April 30, 2003

THE AAC FILE FORMAT: ANSWERS.

AAC is the file format used in the new online iTunes Music Store. The store is online now for Mac users and will be available to Windows users later this year.

Exactly what restrictions does it have on playback?

• You can play the same track on three different computers at the same time. You can change your mind about which three computers are “authorized” to play the song anytime you want.
• On a network, you can stream the song to (and play the song on) five different computers at the same time. None of the other computeers needs to be authorized in any way; it’s just a limit of five at a time.

Can you convert it to AIFF for use in a normal CD player?

Yes. iTunes already has the ability to burn AAC files to a CD in AIFF format suitable for playing on most consumer audio CDs.

Does it really sound better than MP3s? The only scientific study I’ve seen so far is here. They compared AAC, MP3, and other file formats. Their conclusion:

• The AAC codec is the only one in the tests which was evaluated in the range “Excellent” at 64 kbit/s, for all the audio items evaluated.[.....]

That’s not very useful in this case, since most MP3s and AACs are encoded at rates higher than 64 kbits/s.

However, personal assessments from various users appear today via Macintouch. Here are a few excerpts from these comments:

FYI, I’m an audio engineer with over 25 years experience recording and mixing all kinds of sound and music. I downloaded “New Frontier” by Donald Fagen, an impeccably recorded song, and auditioned it switching between the original CD, an MP3 ripped from that CD at 160 Kbs VBR, and Apple’s ACC MP4 file. I couldn’t hear a farthling’s worth of difference between any of them, and this is on a studio reference monitor system.

My Professional opinion: The sound quality is excellent, and a darn sight better than the crap found on Morpheus, KaZaa, et al. Plus no spyware and ad banners and bogus files.

Some songs encode well in AAC and some don’t. If you’re not obsessed with high fidelity—if MP3 sounds fine to you, if you’re satisfied with the sound from your FM radio—then the iTunes Music Store is all you need.

I doubt that the casual listener is going to notice a huge difference in sound quality, if they are used to listening to 128kbps MP3s. If they are sticklers for sound quality, and are used to encoding their MP3s at 160kbps or above, they may notice lower quality with AACs bought from Apple.

AAC is the audio codec of choice for XM satellite radio, and XM achieves very good sound quality (better than FM radio) at bitrates as low as 25 kbit/s. (No, that’s not a typo.)

Most people appear to agree that AAC is better than MP3. However, it appears that AAC, while excellent, may not yet be equivalent to the full AIFF file you get when you buy a CD.

DRAWING THE ROADMAP TO PEACE IN THE MIDEAST.

An excellent article by New Republic correspondent Yossi Klein Halevi speaks to what it’s going to take to get the roadmap to peace to work:

The credibility of the road map depends on an explicit insistence that, this time, the Palestinian Authority act like a real authority and uproot the terrorist infrastructure. [.....]

Like the Oslo process, which imposed a deadline to resolve one of the world’s most complex conflicts, the road map is driven by the clock. It envisions an interim Palestinian state emerging as early as a year from now, to be followed in 2005 by a permanent solution on the thorniest issues dividing the two sides, including refugees, final borders and the status of Jerusalem.

That artificial deadline ignores the need to carefully measure each stage of Palestinian compliance. Unlike Palestinian pledges of peaceful intent, Israel’s territorial concessions are concrete and irreversible.

The fact is, it will take years, not months, to test the transformation of Palestinian society, which has been subjected to an official, relentless hate campaign in mosques, schools and media.

Not only is Libya the chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights – now Cuba has been elected to the U.N. Human Rights Commission for another three-year term. Cuba, of course, has recently been jailing and murdering Cuban dissidents.

The United States walked out of a United Nations meeting Tuesday to protest Cuba’s election to the U.N. Human Rights Commission for another three-year term.

“It was an outrage for us because we view Cuba as the worst violator of human rights in this hemisphere,” said Sichan Siv, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, which elected 24 new members to the top U.N. human rights watchdog.