Apple iTunes - Mastered for iTunes
Reply #48 – 2012-02-27 02:04:08
From a label and content provider standpoint, this is between-the-lines instruction to 1) push suppliers of audio to provide as high a quality as possible 2) instil the value of high quality masters and 3) for labels who supply direct, supply their master mixes from the studio as opposed to CD mixes so Apple can establish market monopoly on having the capability of selling THE highest quality audio down the line, as and when it feels like it Third-party suppliers (who accept any unsigned artist and for a price will upload their music to iTunes and a bunch of other music stores) are also being effectively told to sit up and take note of the quality of audio coming in. You simply would not believe how variable the SQ of much self-released (self-recorded, self-produced etc) music is, some of it is so cringingly poor it makes your ears spontaneously invert. Many albums these days don't even get mixed well, never mind mastered (Unless you count the "Mastering" preset in Logic or Ozone). I see this as Apple covering their arse and preparing themselves for a future quality bump. Why not ask for the studio master audio files? Makes perfect sense, they can offer any level of quality on a whim or differ the quality or codec provided depending on platform, even perhaps price point or country... Since late 2008 / early 2009 they've required labels to supply lossless from CD or audio files, which is fine by me (prior to that iTunes Producer encoded the AACs locally!) so this is just another incremental step. It was almost two years before we saw the results (in the form of "iTunes Plus") of them requiring lossless supply of source materials. If anyone's interested, packages are created in iTunes Producer (which runs on Macs only, the latest version - which includes the "Mastered for iTunes" features - finally obsoleted PPC Macs). This creates a folder full of CAF (AIFFs in Core Audio Format wrapper) with an accompanying XML metadata file and artwork. This is FTPed (or SSHed, haven't investigated which) directly to Apple within iTunes Producer. Larger suppliers of content can use Transporter, the XML-based system for which suppliers have to create their own delivery mechanisms. For the record, this reply was composed whilst listening to a 1991 Tool tape cassette rip 13 kHz is overrated.