology at least as an offering, heck I've used Macs since '89 because they were cutting edge. But, MP3 is weak stuff. Do I use MP3 sometimes while on computer, sure! Put it through the bad boy stereo? Ick!! Crap. Would I buy high-def audio off iTunes? Yup. MP3? Never. Do you think I am alone?

And if you think 720p will be ubiquitous 10 years from now, I have a million extra pixels to show you, today. See ya, suckers.

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A guest said: (hide)

Sat Mar 31, 2007 3:07 pm

Guest wrote:
Wow. You people are screwed. Get a chromosone count. Or better yet, go back to watching TV. Since WHEN should the consumer accept INFERIOR sound OR video? "Good enough" should be "Good enough"? Loser!

I stopped bothering to read after that. Way to convince people over to your side! Insults will make them TOTALLY see your point and come around. With geniuses like you arguing the case, how can you lose? Dumbass.

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gslusher said:

member since 13 Nov 2002 with 2088 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Sat Mar 31, 2007 5:46 pm

Guest wrote:
Wow. You people are screwed. Get a chromosone count. Or better yet, go back to watching TV. Since WHEN should the consumer accept INFERIOR sound OR video? "Good enough" should be "Good enough"? Loser! All my life the goal of anybody that appreciates sound and vision has strived to afford better and better equipment to experience the best possible representation of "reality" that the times provide. It doesn't take "thousands" that the previous moron stated to have "audiophile" taste....whatever that is, in fact good stuff is cheaper than ever.

What unmitigated BS. It is elitist ("Everyone who really counts is like me") and arrogant in the extreme. (His/her/its suggestion that Apple have a "platinum" option has some merit--that's not what I'm writing about.)

Yes, it does cost "thousands." A high-end speaker system, by itself, is $1,000 or more. Add in "high quality" cables (which really don't do a damned thing, as proven by actual A-B tests) at $50+ each, etc. Of course, it's "cheaper than ever," though that's partly because so much "low-quality" hardware is sold to bring down the price of chips. (The other major reason is the use of very cheap labor: check where that "high quality" amplifier was actually built.) The "guest" contradicts him/her/itself by, first, saying that he/she/it "strived to afford better and better equipment," then saying that "it doesn't take thousands."

Most people put less emphasis on their audio systems because they have other priorities, which "Guest" may think are irrelevant, like their children's education, health care, mortgages/rent, retirement, and othe

This "guest" (interesting that he/she/it should choose to castigate others as morons while hiding behind anonymity) apparently knows little about the history of pop music. For many years, the best-selling music was on 45 rpm records, whose quality was orders of magnitude worse than anything on the iTunes Store--scratches, pops, crackles--and those were from brand-new records. The engineering was minimal--that's why a lot of the compilation CDs available today use re-recorded versions by the same artists: the original masters were and still are terrible. Why were they popular, if they were so bad, even by comparison to the 78 rpm and "new" 33 rpm LPs available then? Simple: they were cheap. A teenager could afford to buy one or two a week. The "record players" they were played on were also low quality, but that didn't matter. No one was very concerned with sound quality--they wanted to hear "their" music. (We don't need to go into 8-track tapes. <G>)

Fast forward to today. Do you think that most rap/metal/punk/grunge/fill-in-the-blank fans are all that concerned with the audio quality of their music? (If they did, they wouldn't play it so loud; the human ear is much worse at detecting nuances at high volume levels.)

As others have written, real audiophiles (well, also fake audiophiles, like that "guest"--real audiophiles don't have to insult other people's tastes, much less sneer at their financial situation) have the option to buy CDs and rip them in a lossless format and play them on expensive equipment. On the other hand, why are they ripping the CDs, rather than playing them? Oh, yeah: they want convenience, playlists, portability, etc., just like the rest of us. They can have all this, if they want to spend the money. (Remember that few of the songs on the iTunes Store are not available on CDs.)

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A guest said: (hide)

Sat Mar 31, 2007 11:20 pm

Guest wrote:
Would I buy high-def audio off iTunes? Yup. MP3? Never. Do you think I am alone?

Hmm ... alone? Actually, no, I think the whole world, and even Apple themselves, are with you on not buying MP3 from the iTunes Store! MP3 is waaaaay obsolete, and isn't even available from the iTunes Store - it's all AAC!

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A guest said: (hide)

Sun Apr 01, 2007 2:36 pm

gslusher wrote:
A high-end speaker system, by itself, is $1,000 or more. Add in 'high quality' cables (which really don't do a damned thing, as proven by actual A-B tests) at $50+ each, etc.

I agree with everything else you said, except this. 'A-B' tests have a very difficult time proving much of anything, simply because of the way most of them are conducted.

They usually involve taking a very small sample group of people, who may or may not be audiophiles, sitting them in front of an unfamiliar audio system, and have them listen to unfamiliar music, for a very short period of time. Add in the distractions of the testing process, and well... you get the idea.

Audio cables CAN actually make a difference. The difference between your el cheapo thin-wire Radio Shack cables and a good (but not super-high end) set of Monster Cables is actually pretty noticeable on a good system. I myself was pretty surprised to find this out first-hand, borrowing a friend's set of Monsters for my own 'A-B' comparison.

Of course, after that, you quickly run into diminishing returns. The insano $1000+ cables make no sense for 99.99% of people, and even on the $25,000+ systems you'll likely find them on, we're talking small differences. But to think that cheap crappy cables can't be significantly and noticeably improved upon? C'mon.

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Rainy Day said:

member since 07 Jun 2005 with 607 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Sun Apr 01, 2007 6:00 pm

gslusher wrote:
Do you think that most rap/metal/punk/grunge/fill-in-the-blank fans are all that concerned with the audio quality of their music?
No, because if they were, they wouldn’t be listening to rap/metal/punk/grunge/fill-in-the-blank in the first place! Fidelity and acoustic clarity are simply unimportant in certain genres of “music.”

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A guest said: (hide)

Sun Apr 01, 2007 7:24 pm

The article's basic premise, that Apple's cheapo music is destroying high-end gear, is laughable. Out of touch with economics, music and electronics.

The $10,000 systems purveyed by the independent audiophile stores have NEVER sold more than a tiny fraction of systems. So inexpensive, flexible systems like the iPod are no threat; they have merely helped the other 99.99% of us enjoy our tastes when/where/how we want. If they are going out of business because of the iPod, then their flawed "value proposition" -- marketingese for "why you shovel a bunch of money into our coffers" -- has gone away, if it was ever there.

As The Great Jobs himself has observed, iTunes music is the exception, not the rule, on iPods. And like most listeners, I buy the CD, rip it in the format that is "good enough" for my tastes -- usually, 192 kb/s AAC, meaning zero audible artifacts, as opposed to "crappy CD quality," and start enjoying. Alas, even though I have the ear, the musical taste and the inclination, I don't have time or budget to dig up the occasional disk in SACD format, and put it into a $10,000 system that would actually demonstrate the superior format to the ordinary CD. Of course, the great majority of truly excellent music, as reviewed in the ultra-snobby audiophile rags, is never released in any format better than CD.

Finally, for almost everybody on the planet, the money that goes into the systems with Monster Everything would be money that didn't go into our kids' educations, into attending live performances or into our gas tanks. Especially pitching the iPod as a challenge to the Lifestyles of the Rich and Deservedly Unfamous is laughable in an era where the ultra-rich are becoming more so. Let them eat their damn gold-plated vacuum tubes.

Now the funny part: I tried posting these comments on the original site, but they bounced back with some sort of "busted mailbox" message. The site doesn't give a damn if it spouts garbage, even though I should be a prospective subscriber (paid eyeballs). I really would like to find good quality audio that doesn't have all that phony pretentiousness tied to it. A/V R just ain't it.

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A guest said: (hide)

Mon Apr 02, 2007 3:04 am

The sad part about all this? 99.9% of people will never experience a well-recorded piece of classical or jazz music on vinyl, playing on a Linn Sondek turntable and appropriate (and admittedly semi-expensive) system.

TOTALLY demolishes even the best CDs, makes them sound like a complete joke. Digital has made music a lot more convenient, but that's about it.

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A guest said: (hide)

Mon Apr 02, 2007 11:02 am

Listen...

Stop buying Hondas, because if you keep it up, they'll stop making Lamborghinis.

Likewise, stop eating cheeseburgers, or I won't be able to order filet mignon, lobster, or other delicacies when I go out.

And, finally, cut it out with the "good enough" audio and video. Either buy a $35,000 system to playback vinyl like I did, or stop listening to music.

You have been instructed, now go and OBEY!

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A guest said: (hide)

Mon Apr 02, 2007 12:02 pm

To borrow a phrase.. "It's the marketplace dummy!" Sure, Apple is known as the "BMW" of computer systems, and the "Chevy"(?) of audio systems, but that's where they want to play in the marketplace. That's the niche and they fill it quite well thank you very much.

It was a drive for ease of use that made their "MP3 player" succeed where others have been found wanting. They made decisions about convenience and ease of use against quality and found a great combination. People want to download good sounding music, but they don't want to wait 1/2 hour for each one. There's the bandwidth tradeoff, never mind the storage tradeoff and the "how many will people buy if it's faster" tradeoff.

OK, so what about innovation? Can't Apple put some of their R&D might to work improving the quality while keeping the bit rate and bandwidth needs down? Sure, but what's the payback? I'm guessing that they figured it wouldn’t improve sales that much to make it worth it. Better to spend that resource somewhere where the multiples are high.

So don't blame Apple for wanting a bigger slice of the audio market and a smaller slice of the computer market, that's where they play and that's where they succeed.

If you want very high end music and players... go for it. Perhaps this is what they are trying to do. Convince the current companies in the high-end audio marketplace to create such devices.

Go ahead and build a player that does what you think it should do. Build a music distribution system to the specs YOU think YOUR marketplace wants and have at it. I'm sure that there is a market for such systems. I'll bet you can make money on it even. AND, if you're so inclined, it appears to my untrained eye that there is no one serving this market so there may really be opportunity here.

But if you want that market to grow and to take away from where Apple plays, you'll have to show value. Why should someone want higher quality music? What makes it compelling? If they could find a way to make it MORE convenient while oh-by-the-way it's much better sounding, then they might be able to convince some folks.

Of course, what's really going on is that decent sound can be had for pennies and there are people selling decent sound and the high-end snake-oil is getting stale... (Sorry, I just tossed that in for the trolls! I know that spending more on my system and content can and will improve sound quality, but you reach diminishing returns pretty quickly.)

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A guest said: (hide)

Thu Apr 05, 2007 8:39 pm

Some posters will stroke Apple even when Apple isn't delivering the goods. Get an XBOX 360 if you want quality video. If you're willing to buy into the fake HD that Apple selling, well, I hope you like kool-aid to wash down your AppleTV dinner. I guess Apple products really are for the people who like pretty boxes that cost too much for the performance they can actually deliver. Hence all the defensive posts here!

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DaiMac said:

member since 29 Jun 2001 with 952 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Apr 06, 2007 11:47 am

Anonymous wrote:
Some posters will stroke Apple even when Apple isn't delivering the goods. Get an XBOX 360 if you want quality video. If you're willing to buy into the fake HD that Apple selling, well, I hope you like kool-aid to wash down your AppleTV dinner. I guess Apple products really are for the people who like pretty boxes that cost too much for the performance they can actually deliver. Hence all the defensive posts here!

Umm, I have an Xbox 360, and the only thing I do with it is play Crackdown and a couple of other games. Their selection of videos online is worthless, unless you like the more recent crap hollywood has been pushing out or watch Spike TV religiously. What good is HD video if its of a crappy reality show?

All of that said, I also have an AppleTV, and it has the opposite problem: tons of content, none of it HD yet. However a couple of hours, a torx screwdriver and a USB-IDE cable later it will play high res divx, something the Xbox requires far more extensive modification to do. On top of that, so far (and its only been a few weeks) Apple has shown no indication it is going to go after modders, whereas Microsoft hunts modders the way Rutger Hauer hunts homeless people in Surviving the Game.

We'll also see if I have to send my AppleTV back to Apple 4 months after purchase, the way I did my Xbox when the dreaded "circle of red" came up on it.

[/i]

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Apr 06, 2007 1:53 pm

DaiMac wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Some posters will stroke Apple even when Apple isn't delivering the goods. Get an XBOX 360 if you want quality video. If you're willing to buy into the fake HD that Apple selling, well, I hope you like kool-aid to wash down your AppleTV dinner. I guess Apple products really are for the people who like pretty boxes that cost too much for the performance they can actually deliver. Hence all the defensive posts here!

Umm, I have an Xbox 360, and the only thing I do with it is play Crackdown and a couple of other games. Their selection of videos online is worthless, unless you like the more recent crap hollywood has been pushing out or watch Spike TV religiously. What good is HD video if its of a crappy reality show?

All of that said, I also have an AppleTV, and it has the opposite problem: tons of content, none of it HD yet. However a couple of hours, a torx screwdriver and a USB-IDE cable later it will play high res divx, something the Xbox requires far more extensive modification to do. On top of that, so far (and its only been a few weeks) Apple has shown no indication it is going to go after modders, whereas Microsoft hunts modders the way Rutger Hauer hunts homeless people in Surviving the Game.

We'll also see if I have to send my AppleTV back to Apple 4 months after purchase, the way I did my Xbox when the dreaded &quot;circle of red&quot; came up on it.

[/i]

nah dude, you don't even need a screw driver to get an xbox to play divx, xvid, youtube, apple.com movie trailers, etc. All you do is use a softmod and then install xbox media center. The 360 doesn't have XBMC yet, but it's only a matter of time, especially since they have now gotten unsigned code to run on the 360. Sure the content on xbox live is currently a small collection, but like all online video sources, that's only going to grow. Just because all you do is play one game on an xbox, and don't know about xbox media center, doesn't mean that it's not possible to do all this without ever cracking open the box. Of course, if you want HD content on an xbox, you can do that without even having an internet connection, it plays HD-DVD, something that the AppleTV cannot do, heck it cannot even play a DVD. Apple may not "hunt" modders yet, as you put it, but good luck getting warranty service after you take a torx screwdrive to it. However, since there have been articles in magazines like popular science talking about xbox media center, and it still faces no legal challenge from Microsoft, oh well. Fortunately, the xbox can be modded for divx & xvid & quick time & mpegs 1,2 & 4, DV, h.263, h.264, and on and on, all without opening it up. Actually, an xbox can play all the iTunes movies you want, just run it through any of the drm removal tools available and use xbox media center, again without a screwdriver. If Apple really thinks DRM is bad, and removes it from all of their content, then the step of removing DRM yourself will be unneccesary. So I guess, if you're into modding which you seem to be, an XBOX will give you everything the AppleTV has and more (let me know when you start playing Crackdown on your AppleTV).

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DaiMac said:

member since 29 Jun 2001 with 952 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Fri Apr 06, 2007 2:48 pm

Hey man, all I know is I've already seen several people on the internet end up with bricked 360s because of modding their xbox, of course these were more than just softmods.

The point is, I got my Xbox to play games, I don't have or want an XBMC. If I did, thats what I would have. I'm cancelling my cable service next week, going to just use over the air HD and the AppleTV from now on. I really like Apple's service and their box, and thats unlikely to change going forward. I'll just keep using the Xbox for games (one of the few things MS is consistently decent/good at) and the occasional HD-DVD for as long as the format survives (thanks for leaving it out of the Elite, MS). Please continue to enjoy using yours for video files if that works for you.

Also I am holding off on doing the AppleTV mods for now, waiting to see if a softmod solution comes out before voiding the warranty. I'll probably upgrade the drive once the warranty is out regardless. Which brings me to another problem with the Xbox: WTF is up with $179 for a 120gb drive? I don't care if its SATA times a billion, that is highway robbery. Thats another reason I like the AppleTV, I have a server upstairs with around 2/3rds of a terabyte of storage, and when its not streaming video its converting my medium to low/res video (anything 480p or less) into AppleTV format on a queue, so I just set it and then check back later. If I had a media center PC handy I might try that with the Xbox, but if it ain't a game console in my house than it probably has an Apple logo, and I don't have any intel macs yet.

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A guest said: (hide)

Mon Apr 09, 2007 3:01 pm

Be careful when you mod your AppleTV, I know that people have bricked AppleTV's too.

http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2007/03/my_high_def_life_apple_tv_upda.html

If you're going to replace your HDD in the AppleTV with an aftermarket HDD, you can do the same to the XBOX, and the price will be the same.

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