Compact Disc

Japanese blog Macotakara claims that Apple is planning better-than-CD quality audio for iTunes at some point in 2016.

According to several insiders familiar with Apple, whose products are exhibited at Portable Audio Festival, Apple has been developing hi-res audio streaming up to 96kHz/24-bit in 2016.

By way of comparison, CDs offer 44kHz/16-bit. The sources cited appear to be manufacturers making Lightning-based headphones, which would support the hi-res format. It should be noted, however, that Apple has been sourcing at least some of its music at 96kHz/24-bit for many years …

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What do 1980, 1989 and 2003 have in common? They were the peak sales years for LPs, cassettes and CDs respectively. After that, a very slight resurgence in vinyl aside, it was all downhill.

Billboard magazine has an interesting piece in which they suggest that perhaps 2012 might join that list – as the year that saw peak sales for music downloads, with streaming services like Spotify, Rdio and now, of course, iTunes Radio the heir apparent …

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