Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Since 2012, Apple has been running a program it calls Mastered for iTunes. The initiative allows engineers to preserve the highest-possible quality when encoding master recordings for digital distribution through iTunes (and now Apple Music). Apple’s tools and guidelines prevent clipping and other unwanted remnants of the loudness wars — when producers and mastering engineers keep turning up the volume knob on recorded music at the expense of dynamic range.
Mastered for iTunes was never about bit rate or high-resolution audio; Apple has continued to stick with the lossy AAC format as streaming competitors like Tidal have put an emphasis on lossless audio. But listeners have still been able to make out differences between Mastered for…
Apple rebrands its best-sounding music as ‘Apple Digital Masters’
Source: New feed
