iTUNES brought retail digital music sales to the masses and paved the way for greater music consumption through technology. However, the compressed file sizes don't sound so great.
Neil Young has become a spokesman for the worlds audiophiles with regards to the poor quality of digital files and the way in which the listener loses the quality of the original recording. "My goal is to try and rescue the art form that I've been practicing for the past 50 years," Young said. "We live in the digital age, and unfortunately it's degrading our music, not improving." Apple founder Steve Jacobs also admitted that he did not listen to digital music, preferring the quality of vinyl.
The message it seems, might finally be getting through. Apple is taking a shot at promoting albums under the banner of "Mastered for iTunes," which have been sonically upgraded by recording engineers. Bloomberg Business week recently interviewed Andy VanDette, chief mastering engineer for Masterdisk in New York who has just remastered 15 Rush albums for iTunes. Despite having worked on the Rush albums VanDette doesn't believe their has been a definitive track that has been remastered to give an audiophile the complete experience digitally, "I don't think you're ever going to get that. I think audiophiles are always going to say: "Why isn't everything released 96K full bandwidth, 24-bit? Why isn't that more available or more popular?"
Surely in this age of technology we can have our cake (a transportable pocket of tunes) and eat it (have the best quality sound that reflects the original intention of the artist and recording.) Until that happens, I'll be sticking with my mechanical buddy that spins vinyl for the forseeable future.
