Could Apple be Bringing 24-bit Audio to iTunes?

This might just be one of the strangest ideas I’ve ever heard. It seems that some music execs have been in discussion with Apple to help get 24-bit audio onto the iTunes music store… and as Ars Technica appropriately asks, “Why bother?”

I have nothing against iTunes, and I have in fact spent hundreds of dollars there over the years either for cheap albums, hard-to-get albums, or singles from certain artists. When it comes to bands I am not truly passionate about, I’m able to put aside my love for high-quality audio and suffer with 256Kbit/s, but that sure doesn’t mean I’d object to a higher-quality option, and it’s something I’ve talked about before.

So what’s the problem with 24-bit audio? The main one is that most people are just not going to benefit from such offerings, as to take full advantaged you’d want really good speakers (or headphones) and the rest of the audio equipment to match. Second is the fact that 24-bit audio tends to be extremely weighty in file size (up to 4x 16-bit), and again, is that kind of bloat even going to be appreciated by even 1% of the people who use iTunes?

What these music execs should worry about first is bringing lossless audio to the music store in general, as it’s something that many people want. If offered, even those who’ve always been against iTunes might become interested, because why not? There’d be no better place to get lossless audio than straight from the record labels themselves.

If lossless audio hit iTunes, I still don’t think 24-bit audio would work. I for one would likely purchase select items in that format, but given the acute hearing you’d need to hear the differences in most cases, a higher fee just wouldn’t be worth it. On the other side of the token, people are not likely to jump all over a song that weighs in at around 100~150MB, but 20~40MB… sure.

If anything, the fact that execs are talking about 24-bit audio at all is a good thing as far as I’m concerned, because even if it doesn’t happen, a possible lossless option down the road might. Until then, I’m left mind-boggled wondering why it’s taking them so long.

The difference between an uncompressed 24-bit/96kHz recording master and a 256kbps, 16-bit/44.1kHz iTunes Plus track is great indeed, and some in the music industry lament that listeners just aren’t hearing what the artist intended. “What we’re trying to do here is fix the degradation of music that the digital revolution has caused,” Jimmy Iovine, head of Interscope-Geffen-A&M, said recently during an HP event to announce its new webOS-based mobile devices.