Lossless audio will come to portable players eventually

The great draw of portable MP3 players is quantity.

I remember when my wife and I took a six-month backpacking trip back in 1999. We never even considered bringing an MP3 player, which might have had a whopping 64MB of flash memory, enough for about a hour of audio compressed at 256kbps. Instead, we brought a Discman and about two dozen CDs in a soft case. We grew extremely bored with those CDs and ended up jettisoning or trading most of them.

In 2017, a 120GB player could seem as ridiculous as a 64MB player does today.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Today, you'd laugh if somebody told you they were considering bringing CDs on a trip--why would you, when all but the most hardcore collectors could fit their entire music collection onto a hard-drive based player like the 120GB iPod Classic? I've even taken a stand against the audiophiles who decry MP3s and compressed audio--I think portability is worth the quality loss you have to endure, as long as you occasionally listen to uncompressed (or better, live) music to remind yourself how great it can sound.

But I've always assumed that this is a temporary state of affairs. Kryder's Law--which says that density of data on magnetic discs will approximately double each year--is presumably going to continue, and advances in flash-based storage could lead to an exponential jump in capacity. Of course, we'll all be listening to lossless files on our portable player someday. Right?

That's why it surprised me when a report by Todd Bishop--a former Microsoft reporter for one of Seattle's daily papers, who recently helped start a new Seattle-based tech site called TechFlash--cited representatives from Amazon's MP3 store and Rhapsody saying that they weren't really thinking about lossless music.

Selling lossless files won't make sense for the next year or two because of space constraints and the fact that many players (such as the iPod Shuffle) can't play them. But what about in 5, 6, 10 years? Don't you think kids who grew up with compressed files would switch to better quality audio if it cost the same amount? Don't you think they would notice the difference?

I think so. And Microsoft apparently does too. A Zune representative told Bishop she has a hunch that lossless audio will become extremely important in the future (although today's Zunes don't support playback of any audio at a higher bitrate than 320kbps, meaning they won't play back any lossless files). Her stance is in keeping with Microsoft's corporate culture, which has always bet on the next generation of hardware. With the exception of Vista, which received a media drubbing in part because of the steep hardware requirements for the Premium versions, most of the time this has turned out to be the right bet.

[eman_mccc]

I only listen to lossless (Apple) on my 160GB iPod, ripped from my CDs. It annoys me that Apple didn't increase this to a 240GB hard drive, which Toshiba announced earlier this year. My iPod is full.

I'm not one of these golden-eared music listeners, but I can hear the difference between between MP3s up to 192bps and CDs. At 256 and higher, the conditions have to be just right, but for practical purposes, I can't tell anymore. I decided to just use Apple lossless to not have to worry about the quality, since it's equivalent to CDs.

[James7777777]

Apple Lossless is not truly lossless. It comes close, but not there. The headphone jack on the ipod is TERRIBLE so the quality of the file can only do so much.

In this case Apple and the iPod are definitely the problem, once they stop being the dominant force we will start hearing better quality music.

[OnanSalad]

Actually, you can already listen to lossless audio on the majority of current digital music players - including most ipods, irivers, sansas, etc. All you have to do is install Rockbox (www.rockbox.org). The install is a parallel os that usually doesn't interfere with your original os. Once installed, you can choose a variety of lossless formats such as wavpack and my personal fave - monkeys audio (*.ape), as well as popular lossy formats (ogg, wma, etc). If you're exceptionally nerdy, you can use Rockbox to play DOOM on your ipod.

I even used Rockbox to play video on my 2ndGen nano that wasn's supposed to play video.

I suspect that, for most hardware, lossless will sound no better than lossy - which is why I doubt lossless is a viable market for digital music. Most people do not spend > $100 on ear buds, so the golden-eared cannot generate enough demand to justify increasing supply for such a specialized niche.

[john55440]

The only digital music I buy is CDs. They offer superior sound quality, can be ripped into any format, and on Amazon.com they don't cost that much. In addition, when your hard drive crashes, your CD music collection doesn't disappear. (grin) When you buy albums, rather than individual songs, you often end up with lesser known gems that you would otherwise miss.

[shane--2008]

is lossless in the future? most likely. but why do we care what Microsoft thinks, since while lossless is likely a part of the future, the zune and MS aren't........

"In this case Apple and the iPod are definitely the problem, once they stop being the dominant force we will start hearing better quality music."

you keep telling yourself that. (Editors' note: personal attack removed.)

[SlurmSlurper]

Apple Lossless has the highest portable hardware support due to the iPod, followed FLAC. Windows Media Lossless does not have any portable hardware support the the best of my knowledge.

I agree with 'eman_mccc' that encoding in lossless means that you always know what your getting and you never have to worry about tracks which are 'codec killers'.

I'm going to upgrade my 'MP3' player when/if a decent player supporting FLAC and Replaygain becomes available, else I'll just stick with my current Samsung until it dies.

[rodduckworth]

Doesn't the new Zune 120 play WMA Lossless?

[Magallanes]

You don't need any lossless portable player because any earphones are not high fidelity devices.

Anyways, several devices do support wav or you could say, true lossless format.

[nouser]

For most of us, the perception of better audio with lossless vs. 256kbps or better lossy is all in our heads. In blind listening you would be lucky to find one in ten who can tell which is which. The reason is in our head, specifically our ears. Our ears just don't work all that well and after listening to portable MP3 players for a year or two they get worse. Anyone over 30 who has been to a couple rock concerts and listens to the MP3 players for a couple hours a day likely can't tell which he is listening to.

Spare me all the "I can hear the difference" BS. To prove my point, I just ran a blind listening test with a group of ten of my friends (all >30) on several different genre of music and not one could pick which was which with any reliability. This was using a new iPod with Studio MDR V6 headphones. Not one could tell with certainty which track was lossless and which was compressed. Before the test they all said they could easily hear the difference. Turns out it was all in their head.

Fool yourself if you like but by the time the HD grows in size to support your full music library lossless, your hearing will have degraded to make lossless mostly irrelevant.

[protagonistic]

Perhaps your friends all suffer from excessive hearing loss. Or perhaps you need to upgrade your audio equipment. A set of $20 headphones or computer speakers are hardly adequate to listen to audio. I have had a number of my friends listen to the same song in mp3 format and lossless format and every one of them was able to tell me which was lossless. My hearing is not all that great and even I can tell the difference on my computer sound system.

[Galaxy5]

Funny; I thought the million upon millions of iPods sold in the last four years could all play lossless audio.

[ducttape36]

you want high fedility on your portable media player? really? even though no matter what you do youre never going to get rid on noise from the subway, bus, car, or people around you? even with the best noise cancelling headphone (whih by the way would ruin the 'pure' audio quality anyways) youd still hear outside noise. whats the point of perfect sounding music with all that going on around you? besides, the closest you can get to high fidelity is through a high end record player through high end speakers anyways, digital (CDs) is still behind, no matter what anyone tells you.

[Jerry A]

Some tracks do better with compression than others. Sometimes I can tell the difference, sometimes I'm not so sure. But if my tracks are all lossless, I can enjoy music better knowing that the slight phasing on the faint accoustic guitar track in the background was a production decision, not having to wonder whether the phasing was indeed part of the production or an artifact added by a lossy codec. I don't want to be thinking about codecs when I listen, but with lossy, my mind always wanders there; with lossless, I am more able to just focus on and enjoy the music. Also, my mood and setting will have an impact on how much detail I am aware of...sometimes if my head is just right I hear so much more. Try some of the higher end noise isolating (not cancelling) earphones from any of the top names (Shure, Westone, Etymotic, Ultimate Ears, etc.) and you'll be surprised at how much noise you block out and how satifying a lossless file can sound on your 160gb ipod classic.

[nicmart]

My 60,000 songs are all Apple lossless for home audio use. Unfortunately, Apple is unhelpful at making it practical to use them on iPods. Only when Apple Lossless files are moved to a Shuffle does Apple make it possible to automatically convert the files to 128 kbps AAC on the fly. For that reason I'm only able to store a small portion of my library on an iPod Classic. For lack of a minor software update, Apple prevents me from taking full advantage of the iPod and my music collection.

[cyberDJ-2038765336053745013836]

I gave up on Lossless files after I realized that they tend to be proprietary and DRM-laden.
I got tired of researching which player would play a particular format.
This, after I had ripped a good percentage of my CD collection as lossless files.

At this point in time, storage is both cheap and plentiful enough to go straight-up uncompressed.
Now, I archive my CDs as WAV files.

[cellotennis]

can i assume that ALL the music files tested above were pop/rock and NOT classical ?

i am a pro classical musician and planning to test what you have just described - but with classical cds and my sennheiser headphones - and i DO hope there will be an audible difference, given the subtlety of the music, my ears - so far undamaged by rock-blasts - and the quality of a high-end headphone.

will keep you posted...

[plasticities]

Lossless is fantastic for archiving purposes and storing music in a future-proof format (i.e. if a revolutionary audio codec comes along, you can convert your lossless to this new format without it being a lossy-to-lossy transcode). That said, I don't see why anyone would want to put lossless music on a portable device. Unless storage is infinite, you could always fit 3-4 times as much music on the device if you just use .mp3s at 320 kbps, or even better, LAME -V0 preset. Download times are also 3-4 times as long for lossless files. If someone comes up with a lossless codec that averages at about 400-600 kbps (not sure if this is even possible), then I could see lossless music as becoming the norm.

[Goodman.seth]

This debate is so funny because it's all opinion and hearsay. I'm personally a believer that a 256 MP3 is for all PRACTICAL purposes indistinguishable from a CD quality file (which I should remind everyone was universally panned as reprehensible to audio purists when the CD was first introduced due to it's initial compression down to 16/44.1) I challenge CNET to setup up a listening test for all of it's readers with MP3's and lossless wavs and post the results for all to see. I'm almost positive that just about everyone would fail, and if you do pass then it's in your best interest to use lossless files. But from an economic and bandwidth perspective held by the content providers like Amazon and iTunes, there is simply no immediate need for higher quality (and massively larger) files.

[gr0mmet]

Yes, as mentioned earlier... all Zunes play WMA Lossless natively. There is no "320 Kbps" limit, as mentioned in the article. It also supports 2-channel WMA Pro... in addition to the usual suspects: MP3, M4A/AAC & WMA.

[stockyjoe]

The Zune 120 I got for Christmas supports WMA lossless. THe nixe thing about the Zune is it makes ripping these fils driect from CD to lossless WMA a breeze. I just wished the Zune supported FLAC as well and had an SD slot. Then it would almost be perfect. I still evantually want some device thats solid state or SD to archive lossless music. Hard Drives will go bad.