Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: Friday Music: About Apple Music

Russell Brown

Sat, 13 Jun 2015 15:44:09 +1200

As I’ve said before, one reason to go with lossless if you can is transcoding, you might not be able to hear the difference between MP3 and lossless, but you are more likely to be able to notice a file that’s been transcoded from MP3 into Ogg Vorbis or whatever.…

Rich of Observationz

Sat, 13 Jun 2015 15:23:54 +1200

I got 5/6 on my Mac speakers – didn't get the classical recording (although given its age it would be interesting to know the original bitrate). I don't consider I have particularly good ears, although I do know what to listen for, e.g. the sibilants (?) on the Suzanne Vega…

Joe Wylie

Sat, 13 Jun 2015 15:22:42 +1200

Suzanne Vega annoys me just as much as she did back in the day. Vinyl or WAV, it's all the same to me! :-)

TracyMac

Sat, 13 Jun 2015 15:07:14 +1200

Same, but that's more than chance rate, given the fact each sample is out of three. I only identified one at 128 kbps.

And I have also learned that Suzanne Vega annoys me just as much as she did back in the day. Vinyl or WAV, it's all the same…

Vivid

Sat, 13 Jun 2015 11:18:09 +1200

NPR has an intersting test of your perception of audio quality. Various songs in 128 & 320kbps mp3 and uncompressed wave files.
I'd be interested to see what the results are for those that say they prefer high quality audio. It's not as obvious as the audiophiles would have you believe.…

Sacha

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 22:22:08 +1200

I'm spinning a few discs there

macho styles, right

Joe Wylie

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 20:06:19 +1200

Re: James Last – when New Order toured NZ in the late 80s, they said Last had expressed interest in covering Blue Monday with his orchestra. Sadly, I don't think this ever came to pass...

Pity, that. A couple of years ago I attended a gold coin donation afternoon accordion…

Simon Grigg

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 19:53:13 +1200

The quiet impending giant in the Asian music streaming market is Line. It exists on just about every smartphone in the region as the dominant messaging service and launched its music service in Japan and Thailand in May. A month in it has 58m subscribers and is soon to…

David Bishop

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 18:57:37 +1200

Re: James Last – when New Order toured NZ in the late 80s, they said Last had expressed interest in covering Blue Monday with his orchestra. Sadly, I don't think this ever came to pass...

Murray Hewitt

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 18:52:23 +1200

Okay it's a crappy mp3, but you'll still get the power of that baseline (and the voice). My daughter, Avalon, today won The Edge acapella (A capella? a'capella? – it's a bloody cover, alright?) competition with this version of "Take Me To Church"

Joe Wylie

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 17:03:44 +1200

To my ears, nothing sounds worse than a 128K rip of of a favourite track – it's like nails across the blackboard.

No argument there. Given the option to pay a premium for FLAC over high-bitrate MP3 I'll usually take it. But it has nothing to do with with Roon's…

Grant McDougall

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 16:55:35 +1200

RIP jazz giant Ornette Coleman, too.

Grant McDougall

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 16:54:54 +1200

The relationship between me, music and Apple is … complicated.

So, not a Beatles' fan, then ? Don't worry, I'll get me coat...

So, no Adele, Arctic Monkeys or The Prodigy.

You say that like that's a bad thing. Putting me coat on now...

Clarke

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 16:34:32 +1200

While Tidal might offer something, as a paid app Roon by itself makes some dubious "audiophile" claims while barely matching the features of totally free players such as Media Monkey and Music Bee.

Both the apps you've referenced are still using metadata tagging as the mechanism for arranging and relating…

Joe Wylie

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 15:46:27 +1200

What you need is Roon – once you've used this little puppy with a TIDAL account, you'll never bother with iTunes or the Apple ecosystem ever again.

While Tidal might offer something, as a paid app Roon by itself makes some dubious "audiophile" claims while barely matching the features of…

Clarke

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 14:46:44 +1200

What you need is Roon – once you've used this little puppy with a TIDAL account, you'll never bother with iTunes or the Apple ecosystem ever again.

Things to like include a user interface that actually provides the artist and music discovery experience that everyone's been blathering about for the…

Stupid

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 13:38:25 +1200

One word: Asbestos :-(

Russell Brown

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 13:31:34 +1200

St Kevin’s Arcade update: I’m told Paul Reid has said he definitely doesn’t want to turn the arcade into Ponsonby Central, just to refurbish and restore it, and more particularly he has no plans to do anything to Wine Cellar/Whammy. Benefit of the doubt, I reckon.

Stupid

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 13:14:38 +1200

Great to see you're getting out DJing Russell, sadly I won't be able to catch your Saturday 27 June 7-11pm set at Golden Dawn as I'll be checking out Sam Hunt with David Kilgour & The Heavy Eights at the Kings Arms. I look forward to hearing how it goes at…

81stcolumn

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 13:08:51 +1200

And a gratuitous vaguely connected favourite of mine.

https://youtu.be/OM5WZfoE95E

I wonder what Dave Brock makes of it all.

Russell Brown

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 13:06:19 +1200

Real Groovy? Brian Rudman has a plan –

That's a weird column. He proposes an "arts precinct" in the old admin building and concludes by explaining why it's a non-starter.

Russell Brown

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 13:03:50 +1200

but still no Linux support I guess – no music for me I can’t buy on CDs I guess

You don't really want to be buying 256k AAC files anyway :-)

There's always Spotify for Linux.

Graham Dunster

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 12:58:07 +1200

Real Groovy? Brian Rudman has a plan – http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11463668

Paul Campbell

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 12:55:53 +1200

To be fair, they’ll launch Apple Music on MacOS, Windows and iOS and will have an Android client in a couple of months. That’s a lot of people covered.

but still no Linux support I guess – no music for me I can't buy on CDs I guess

Mikee Loop

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 12:41:47 +1200

The Apple Music royalty pay out comparison to Spotify in the DMN article is flawed. The leaked Apple split is the master tape share only and they have compared that with the overall Spotify royalty share of master and copyright! Not to mention the gross verse net definitions which differ…

Russell Brown

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 12:15:45 +1200

Don’t expect much on the radio front, radio works best on a local community driven level… curious to see how it works though, especially given the addition of a Rinse FM person into the mix

I'm prepared to add it to my radio diet and see if I like the…

Russell Brown

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 12:12:59 +1200

I’m not an Apple customer, they don’t have an iTunes that runs on any platform I use day to day, they’re sort of a foreign country to me. I used to be a fan, even a developer, but they’ve closed off their world from the rest of us.

To be…

bob daktari

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 12:04:29 +1200

a nuclear family of three can use one spotify account on 3 devices for the single price – zero dollars if on one of the spark plans

streaming mobile families need to factor in data charges on each individual account as well as subscription is only one part of the…

SomeGuy

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 11:36:44 +1200

If the indicated pricing is right, and the android app appears soon, Apple Music will be enormously successful. For the simple reason that if you're a family of 4-5 listeners it's roughly half the price of Spotify ($20NZD vs $39NZD for 5).

Alan Perrott

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 11:11:04 +1200

it's been a particularly crap week for my icons – first John Keating, one the great English big band leaders/ arrangers and such. like many of those guys (Geoff Love, John Gregory, Alan Tew, Keith Mansfield etc and so on) he was always willing to experiment with odd ideas and…

Paul Campbell

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 10:44:28 +1200

I'm not an Apple customer, they don't have an iTunes that runs on any platform I use day to day, they're sort of a foreign country to me. I used to be a fan, even a developer, but they've closed off their world from the rest of us.

bob daktari

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 10:33:59 +1200

I'm sure due to the size of Apple this foray into streaming will be successful, mainly for the fact they have an established client base... I'd wager the not so young more conservative members of the iTunes/apple community will love streaming via apple, for most others I'm not so sure…

Public Address

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 10:33:59 +1200

Discussion from blog post.