iTunes comes to Europe (next week)

[bond]

as reported on Reuters (http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=5359705&section=news):

Apple Computer will announce next week its long-awaited European version of the iTunes online music store, sources familiar with the matter say.

The announcement will be made on June 15, said sources familiar with the necessary licensing negotiations between Apple and music labels.

Traditionally when Apple announces a new product or service, it is available straight away, adding to the speculation that the service will go live next week.for everyone, wanting to buy songs online (well good ol' CD is still out there ;) ), but not knowing whether he/she should buy the songs in the MPEG-4 open AAC format (iTunes), in M$'s proprieatary WMA9 format (Napster) or in the ATRAC3 format (Sony's music store), simply have a look at the following quality comparison at 128kbps (from rjamorim's latest test (http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat128/results.html)):

http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat128/plot18b.png
see, also the quality of the stuff you buy matters ;)

"One codec can be said to be rated better than another codec with 95% confidence if the bottom of its line segment is at or above the top of the competing codec's line segment"

still questions? :D


ps: in rjamorims test even MP3 was clearly rated higher qualitywise than WMA9 at the same bitrate (oh m$, what crap are you trying to sell us :rolleyes: )

[theReal]

I'll quote my physics teacher here:

"So what is your unit of measurement here? Sausages?"
LOL

It's really like this here: The "ratings" unit could be anything (sausages?).


P.S. That's usually the way Apple arguments ("our new G5 is a million times faster than any modern PC"). BlaBla...
There's also a million ways to make statistics look better than they actually are...)

(btw. I'm not an apple-hater, I even think Final Cut Pro is one of the finest video editing programs out there - but still I like PCs more...

[duartix]

@theReal:

If you follow the link to the listening test you will find out that the units are testers subjective ratings, where (0 is minimum and 5 is maximum).

You will also find out that there is an elaborate statistical analysis behind those final ratings, but the relevant information (as bond very well pointed out) is:
"One codec can be said to be rated better than another codec with 95% confidence if the bottom of its line segment is at or above the top of the competing codec's line segment"
This means that 95% of people will feel that AAC is better than WMA9 and 95% of people will feel that WMA9 is better than ATRAC.

The test also says that 95% of people will feel that Vorbis aoTuV is better than AAC, but even though there are no online music stores using this format as of this day, there are already a lot of portable players suporting it...

[unmei]

yes :)

i don't know exactly why i insisted on a device that could play vorbis when i decided on mine as i actually filled it with mp3 ..probably because i was too lazy to re-rip-
..but when discovered the aoTuV vorbis encoder's performance on really low bitrates a dozen of days ago i felt such a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that once i get short on space on the device i can go much lower/retain much more quality than all those poor souls with the mp3/wma combo. And afaik the ipod doesn't know about HE-AAC sooo basicly vorbis has its nose in front in the low bitrates on portables.
As what i meant with low, i tested for movies, where i usually accept lower quality audio than on music albums. But i found aoTuV to provide almost acceptable movie soundtrack at as low as 42kbit/s (-q-0.75) and q0 sounds pretty damn good (~50-60kbit/s) ..so i think i could go for -q0 for the low quality albums.

sorry for being so offtopic, but aoTuV impresses me greatly atm ;p

[edit:typos]

[wmansir]

I recall an article on slashdot last week that said the iPod doesn't have the CPU power to play Vorbis, so I wouldn't be expecting a magical firmware upgrade. Some of the comments also pointed out that Vorbis's increased quality comes at a price around 25% less battery life compared to MP3/AAC/WMA.

Not that any of this matters to me. I made my choice back in 1998, the Diamond Rio PMP 300. 32MB should be enough for anyone. Seriously though, I still use it several times a week when I work out. Ok, a couple of times a week or whenever I realize I don't remember what the outside looks like. I remember how cool I though it was when I first bought it, now I'm almost embarrassed to be seen with it. :)

[bond]

Originally posted by wmansir
I recall an article on slashdot last week that said the iPod doesn't have the CPU power to play Vorbis, so I wouldn't be expecting a magical firmware upgrade.i remember monty's answer saying that the ipod could handle it (see the discussion on HA)

[unmei]

Originally posted by wmansir
now I'm almost embarrassed to be seen with it. :)

take it with pride, all hi-tech gets old quickly ..but then again old computers are cool, so why should old portables not be cool as well. A friend of mine still has this 1st gen minidisc ..it's taped together and all, but i think that's pretty cool.

and oh noes the ipod with vorbis :0 then i lose because i paid about the same amount for my player and it doesn't do AAC, only vorbis/mp3/wma.

BTW when i looked at the available devices in my store i found almost none that doesn't do WMA ..it's a pity how M$ managed to push their crappy format into that market. i guess either they offer it (almost) license free or there is a widely used chip that integrates WMA into Mp3 decoding..

[theReal]

i guess either they offer it (almost) license free or there is a widely used chip that integrates WMA into Mp3 decoding..M$ probably gives away the decoder chips plus the license for free :D

[bond]

Originally posted by theReal
M$ probably gives away the decoder chips plus the license for free :D well you grin, but i am pretty sure that they do something like that. otherwise they would have gotten all these 0815 players to support wma

its a pretty smart tactic: you have to give people a reason to use wma (why should they, there are far better formats out there, like vorbis, aac and even mp3 on high bitrates):
wma on hardware -> more people use -> more people ask for it -> even more support on hardware (without m$ pushing it) -> more people... -> everyone uses wma (the competitors die) and m$ has the monopoly -> m$ changes their licensing behaviour, releases wma10 (backwards compatible and heavily quality tuned, so that everyone wants to use it), but doesnt give it away for free anymore -> m$ cashes in heavily :D

also you see that wma is a company-driven technology, getting support because m$ pushes it, whereas mpeg-4 is an user-driven technology, getting support on hardware players because the users want support for it (divx5, xvid)