Apple, digital retailers to offer improved audio quality for music downloads?

Andre Yoskowitz
22 Feb 2011 16:22

Apple, Amazon and other digital music retailers are currently in talks with the major record labels in an effort to improve the audio quality of music files they sell via iTunes, Amazon MP3 and other similar stores.
Current offerings are 16-bit files, downgraded from the 24-bit high-fidelity formats they original come in as pressed CDs.
After that, the audio is compressed even further, into MP3 or AAC at 256kbps (usually), in an effort to minimize download time and the amount of space a track will take up on an end user's hard drive.
Jimmy Iovine, the chairman of Universal Music Group's Interscope-Geffen-A&M record label, seemed very gung-ho about the change back to high quality audio (via CNN):

We've gone back now at Universal, and we're changing our pipes to 24 bit. And Apple has been great. We're working with them and other digital services -- download services -- to change to 24 bit. And some of their electronic devices are going to be changed as well. So we have a long road ahead of us.

The road may indeed be long, as most portable devices (smartphones, media players) lack the ability to play 24-bit audio. Most computers, and iTunes, do have the 24-bit support, however. Apple and other companies would have to upgrade future models of their devices to include support for the higher-quality audio.
If the higher-quality files were to hit digital retailers, they will likely come with a premium, speculates CNN, although any exact figure is still very unclear.