The tenth anniversary of the iPod debut means you’ll find plenty of commentaries on Apple’s iPod and how it has changed music. It’s an issue that’s been talked to death enough, continuously, in the past ten years that I’m literally uncertain there’s more I can say about it. Here’s one good, compact commentary from Daring Fireball, inspired by Macworld’s sharp review from the 2001 debut of the hardware.

Instead, let’s consider what hasn’t happened: Apple hasn’t discontinued the standalone iPod, as distinct from the iPad and iPhone and other general devices. For music lovers, that’s a big deal. The sad news is, the category itself has all but entirely imploded.

The last ten years has been in almost every category a kind of battle between dedicated devices and convergence devices. Anecdotally and statistically, you’ve seen people abandon dedicated video cameras, still cameras, audio recording gadgets, and audio players for something like their iPhone. Little wonder: unless you have enormous pockets, if the integrated device does the job – and its battery doesn’t give out – it means something that’s always at the ready.

Apple’s legacy in music players is curious: they both defined the category, and wiped out all the competition. And that’s true even before Apple changed the category again with the iPhone. That’s not the normal pattern: typically, in electronics or any other tech, the pioneer defines a space in which other competitors come and play. Not so with the iPod: a combination of shifting consumer trends, the profound success of the iTunes “ecosystem,” and the general ineptness of competitors to make quality, differentiated alternatives has led to the iPod standing more or less alone. The iTunes issue shouldn’t be overlooked: recall that when the iPod launched, record labels were still concerned about copy protection. The result was an iTunes-iPod relationship that ultimately kept consumers from working out the complexities of moving their music library to another, rival player. (The fact that most of the rival players weren’t any good didn’t help, so we can’t ever really know how much of a factor this was.)

Two things have happened this fall. Microsoft did discontinue the Zune, in what seems the final death knell for any major dedicated music player that isn’t made by Apple:
Microsoft confirms Zune HD is dead

But, secondly, even as various analysts predicted Apple would kill the dedicated iPod players or even the iPhone-with-no-phone iPod touch, Apple didn’t discontinue anything.

My favorite player remains Apple’s iPod Classic. It’s beautifully designed, holds an absurd amount of music no phone can match (160 GB), and has a simple, clean interface for getting to your music. It’s sad to me only that it’s the only choice, particularly because the one thing rivals did have going for them was easier, more open sync rather than iTunes-only solutions. In fact, even the original iPod had as a major selling point the ability to work as a dedicated hard drive. As a purchaser of the first iPod, one of my favorite features was the ability to easily tote around a big file or two atop the music library.

Oh, yeah, and it’ll still run when your phone battery is dying, and it costs just US$249 – no phone contract required. Ahem.

http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/

Phones as playback devices are pretty great. But remember that the original dream of the iPod was something different: it was the ability to put your whole music library on one device and take it anywhere. My main question is how that legacy will pan out. Dedicated music devices give you distraction-free access to nothing but music, and ongoing storage innovations mean that something that’s just a music device may long exceed what the convergence devices can do, surviving for the reason SLR cameras do.

Apple’s iPod series will last so long as people keep buying them; Apple seems in no hurry to walk away from extra revenue. (It’s part of the reason why they’ve got all that cash, folks.) But I wonder in the long term what will happen to the category. To me, the major gaping hole is something a lot of us wanted even when we saw the first iPod: a dedicated, pro-quality music player, a kind of audiophile iPod. It doesn’t need any fancy features or silly gold-plated jacks, just something dedicated to playing music and nothing else. I wonder if we’ll ever see that, or if it’ll be another casualty of the explosion in consumer gadgets. In the meantime, long live the iPod Classic.

And for the record, if you do have an original iPod from ten years ago, you can still make it sing: install Linux and it’ll even run Pd.

Jeff Price, writing for TuneCore, has a different take on Apple’s iCloud. He thinks it will both transform the industry and shift consumer listening from downloaded files to streams. That would mean I’d have to substantially revise my knee-jerk take following Apple’s announcement – and his line of thinking would raise questions about whether dividing up a $25-a-year fee will leave much of a revenue stream for artists.

Updated: Apple responded to NPR’s request for clarification. iCloud is not a streaming service. That invalidates a lot of the arguments on the TuneCore blog. My analysis earlier was based on the assumption that Apple was making iCloud music and iTunes match download-only.)

iCloud: A Music Industry Game-Changing Product

You can read Apple’s description of the product on their site. Correction: while TuneCore claims iCloud’s music functionality is streaming, Apple has only confirmed file sync capability – you play music from local storage. Indeed, Apple touts the ability to download and to listen to music matched on iTunes Match as 256k AAC files.
http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/

There are several observations in his piece worth highlighting:

• Apple’s library sync, once you pay the fee, is automatic, says Price. (This much is correct.)
• It’s a legal coup for Apple. Price notes that the same concept on MP3.com, back in 2000, earned RIAA lawsuits that shuttered the service in 2008. (This is also likely accurate, though we don’t know yet the terms of Apple’s negotiations. Removing streaming would simplify licensing greatly, but since iTunes Match can associate content that isn’t purchased with a file download, it’s safe to assume some sort of revenue sharing for that media. If that’s the case, it’s a huge step forward.)
• Re-downloading uploaded files is possible only with Apple — and yes, that includes files you pirated. Price believes that this “provides the feeling of owning what you are streaming.” But that could be bad news for artists who depend on the “ownership” feeling coming from buying from stores like Bandcamp. Confirmed: Price is at least partially mistaken. Amazon allows re-downloading files, though it’s worth noting those are files you’ve purchased from the Amazon MP3 store — Apple’s functionality is indeed different. What’s entirely incorrect, based on the service in its present state, is the assumption that you stream files. While that’s true of Google and Amazon stores – and while those services might assist the kind of streaming preferences Price describes – Apple isn’t streaming, or at least isn’t doing so yet.
• Price suggests that licensing fees could be a “pot of gold at the end of the digital music rainbow,” by creating revenue streams for plays of music, regardless of source. (That’s an interesting theory, but without specifics of how revenue sharing takes place, it’s unclear how big that pot is.)

Why would this transform the landscape? Two things: one being increased lock-in to Apple’s products, Price argues. While there’s no new DRM, the automatic download as AAC renders files incompatible with some non-Apple players. (I disagree here – AAC compatibility could simply become more widespread, and even now, it’s not limited to Apple.) I think sheer iCloud compatibility could increase Apple dependency, however – and to the iTunes store, too, which is essential to TuneCore’s business as a gatekeeper for unsigned artists.

The other half of the argument is more interesting an interesting description of a hypothetical service that is not iCloud in the state described by Apple:

Just as the original Napster trained people to download music and listen to it on their computers, Apple, due to its vast hardware proliferation (iPhones in particular) is in a position to shift consumer behavior yet again–this time from downloading music to listening to it via streams. And with this consumer shift, the music industry will reset itself once again until the next revolution…

The bottom line here is whether consumers buy in and adjust their listening habits. If they do, Price could be right – we could see a shift from downloads to streams, an income shift from purchases to royalties, and even greater dominance of Apple over how people consume music. Notably, because of the lack of licensing deals, Apple might be without competition. My big fear: those shifts could ultimately mean that only artists with lots of plays get revenues, which again would tilt the scales to big artists. The charts would simply be on your iTunes players, not on the radio. We’ll have to wait and see; stay tuned as I hear from more people close to the iCloud deals and product.

Updated – one last thought for the day. If you’re wondering how you can split up a $25-a-year fee and provide streaming, a simple answer may be, you can’t. It’s possible TuneCore is simply dead wrong, because it doesn’t seem that the math for licensing fees would add up. Apple, for their part, never mentions streaming.

But I am at least partly comforted in my fears about streaming becoming the norm at this absurdly-low price by the evidence that this isn’t a streaming service to begin with. Ahem.

Again, confirmed: Price is making an argument that appears to be divorced from the present facts, though it certainly remains possible a future version of the service will stream. (Given the service isn’t due out until the fall, it’s even possible the final version will ship with that functionality.) In his defense, the question of whether Apple’s service provided streaming seemed to confuse everyone. While it was the single most-anticipated portion of the WWDC keynote, Apple left demos and description to the end of a marathon set of demos of Mac OS and iOS features, and then showed a service that wasn’t complete. That has surprised some onlookers (see our comments), given that many people expect Apple to keep functionality under wraps until it’s fully baked. (Contrast: Google, who regularly release experimental and “beta” products.) Since Apple never specifically debunked rumors their service streamed, some people conflated rumors (and features of rival services) with what Apple showed. While TuneCore hasn’t posted an update to their blog, we’re blessed with the ability to post updates online. For now, the iCloud doesn’t stream. Price’s arguments remain a perspective worth considering because a future iteration might stream, and rival services make it a cornerstone feature.

We’ll be watching Apple’s developer conference closely to try to understand the implications of a likely announcement of an Apple cloud music service for artists. While Google and Amazon are already testing those waters, Apple’s dominance of the software player (iTunes) and mobile players (iPod, iPhone) give it arguably greater weight.

We should know more after the official announcement, but early reports suggest independent labels (to say nothing of unsigned artists) may have reason for concern. I think it’ll make more sense to analyze this once some of the secrecy is lifted, but one group has already made a statement even before that announcement, indicating the level of scrutiny today’s keynote is likely to gather. The “fifth major,” the largest representative of independent labels, is already concerned about even the possibility of a cloud that would favor major labels:

In response to media speculation that independent labels are being offered a discriminatory licensing deal for the new iCloud service, Charles Caldas, CEO independents’ rights agency Merlin says:
“As the most experienced player in the digital music space, Apple should have the deepest understanding of the significant value that independents bring to their business. In light of this I would be very surprised and extremely disappointed if Apple were not going to ensure that independent rights holders are properly and fairly remunerated on the iCloud service.”
Merlin is unable to comment on any aspect of the negotiations, which given Apple’s position running the world’s longest-standing digital music service, with existing deals with the vast majority of the world’s right holders, are a matter between Apple and its licensees.

Merlin is a big player in this landscape, not just someone looking for attention on an Apple launch day. As they describe themselves: “Merlin, the virtual fifth major, represents the world’s most important set of independent music rights. Merlin seeks to ensure its members have effective access to new and emerging revenue streams and that their rights are appropriately valued and protected.”
http://merlinnetwork.org/

I believe interested artists and music lovers may want to pay attention to a number of issues with cloud services from Apple and others:

• Major/minor cadence. Will majors get better deals than minors, in licensing, exposure, compatibility, or other areas? The cloud could level the playing field in some of the ways digital music has generally, but we have yet to see if it’s a step forward, backwards, or sideways.
• Licensing. How will a cloud service track plays? Who will it play for those plays?
• Fidelity. With mobile networks under heavy bandwidth concerns, what will the quality of streams be? How easy will it be to sync a higher-quality file to a device, and what will the quality and format of that device be?
• Ease of sync. Will there be new layers of DRM associated with the synced file?
• Distribution. Will cloud services work with files you’ve purchased direct from artists (on services like Topspin and Bandcamp)? From independent stores (Beatport, Bleep, and the like)? From CDs (or vinyl) you’ve ripped? Or will they tend to favor the store from which you purchased those files (iTunes, Amazon)? (Google, for instance, syncs your entire iTunes library regardless.)
• Interoperability. To put this bluntly, “does this mean I have to buy stuff from Apple just to make it work in the cloud”? See also proprietary chipsets in playback devices: Apple’s AirPlay for local wireless even requires a chip to authenticate the validity of the stream, which could be seen as a kind of wireless DRM.
• The open Web. Looking at interoperability on a Web front, will we see open APIs for working with these services? I was contacted by a number of people who were disappointed when Google didn’t talk about adding an API to their cloud service – particularly since they unveiled it, as Apple is likely to do today, at a developer conference.

So there’s my checklist; if you have ideas of your own, feel free to add them in comments. Why be concerned about these issues? Ironically, many existing Web services have begun to address these questions, though sometimes with questionable legality.

Updated – I compared these questions against what we got. Apple deserves credit for making the design of the service efficient; the situation just remains complicated by multiple vendors and platforms, and a lack of Web interoperability in all of these services (compared to the level of innovation from Web-based startups).

How’d Apple’s Cloud Do? Four Questions Answered.

The sum total of the flexibility, fairness, and openness of these services could also have a significant impact on independent artists and labels, and the ability to support a diverse range of music. That’s not to say that, absent these factors, the effect will immediately be negative – only that they’re areas of interest.

TuneCore is promising snap reaction immediately after the keynote, which might provide a clue into how unsigned artists would get on the service; I hope to follow up with Merlin, as well.

More reading in advance of Apple’s keynote:
Apple’s iCloud Will Scan, But How Much Will It Match? [Digital Audio Insider]
Storms Ahead for “Cloud” Music? [Future of Music Coalition, speaking largely about concerns and disappointments with Amazon and Google]
Digital Music News has been dutifully covering Apple behind-the-scenes as they reportedly sign a number of major labels – and raising red flags that the service may favor those labels. Unfortunately, that site is down as I write this.

DMN is back up. Read, for instance:
Uh-Oh: iCloud Has All the Markings of Another Indie Shaft…

Merlin is part of the negotiations and are unhappy about how they’re being treated. But note that the issues I raise above go beyond just the licensing questions, to the issue of how music is distributed and consumed in generally. And that may prove to be bad news for “artists who aren’t Lady Gaga,” too.

Image-Line has long promised it’d never make a version of its popular FL Studio – aka Fruity Loops – for Mac desktops. Blame the Windows-centered development tools in which this cult-hit all-in-one production studio is built. But it has found its way to a fruit-themed platform of a different sort, with FL Studio Mobile for iPhone, iPad, and iPod.

Leaked specs and early screenshots have surfaced (apparently unintentionally). That means anything said here could change as the app is developed. (Thanks to readers who tipped us off, though it seems I-L didn’t intend to make this public!)

The app looks cool, but it’s largely FL Studio in name only. You get something like 90 preset instruments (only the attack envelopes are editable), a step sequencer, and pad triggers. There’s also very nice MIDI support, both for Core MIDI and the MIDI Mobilizer, meaning this will work with various MIDI accessories both for the iPhone specifically and more generally with MIDI input. Image-Line also claims they’ve balanced battery life with low latency.

All in all, it looks like a decent on-the-go sketchpad for quick ideas, but hardly a big departure from other apps we’ve seen on mobile. In fact, while it promises the ability to open your projects back in FL on the desktop, you don’t even need to be an FL user – MIDI file export is available, too.

I see some FL Studio users, loyal to a non-Apple desktop OS, are already unhappy that this isn’t on Android. But my real disappointment here is that I don’t see anything beyond the superficial look of the step sequencer that makes this look like FL to me. I would’ve liked some of the quirky personality of the original on handheld. It’s a useful-looking tool, but put that name on there, and some people may come away feeling like they’ve got artificial fruit – only 5% real juice.

I like things like this – you never know when an idea will pop into your head that you want to get down. (And the app, now via updated screenshots, looks really nice and clean and touch-friendly.) But it does serve as a reminder that the $500 spent on a tablet could also go to a pretty amazing laptop that’s more than capable of all the depth and power of the real FL Studio.

Official specs on the app from I-L The specs we got from Image-Line’s public site are apparently “placeholder” specs, so not entirely complete or accurate. From comments: “To clarify, that spec page was actually just a placeholder with the specs of Xewton Music Studio. FL Studio Mobile, which is being created by the same developer, will have different sample content, amongst other changes.” But they look as though they’re at least in the ballpark, so here they are:

Save projects and load in FL Studio personal computer edition.
Photorealistic dynamically configurable 85-key keyboard
Instant positioning via the slide gesture and resize with the pinch gesture
90 studio-recorded instruments (16bit 44.1kHz sampled from real instruments)
40 free instruments, 50 available in the in-app shop
4 categories: classic, band, electronic, world
Release and attack time configurable per instrument
Sustain samples • Pitch bend via accelerometer
Low-latency, highly optimized, high-polyphony, battery saving audio engine
100 beats (drum loops)
5 real-time effects with lots of parameters
3 high-quality reverb algorithms, delay, 3-band equalizer, amplifier, filter
128-track sequencer • Beat & metronome settings (tempo, signature)
Per-track mute, solo, effect bus, pan and volume adjustment
Edit whole tracks or bars, down to individual notes:
Draw, quantize, transpose, repeat, move, length, velocity, etc.
MIDI import and export
Save and load your songs and export to wave
Wi-Fi and iTunes file transfer with your Mac/PC
Songs and MIDI files can be opened directly from Safari and Mail
Unlimited undo and redo
Detailed in-app help
Play or record 2 different instruments at the same time with 2 keyboard rows
Key labels (Cs only, all keys, all keys colored)
iPhone 4 Retina Display supported
Compatible with: Line 6 MIDI Mobilizer, Akai SynthStation 25, CoreMIDI

http://www.image-line.com/documents/flstudiomobile.html

Same as it ever was:

With talk of the cloud, streams, special proprietary devices that pipe vendor-specific sounds to particular home stereos, intelligent, always-on access to entire music collections, tablets and set-top boxes and … all of that … it can be tough to look into the future of music and audio. I spent the last weekend at Project Bar-B-Q, a mind-bending retreat of audio tech industry sages and engineers, on a team that looked at the issue. It’s not time yet to share those discussions, but as we face the dizzying array of possibilities ahead, this one quote stands out, pointed to me by someone in my BBQ group.

The article is from June, but as “cloud music” talk heats up, it’s worth pasting to your wall. The ever-insightful Sasha Frere-Jones writes for The New Yorker

…the near future of listening to music looks a lot like 1960. People will listen, for free, to music that comes out of a stationary box that sits indoors. They’ll listen to music that comes from an object that fits in the hand, and they’ll listen to music in the car.

Full story: You, the D.J.: Online music moves to the cloud.

I think a corollary is that, even with the big box playing music for free, people will want to own a collection of music and own things they take around with them, alongside the free things. Exactly where that line falls and in what way remains the sticking point.

But why stop at music listening, or even music creation? The idea above could lend perspective to any conversation about design and technology. The dimensions of the virtual, digital universe and its possibilities are indeterminate and difficult to conceive. But the dimensions of human beings are not.

I look at my Android phone and iPod touch and see something that rests comfortably in the palm of my hand. Keyboards and pianos sit before me at waist height and stretch within reach of my arms. The netbook to which I’ve just taken a strong liking I notice is the near exact size and weight of one of my favorite paper sketchbooks from a few years ago. It folds under my arm. (The dimensions of an airline coach row are applicable here, too, but one could think of those as the economic extensions of how closely you can pack humans and still get them to buy tickets.) The iPad, embraced recently by musicians, is sized to a music stand and could easily replicate manuscript paper, which in turn could be the net of multiplying staves sized to human hands and handwritten dexterity. The ubiquitous knob may be just an endcap on the electrically-convenient potentiometer, but it’s also a physical manifestation of the fact that human beings have opposable thumbs. The grip of your hand is, literally, the reason we talk about “tweaking.”

It’s not just a matter of ergonomics, though if design causes discomfort or you can’t see a user interface, that obviously matters. Human scale is part of what allows us to grow emotionally attached to certain things.

And it should also be apparent that while the tech headlines and reporting focus on platforms or vendors — Apple! iPhone! Cable TV box! BMW car stereo! — humans, quietly, keep using objects that are fundamentally more or less the same. The rest is just a bit of icing. It makes you wonder why we don’t ask the fundamental questions first and worry about the details later, instead of the other way around. That would bring some humanity, sanity, and a longer view to technological discussions. (A shock, I know.)

Think in human terms, and sometimes design answers or the future of music are within arm’s reach. Just ask an accordion.

If you’ve wished you could use your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad as a remote control for Logic, now’s your chance. And touch control continues to evolve as an additional option for manipulating music software, alongside good, old-fashioned knobs and faders.

Handheld wireless touch control is certainly coming into the mainstream. As we see new controller integration in tools ranging from Ardour to Renoise, Apple quietly added support for iOS touch control in an update to Logic.

One line in the release notes says it all:

Supports iOS control surface apps that utilize the OSC protocol.

Logic Pro 9.1.2: Release notes

– or, to put it another way, that’s all they say. Fortunately, Sam Greene has written up a great little tutorial / first impressions:
Control Logic using your iOS device – Officially.

Basically, select the awesome TouchOSC app and your device under Control Surfaces, and automagically unlock access to mixing controls and automation. It’s nothing revolutionary, but these devices make perfect remote controls. It’s also nice to see this kind of control as something that’s evolving independent from individual apps. That is, instead of having to buy an app for each software you own, just as with MIDI, there’s some interoperability.

It seems to me that the next logical step is to begin to introduce some standardization to the way in which DAWs and touch controllers interact. But before we get there, this kind of solution is a good place to start; I think without playing with this stuff, it’s hard to know what a “standard” of some kind (lowercase “s”) would look like.

Speaking of playing, let us know how this works for you.

Thanks, Sam, for working this out!

With the regularity of clockwork, stories about how digital audio consumption is degrading the quality of music are published and then re-published. Nearly a decade after the introduction of Apple’s iPod, this still apparently qualifies as news. The content of the articles is so identical, you could believe the bylines are a ruse, a nom-de-plume for the same author re-publishing the same story.

Whatever the reason for their supposed newsworthiness, the problem with these stories isn’t their claims about the variable quality of music listening. I think it’d be hard to overstate just how sub-optimal real-world listening by real-world consumers can get. The problem is that these journalists, inexperienced in the actual history of the technology they’re covering, falsely identify a technological trend.

In the process, they miss the real story of how listeners listen.

Here’s the latest offender:

In Mobile Age, Sound Quality Steps Back [The New York Times]

The story conflates everything from comparing analog to digital to dynamic compression in mastering to data compression, so it’s hard to know where to begin. But I’ll do my best to separate out the issues. (After all, you barely have to read this article, because you’ve read this story – substituting a couple of sources here, a couple of metaphors there – repeatedly for about ten years.)

Myth #1: Audio advancement hasn’t kept pace with video advancement.

Here’s the myth, from author Joseph Plambeck:

The last decade has brought an explosion in dazzling technological advances — including enhancements in surround sound, high definition television and 3-D — that have transformed the fan’s experience. There are improvements in the quality of media everywhere — except in music.

First, this idea itself is internally inconsistent, at least in part. People’s home theater setups are full of music, from the soundtracks to games to movies to video of live concerts. In fact, the quality of audio in audiovisual contexts – including music – has improved alongside the video. Consider:

Original VHS format: Poor frequency response (100 Hz – 10 kHz), mono, or stereo with hideous dynamic response. In fact, this isn’t even worth measuring – it was awful. Couple that with poor analog reception or low-quality analog cable signals, and it means the 1980s, peak of the music video, sounded like crap.

DVD: Typically AC-3 or DTS digital audio, with better-than-CD audio quality (in terms of theoretical specifications), and digital surround capability. [Clarification: technically, it's the theoretical 24-bit, 96kHz encoding rate that would make audio on DVDs "better" than CDs. Commenters are correct, though, that the lossy audio format, combined with real-world concessions to space, could degrade real-world audio quality - though you also get more channels, which is a good thing. For a better advance from the CD, see the Blu-Ray disc. Ed.] So, the NetFlix age is better off than the Blockbuster age.

Gaming: Games increasingly use compressed but relatively high-quality audio, approaching CD quality, and in digital surround formats. With intelligent surround mixing, this also leads to better channel separation and spatial separation, and a more pristine listening experience. Not only that, but because gamers use auditory clues to help them perceive where they and enemies are in space, anecdotally many non-musician gamers I’ve talked to are particular about their sound experience.

But that’s not the argument here. Apparently, the lowest-quality audio distribution format can be compared to the highest-quality video format. That just doesn’t make sense.

Let’s turn the tables, by way of comparison. I can even write the headline:

“Video Quality Suffers in the Age of the Internet – Unlike Audio”
By Peter Kirn['s fake evil imaginary brother]

Kids today, with their YouTube and their over-compressed, handheld shot video. Why, I remember in the old days. I used to shoot in gorgeous film on my Bolex and edit by hand on a Steenbeck.

Audio quality today is fantastic. 10.1 surround is the norm, as is better-quality mixing. Just listen to The Lord of the Rings recording. It’s spectacular. It’s a whole orchestra and everything. You can go watch the movie in a THX-certified theater, and listen to nearly three full hours of music. In fact, by the time you’ve watched the trilogy, you will have sit and listened to a longer piece of music than a Wagner opera – and you won’t have gotten out of your chair (minus that quick bathroom break).

Not like video. 320×240, really? Over-compressed video encoding and 15 fps? Stations that call themselves “HD” but exhibit noise artifacts do to over-compression – to say nothing of the less-popular, standard-definition stations squeezed into your cable signal to allow you to have 2000 stations? It’s as if people aren’t videophiles any more. It looks horrible.”

You get the point. Nothing above is incorrect; it’s just a matter of perspective, and whether you combine the best practices of one medium to the worst practices of another.

In video capture, the difference is more pronounced. Modern digital cameras now shoot in increasingly high-quality audio, which previously was often more compressed than the video. My new Olympus E-PL1 actually shoots uncompressed PCM audio alongside its motion JPEG video.

In fairness, the author here is talking about “music.” If TV in HD is now the norm, there isn’t an equivalent shift in the common format for distribution of musical albums (see myth #2). And that’s fair – mostly. But the issue is, again, comparing different delivery formats for different delivery applications for different content. Sure, the musical album hasn’t had the leap forward that, say, television has, in the move from standard definition content to high-definition content. But by the same token, would you compare the 16:9 cinematic experience – which was already “high fidelity” and “high definition” in optical film before the advent of these technologies – in the same way? In fact, if you did, the advances in cinema audio have been greater in the cinema than the advances in film presentation. While digital projection and 3D have very recently improved the situation, urban movie theaters getting carved into subdivided rooms actually made a lot of movies smaller, not bigger or “higher def.”

Myth #2: MP3s reduce audio fidelity in the name of mobility

This topic has been discussed to death. At the risk of giving away the ending, low-bitrate MP3s don’t sound very good. Higher-bitrate MP3s do sound pretty good. (The same is true of Apple’s AAC-encoded audio, which incidentally, shares the audio codec being used on those DVDs and Blu-Ray discs and consumer digital video recorders.) In fact, bizarrely, the New York Times article doesn’t compare any hard numbers on perception of high-bitrate MP3s and AACs to CDs. It just takes it as a given that they aren’t as good, without any actual research.

But the central thesis of the entire article – one we’ve seen before – is this:

In one way, the music business has been the victim of its own technological success: the ease of loading songs onto a computer or an iPod has meant that a generation of fans has happily traded fidelity for portability and convenience. This is the obstacle the industry faces in any effort to create higher-quality — and more expensive — ways of listening.

Instead, music is often carried from place to place, played in the background while the consumer does something else — exercising, commuting or cooking dinner.

As usual, the lay journalist struggles with the notion of data compression, saying that the process is “eliminating some of the sounds and range contained on a CD.”

In fact, by design, lossy compression does nothing of the sort. The ideal behind MP3 compression is to eliminate tones which are themselves inaudible, masked in the normal perception of music. That means that, encoded correctly and with enough data, an MP3 should theoretically sound identical to a PCM-encoded CD.

There’s often a difference between theory and practice. But to suggest that the aim, the goal of MP3 or AAC is to eliminate auditory, perceptible sounds in order to increase portability is simply inaccurate. Perceptual compression designed so that, according to the appropriately-named Karlheinz Brandenburg, compression pioneer of the Fraunhofer Institute, “the basic task … is to compress the digital audio data in a way that … the reconstructed (decoded) audio sounds exactly (or as close as possible) to the original audio before compression.”

You do need enough data for the compression technique to work its magic, which is why the shift from lower bitrates in MP3/AAC to higher bitrates on leading digital music stores is so important. But at a certain point, you no longer perceive anything missing, and as Duke Ellington would say, “if it sounds good, it is good.”

If the audio compression is successful, that means a generation of fans hasn’t traded fidelity at all, if the previous popular format was the audio CD. The “if it’s successful” part is important, but it isn’t as simplistic as this (and most other stories) would have you believe.

Newspaper journalists continue to treat MP3s as though it’s still 1999. In 1999, it wasn’t uncommon for people to illegally download music from services like Napster that were encoded at bitrates that were too low, and that actually contained encoding errors, which will cause auditory distortion and pops. That’s not true of a track downloaded from Amazon or iTunes today. These issues are significant.

A discussion of how compressed audio compares to an audio CD actually isn’t an easy discussion. Even simple metrics like frequency range or signal-to-noise ratio aren’t directly applicable to audio that uses perceptual encoding techniques, because by definition, they use variable encoding rates to change from frame to frame. The quality of the encoder and its settings make a big difference. Suffice to say, it’s possible to create an MP3 or AAC file that isn’t as satisfying as an audio CD, or to create one that – even for many trained ears – is satisfying. I won’t even try to debate the merits here, because to get the answer technically correct, we’d have to do more work.

To have a technically-robust discussion, though, we’d actually define what we’re talking about: comparing, say, the quality of a direct-to-digital audio CD with a broad dynamic and frequency spectrum as played on a standard audio CD and a 320-kpbs MP3. That could be an interesting discussion, and you might even choose the audio CD over the MP3 in certain cases. But it probably wouldn’t reach any sweeping conclusions like generations of listeners turning their backs on quality in the name of cheap thrills.

In the dance of logical fallacies, articles like this one never define the terms of their basic thesis – the “generation of listeners” trading convenience for quality:

• What generation? (I’ve seen everyone from age 8 to 80 with an iPod.)
• Compared to what? (MP3 to audio CDs? AAC to 8-tracks? What?)
• Who’s judging the quality, and how? What’s quality?
• When? Who? Where? … What?

But yes, I suppose it can be said that at an indeterminate time, using an indeterminate playback format (MP3 or AAC or … something) with an undetermined bitrate (maybe 128k, maybe 256k), listening through a range of variables that have gone undefined (headphones? background noise? are you using your blender when cooking in the kitchen?), an indeterminate group of people listening broadly to things that might be called “music” (whether that’s the Brandenberg Concerto or Frank Zappa) from some indeterminate era, itself recording originally through some unknown means at some undefined time, has audio quality that is not as good as some other music music listened to by someone else … sometime. Or something.

I can’t really argue with that, can I?

Myth #3: The iPod is the perfect emblem of a generation that doesn’t care about music

Quick: what’s small and portable but sacrifices audio fidelity for over-compressed music with no frequency or dynamic range? It’s portable, it’s pocketable, it was a wildly-successful creation that changed how a generation consumed electronics and music alike, and it has terrible earbuds.

The iPod? No, I’m talking about the Japanese transistor radio. By contrast, it makes the iPod looks pretty amazing. The transistor radio had:

• A terrible tuner. In order to save space, cost, and power consumption, the tuner in early radios – the “transistor” in transistor radio – was often sub-par. Say what you will about MP3s or online streams; at least you don’t have to tune them out of the air. Weak signal? Weak music.
• A crappy speaker in a crappy housing. Want an insider tip for how to make a bad speaker sound even worse? Here’s a hint: put it inside a rattling plastic housing.
• AM radio for music delivery. The irony of talking about MP3 as a step backward is nothing when compared to AM radio, which supported mono output and bandwidth of only 10 kHz. Analog mono FM radio sounds better, let alone a current average digital file. Only later did transistor radios add FM radio support, and it was some time before stations embraced the format.
• Terrible, mono earbuds. The iPod’s weakest link is the lousy earbuds Apple ships with the device, but early transistor radios were even worse. Aside from holding one up to you ear, you could plug in an earbud – yes, one earbud, in one ear. The earbud was terrible, and mono. The signal was terrible, and mono. And you had one in only one ear.

I’ve always loved listening to transistor radios. They have gotten better. But that’s the point: they’ve gotten better, not worse. And an iPod can usually beat one of these devices when it comes to sound quality.

Myth #4: Music is getting squashed by loudness wars – blame the iPod

No article on the evils of digital music would be complete without reference to the Loudness Wars:

With the rise of digital music, fans listen to fewer albums straight through. Instead, they move from one artist’s song to another’s. Pop artists and their labels, meanwhile, shudder at the prospect of having their song seem quieter than the previous song on a fan’s playlist.

So audio engineers, acting as foot soldiers in a so-called volume war, are often enlisted to increase the overall volume of a recording.

It’s a subject for another post, but I’m tired of the “loudness war” being applied to “music.” What music? What genre? Recorded by whom? When? I’ve heard exquisitely-engineered music from the past few years. I’ve heard brickwall-limited pop songs that … well, would have sounded like crap even without being poorly mastered. I’ve also heard music that used over-compression for intentional distortion in some genres (like Dub) long before anyone began worrying about loudness wars. (I’m also unconvinced by the listening habits described here. We know how many singles versus albums are purchased, but not how people listen to their existing music collections, so I’m dubious.)

But that’s not really the argument here. The issue is what’s to blame. In fact, I believe historically the author again has it completely wrong. The technology that began to change how music was mastered, that began to cause people to move from one track to another, isn’t the iPod. It’s the radio. And if anything caused the homogenization of music at the top of the charts, it wasn’t the introduction of digital singles. In fact, the iPod has technology designed to level out volume levels automatically on a playlist. The trend attributed to the loudness wars scaled in the 1990s, as sales of CDs and CD singles – not downloads – were on the rise.

Let’s face it: A&R people don’t care what a track sounds like by the time it’s found its way to your iPod playlist. You’ve already bought it. Job over. What they care about is how “loud” that track sounds when you haven’t bought it. And that means impressing the people who run the radio stations.

If you want a historical variable in that time span (and the more recent decade), look to the consolidation of broadcasting companies and radio markets.

The nonpartisan Future of Music Coalition (FMC) found that in 2005, half of listeners tuned to stations owned by only four companies, and the top ten firms had almost two-thirds of listeners. At the same time, radio listenership has declined 22 percent since its peak in 1989 in the top 155 markets.

Source: Peter DiCola, False Premises, False Promises, Future of Music Coalition (2006)

It’s a topic for another article, but I just can’t find a rational explanation for why the iPod would make less dynamic range make sense. Personal listening means the ability to set your own volume level, and data compression and poor-quality headphones mean that over-compressed music sounds worse, not better. The charges levied against the iPod might just as easily be directed at the Cassette Walkman of the 80s, on which people routinely listened to mix tapes of their own creation.

At the same time, I haven’t seen anyone argue against the notion that media consolidation might be the culprit, even though radical consolidation took place over the same era that the “loudness wars” were supposedly raging. I welcome other theories here. But even if you don’t agree with me, I don’t think you can take it as a given that the iPod is specifically to blame – and I’d think you’d want some evidence, regardless.

Myth #5: Technology is the cause and determinant

There’s a bottom line to my endless rant. (I know, I know – get to it already.)

Via Twitter and Facebook this morning, while I was blowing off steam about this article, a couple of people referred to how artists “intend” their music be heard. I’ve got bad news for you: your listeners don’t care about your intentions. Part of the genius of people who are great mix engineers or great mastering engineers is that they know how to shape music for the worst-case scenario listening environment, not just the best.

It’s not that some MP3s don’t sound terrible, or that music is sometimes mastered poorly or overly compressed. It’s not that the standard earbuds on the iPod aren’t awful, or the blown-out speakers in someone’s car aren’t poor – they are.

The variable in all of this that’s more important than the technology is the listener. Listeners are fickle and unpredictable. They don’t always concentrate on music. They don’t always care about fidelity. “They” don’t always agree – which is why some people don’t replace those default earbuds, while others blow thousands of dollars on listening equipment.

Too much of the debate over listening focuses on the technology and not the listener. The listener – and perception – is everything. And that leaves us to our final myth:

Biggest myth of all: Perception and reality are one and the same

There’s an unstated elitism in most of these discussions. I think it’s worth a separate post, so I’ll come back to this video and the ideas in it, but one key revelation is that even golden-eared pros can have their perceptions fooled by comb filtering in a room or even the placebo effect:

[Mix engineer] Anyone who records and mixes professionally has done this at least once in their career—you tweak a snare or vocal track to perfection only to discover later that the EQ was bypassed the whole time. Or you were tweaking a different track. And if you’ve been mixing and playing around with … whether you’re a professional or just a hobbyist, if you’ve been doing this for a few years and you haven’t done that, then you’re lying. Yet you were certain you heard a change! Human auditory memory and perception are extremely fragile, and expectation bias and placebo effect are much stronger than people care to admit.

There’s a lot more to this panel. It winds up being a lot more interesting than the debates over MP3s and digital downloads, and get to the heart of how we hear. I’ll try to pull it apart and talk to people with more expertise than my own about is soon, but in the meantime, there are copious notes and audio downloads to go along with the video:
http://www.ethanwiner.com/aes/

Thanks to oivindi (see also SoundCloud) for the tip.

Why bother with this whole rant? I’m hopeful that, if we look beyond the simplistic explanations to the actual science, history, and magic by which we all hear music, we’ll find out a lot more about what music means. The story above came from the business section, but the industry isn’t a good place to look for answers. The failure of a format like SACD shows a real failure of understanding about how people listen, how they perceive quality, and even basics of how formats and compatibility would appeal. Nor has the recording industry always given you a better product for more money: they were just as happy to sell you excerpts of music at ridiculously inflated prices at lower fidelity for mobile formats in the form of ringtones.

My alternative rebuttal:

1. Audio and visual technology have advanced in lockstep, whether or not consumers have always bought the gear.
2. MP3/AAC files can sound just fine, so it’s not fair to leave audio complaints at their doorstep; what we need is better testing under optimal circumstances, not just how these formats fail.
3. The transistor radio, not the iPod, was the great backwards step in mobility; it shows just how important being mobile and cheap and for how long, years before digital.
4. The real culprits in the loudness wars is media consolidation and top-of-the-charts senselessness, not mastering engineers or iPods.
5. Listener are the variable, not tech.
6. Human perception is always the first place to consider – even with pros.

If you want to improve “fidelity,” even for your own listening, you can’t ignore the listener. You can’t ignore perception. And you certainly can’t ignore history. But pay attention to these things, and who knows what’s possible?

ReBirth, the Roland groovebox emulation that helped launch the popularity of soft synths, is now on Apple’s mobile devices for US$6.99. (I woke up to a note from Propellerheads’ CEO Ernst left in my inbox overnight, so thanks, Ernst, for the tip!)

This is not the native iPad version MusicRadar predicted after an interview with Ernst. For now, iPads scale up the iPhone interface. But a version with “native” resolution for the tablet seems a no-brainer down the road.

Feature list:

2 x TB-303 Bassline synths
TR-808 Drum Machine
TR-909 Drum Machine
Pattern Controlled Filter
Distortion unit
Compressor
Mixer
5 user mods
Pattern sequencing
Full automation
Combine patterns to build songs
Share songs with other ReBirth users

Full details: http://rebirthapp.com/

I have a few questions about this tool that I hope to get answered. I do wonder, for one, whether people in Sweden have some sort of superhuman vision that allows them to see incredibly tiny (ahem) user interface widgets. I’ll have to test this on my iPod touch. On the other hand, the faux hardware knobs and buttons actually seem to me to make more sense on a touch device than they did with a mouse, so that element could be a lot of fun. In a way, I’m sort of happy that they did a direct port like this, visually – the only way to tell if it makes sense for you is to give it a try. I’ll reserve judgment until I do.

Updated: I did get a chance to verify the export workflow, and unfortunately… there is none. Ernst confirms:

You can import files from the Rebirth Song archive and from your computer (via a web page), but not export to anything but iPhones.

That’s a deal-breaker for me personally, because I like the handheld as a way to sketch ideas for the desktop, not just via audio. Hopefully that’s something that can be addressed. I’m sure for the way other folks work it may be less of an issue. Stay tuned; I’m putting together an overview of all the various musical apps in terms of how you could integrate them with your creative process on your laptop or studio machine.

Synthtopia has some good thoughts on why this release matters. You can tell from the exclamation points what the review may be:
ReBirth Is Back! Turns Your iPhone, iPad Into A Techno Studio!

I’m also interested to know more about that sharing workflow, and how you might use this in a studio, beyond just connecting the audio out headphone jack of your device.

Of course, if you don’t have an Apple mobile, you can still get the original ReBirth for free, for Windows, meaning various tablets and netbooks can run this, too. (It’s ReBirth Everywhere! Speaking of which, I still need to try to make it run in WINE on Linux – anyone done that?)

In the meantime, enjoy; have a great weekend, everyone. I’m back to notating a conventional score, using paper, a pen, and a laptop. Kids, ask your parents.

Updated: questions answered.
ReBirth, Reborn, as Synths in your Hand: Q+A with Ernst Nathorst-Böös

For computers, digital tech means the ability to turn anything into numbers. For humans, it means a chance to translate between gestures, ideas, sounds, and images. We can interface with musical, visual creations intuitively and collaboratively – now with ubiquitous, cheap touch and electronics. Two events take on that idea on the two coasts of the US; if you’re nearby, hopefully you can drop by, and if not, we’ll have plenty to share.

Multi-user Art, Networked OSC Workshops in NYC

Here in New York, mobile touch is put to the test in a gallery show in Brooklyn, with two workshops that can help you make your own work. Multi-User Art (image, top) uses the open platform mrmr and OSC protocol to allow visitors with mobile devices to manipulate installations. Step up, and a layout of controls is automatically pushed to your device, so you can push buttons, slide faders, draw, and otherwise control what you see — even with multiple users at a time. (For now, we’re stuck with the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad only, but I’m working on Android and browser-based ports for anyone interested.)

The artwork includes installations by myself, by mrmr creator Eric Redlinger, Superdraw artist Joshue Ott, and, using mirrors and light in place of projection, Chris Jordan. They range from three-dimensional, collaborative drawing to reflected light to moonscapes. The opening is free on Friday night:

But what if you want to learn to harness some of these same tools in your own work? We have two workshops Saturday, too.

Friday, 4/9: Opening, free – 7p; see exhibition information

Saturday, 4/10
11a-12p, free, Eric Redlinger presents an introduction to mrmr, a demonstration of how to use an iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad for control via OSC.

1p-4p, Joshue Ott and I will teach an in-depth workshop on using OSC for networked communication with free tools, focusing on Processing and Pure Data. We’ll talk about how Zeroconf (implemented by Apple as Bonjour) can create zero-configuration, automatic connections – no IP numbers to type. We’ll look at how you can use OSC to make software and hardware communicate across networks, for sound and visuals. And we’ll talk about how you can use tools like mrmr on mobile devices. $75. Class information, signup required!

All information:
Devotion Gallery, Brooklyn

Physical Controls with Arduino, Max, Pd in LA

Touch controls a bit too insubstantial for you? Prefer the tactile feel of a physical encoder in your hand? We’ve got you covered there, too.

Kevin Nelson writes us to share some new events he’s setting up at LA’s new CrashSpace hackerspace. (About time LA got a new, proper hack spot!)

There’s a free workshop Wednesday, using Max (though translating to other environments like Pd shouldn’t be hard), plus a more advanced intensive in May. Details:

First, I’m going to be giving a high-level talk this Wednesday, April 7 at 8pm on using a Monome to control things in the real world by integrating an Arduino with Max/MSP. The talk is free for members of the space, with a $10 suggested donation for non-members.

Flamethrowers! Arduinos! Monomes! This Wednesday, April 7th [CrashSpace]

Second, I’ll be teaching a course on building user interfaces with the Arduino and dataflow languages (I’m trying to make the emphasis on pd because it’s open source, but depending on the audience, Max and Max for Live might slip in there too). The curriculum and description haven’t been posted yet, but should be done and up by the end of the week.

The basic idea of the course is to target musicians who have dabbled in electronics and give them the tools necessary to empower themselves to build their own interfaces and instruments. It’s a two day intensive (8+ hrs/day) on May 15 and 16. We’ll be covering basic electronics & sensors, Arduino programming, serial communication between Arduino and pd/Max, and basic pd patching for midi routing or sound generation. The course is $150 for CrashSpace members, and $250 for non-members, and both prices include an Arduino and selection of sensors & misc components for the project.

http://csarduinodataflow.eventbrite.com/

What’s the Best Way to Document?

What do you prefer for documentation of these courses, for those of you not in NY or LA who want to follow along at home? (And hey, I can’t be accused of being too specialized geography-wise — I’m teaching a similar course in Portugal this spring.)

I’ve (ahem) sometimes promised more documentation than I’ve actually delivered, but in the meantime, I have been gradually refining some examples in Processing, Pd, and the like, so I’m feeling less shy about sharing them.

Suggestions? The more specific, the more likely I am to implement them. What do you want to see? In what format? Any sites you’ve found useful for this sort of sharing?

The more we can share this sort of specific knowledge, the more we as a community can help each other build our skills.

Yesterday, I talked about two complaints of music developers writing applications for the iPhone. These come from developers who are really iPhone fans, who just want to get their software released and (for many music devs) better categorized on Apple’s store. Pajamahouse Studios, maker of the new Sonorasaurus remix application, follow up with a more detailed explanation of their situation.

These are not rejections; at least rejections are generally accompanied with some sort of suggestion of what would need to be changed. They represent the dreaded iPhone developer “limbo,” in which an application is neither rejected nor approved. For Sonorasaurus, that’s been the state of affairs for over two months. As the developers explain, there seems to be nothing unusual about their app:

• Library access: It doesn’t access the iPhone/iPod music library. (no application is allowed to do that, which incidentally limits a lot of the DJ app possibilities of the device) Clarification: The status of the music API itself is unclear; some developers report just this sort of approval delay when trying to use it. [Source] Also, access to files inside the media library is not directly possible, which can be compared to the status of Android.
• File access: A separate http server is provided, with a parallel library, for users to store their own tracks – again, something found on numerous other approved applications. This doesn’t use the included library.
• Included music / music distribution: Five included songs are for testing only – something found in a number of other, similar applications that have been approved. The application is not an alternative to iTunes for distribution.
• Media decoding: Custom MP3 decoding technology – something not provided on the iPhone – was separately licensed. Clarification: This was not meant to imply that you can’t do MP3 decoding; the developers meant to make the point that they were not violating patents or licensing by using their own decoding, which presumably they did for the purposes of building a DJ app.

Of course, whatever the reason, we’ve seen in past applications suddenly approved after weeks or months, so who knows what will actually happen with this app.

Read the full explanation:

In Limbo Pt. 1 [Sonorasaurus]

While reading that, though, I also have to observe how significant these workarounds are. Without launching into an Android versus iPhone debate – believe me, there are many, many things to criticize about the Android as a platform, especially relative to music –  none of these is an issue on the Android. Forget platform wars or fanboys. Alternatives are good. I’d hope that we do have more than one approach to how to do this. These approaches should have to compete with one another, as they offer different tradeoffs and advantages.

If music is becoming an application, this kind of freedom is important.

Point by point:

• Library access: Android’s standard, supported APIs provide access to the media library and user playlists. Clarification: this includes direct access to the files and the ability to read from the buffer of these files (with some effort), in public, documented, approved APIs, with no chance of having an app rejected for the use of these APIs. My understanding is that this is not exactly the case on the iPhone.
• File access: Users are free to put files on their SD card over USB, and off-load those files – neither possible on iPhone. And yes, these will be integrated with the media library; iTunes-style sync isn’t necessary.
• Included music / music distribution: Including songs is actually a bit of a challenge, but you can freely download content and store it on the SD card. Because Google doesn’t have an equivalent of iTunes, that includes creating your own alternative distribution methods – meaning a label or music store can do make their own outlet.
• Media decoding: Decoding technology is included on the phone, including the ability to decode the open OGG Vorbis format. Clarification: Some folks read this to mean that the iPhone can’t decode MP3s, which was not what I intended; the key point here is that Android has in-box support for free formats and byte-level access to the audio buffers they give you, by default, straight out of the user’s media library. That is not entirely the case on iPhone.

Beneath all of this is the major fundamental difference, which is that you can install applications for Android whether or not they’ve been approved for Android. There’s actually a checkbox in the Market that allows you to opt into installing other apps you’ve downloaded directly from a developer or from another source.

Again, I don’t mean to make a pro-Android argument. In fact, I believe many of these items are also true on Windows Mobile, Symbian, and upcoming Linux platforms; I just happen to be working on Android now, so I’m more familiar with it.

What’s important is that this represents an alternative approach to how to provide music as an application, one in which the user is free to load content on and off the device.

Specifically, this paragraph jumped out at me:

Another problem would be that Apple could see this as a means to circumvent iTunes as a means to sell and distribute music. This we also addressed. These songs can only be used within the App. They can not be removed from the app / device for use elsewhere (iTunes on the desktop, burning to a CD, etc).

Now, we hear from many developers that the iTunes integration is something that attracts them to the platform. Likewise, many content creators will want just these sorts of restrictions.

But what if you want fewer restrictions? Let’s say you’re an artist releasing Creative Commons-licensed tracks, and you want to encourage remixing, sampling, modification, and free use of your tracks. Or what if you’re a label or artist collective, and want to experiment with new ways of using mobile for distribution, beyond what’s possible with iTunes and Apple’s stores? The same qualities that may attract someone else should, I think, concern you. I don’t think that necessarily means you shouldn’t write an iPhone application with your music, but perhaps you should also consider trying an alternative platform.

There seems to be a growing sense that the iPhone Way is The Only Way. Obviously, that’s not the case. This very debate demonstrates just how much room for interpretation the distribution of content can produce.