iTunes Music: Mastering High Resolution Audio Delivery: Produce Great Sounding Music with Mastered for iTunes

This is a concise guide to mastering for iTunes, highlighting the various pitfalls that one can encounter if some basic "rules" are not adhered to. The explanation on, and justification for, dithering is well worth the read.

This book is very good reference for me. More good for who want to get to know Mixing and Mastering

Thorough and insightful!

See the title of this review for my #1 opinion.Mr Katz has a very good reputation & is an entertaining writer. Some of the info here was new to me, especially that about 32 bit floating files for premastering & just about everything to do with I-tunes.He is obviously Not a proponent of the horrible loud, bright screechy compression that has become all but required in today's music INDUSTRY. He even makes an interesting argument near the end why the volume wars actually harm radio stations (who started the wars in the first place).I consider myself an audiophile & despise compressed mastering. IMO, it ranges from robbing music of it's musicality at minimum to physical pain at worst.Where I have a problem with the book is the I-tunes part; with flac & other lossless codecs (or at least very close to lossless in reality), almost universal high speed internet & cheap storage there is no longer ANY legit excuse for MP3's or Apple lossy. They are the 8 track tapes of this decade. As the author is considered an audiophile mastering engineer I have some questions about the integrity of his association with lossy music.At one point he does make a brief argument that lossy files without volume compression may sound better than cd's with lots of volume compression & as much as I hate to admit it, he may actually have a point there! He also does state more than once that lossless files sound better than any lossy file; nonetheless imo there is no such thing as lossy audiophile music!That all said, I still recommend the book especially for people who's tech knowledge is at least slightly above average (so you'll understand it) & who still believe that volume compression & brickwalling during mastering is a good thing (believe me, it's not!)Addition 2/10/13:I just finished istening to the recent Counting Crows Underwater Sunshine cd.The 44/16 cd has a Dynamic Range reading of "6" (the WORST I have ever seen). The 2 I-tunes bonus tracks have a DR of "11"; which would seem to validate the author's point that Apple is discouraging Dynamic Range compression; he makes the point that loud mastering harms lossy files even more than it harms lossless.No, I'm not going to make any lossy format my primary source due to this; but when is the music industry going to get a freakin' clue that DR compression destroys musicality? (sigh)In another aside, I had been blaming the loudness of recent CC's albums on Eagle Rock (who tend to master REALLY Loud); but this is on an indie so the choice would seem to be by the band or management. The book states that Apple has begun rejecting overly volume compressed submissions for their "less lossy" "higher end" program; so that may account for the difference.Hope this also sorts itself out before I lose my hearing due to old age!

The book's title initially fooled me - I thought it might be nothing more than a glossy guide to "mastering" Apple's iTunes application.I was wrong and the name Bob Katz should have tipped me off to the depth of technical detail and the passionate argument for quality audio that comes through every page."Mastering Music For iTunes" is not a tutorial on digital audio mastering (If you're interested, check out Katz's "Mastering Audio" text - it's one of the bibles of the industry). While mastering engineers will appreciate the technical depth, the book's audience is anyone in the music production chain from musician, mix and mastering engineers, producer and marketers with an interest in producing high quality digital audio.With downloaded music now a dominant form of distribution and Apple's iTunes store a major point of sales, submitting the highest quality audio files to Apple under the guidelines of their Mastered for iTunes (MfiT) program requires some technical understanding. For many engineers, that means some changes to their traditional workflow of targeting CD and vinyl media. Traditional mastering tasks such as inserting pauses, balancing individual track loudness have changed, as has the very concept of an 'album' of assembled tracks. "The book's stated goal is not to make every reader an expert in audio encoding, loudness normalization, metadata, sample rate conversion and the benefits of preserving headroom, but rather to provide a working foundation enabling intelligent discussion and collaboration.I'm an amateur musician with more experience in low-level software development than mastering audio but it fascinated me to see how the inherent lack of floating-point precision in microprocessor math operations I've been aware of for years has shaped and influenced software built on top of it, including digital recording and mastering tools. Subtle and counterintuitive artifacts and behaviors are often introduced (such as the substantial growth in audio file size as a result of effects processing - which is often nothing but an overlay of repeated floating point calculations). I found the comparison to digital photography effects such as dithering and pixelation spot on and it clarified a lot of the heavier detail, as did the many software screen shots of analyzed signals.The book gives a good grounding in high-resolution audio, compression and limiting and their influence on loudness, and presents examples from a variety of software tools to give a sense of what's available to the contemporary engineer. None of the material is at the tutorial level and it's assumed that someone looking for technical depth already has a substantial background. The writing is lucid and lively and the pictorial layout of the book will make it a pleasure for non-technical readers with a serious interest in the topic.If you've followed Bob Katz's writing and his blog you're familiar with his happy warrior stance in the "loudness wars". The tone of "Matering Music for iTunes" is upbeat; Katz feels that Apple's Mastering for iTunes program has provided him with ammunition and tools to support his case for preserving headroom and with it the spacious dynamics that are for him the hallmark of quality musical production. As someone from the same generation who shares much of his perspective, I hope he's right.As a target reader I probably fall somewhere in between technical and non - I've recorded and mixed my own music in analog and digital for years but am self-taught and know merely the basics of mastering. Still, I found the book set off many ideas I want to explore and I imagine re-reading it and keeping it close to my studio desk for some time.

A decent primer on mastering HiRez audio. My big complaint is that it focuses on audio delivery to Apple for inclusion in the iTunes store. I would have like more info on doing your own "mastered for iTunes" for home and personal studio use.

Very poorly written book. Many true High Resolution experts would not agree with much of what has been written here. Total waste of my money.

Sorry , not for me. Can't figure out how to use the thing. Passed it on to my Electrical Engineer son. Maybe he can figure it out.It's horrible when technology passes you by...now I understand why my parent's VCR always flashed 12:00.

This book fill your every gap, he tells the difficult path traced by the finest minds, those who have contributed to the overrun of the thousand obstacles encountered during the implementation of the distribution of music via the Internet, experimenting with algorithms always best in order to provide the highest sound quality compared to the lightness of the file.Interesting for both a music fan and for the sound engineer committed to achieve maximum results in terms of sound quality with the Mastered for oTunes, MFiT, format.Questo libro è in grado di colmare ogni vostra lacuna sul percorso e le difficoltà che hanno incontrato delle menti geniali, gli stessi che hanno sviluppato gli algoritmi per consentirci di ascoltare file compressi in alta qualità sonora.Una lettura indispensabile sia per l'amante della musica che per il tecnico del suono impegnato a realizzare brani musicali nel formato Mastered for iTunes, MFiT.

Tout est dans ce petit livret....Technique, histoire et développement des techniques de mastering dédiées a la diffusion sur internet, et en particulier sur iTunes. Bob Katz est l'ingénieur de Mastering et sa parfaite maitrise des systemes de traitement audio analogiques et digitaux les met a la portée de tous

As expected, Bob provides a wealth of information on the subject with detailed information on the various aspects and steps to achieve the best master possible. Worth every penny (or cent in my case).Too bad he can't autograph the kindle version. ;-)

Mastering expert Bob Katz explains very well why the arrival of iTunes is changing everything for mixing and mastering engineers.The label 'mastered for iTunes' may sound like just another Apple marketing gimmick but it's actually a very serious effort which will make online music sound more faithful to the studio master than any CD ever was, despite the lossy compression.A few big names in the music industry have been lobbying and working with Apple for years to get better sound quality (Neil Young and Rick Rubin amongst others) and Apple is giving mastering engineers the tools to do that.If you mix and master music you have a duty to read this (very short) book as soon as possible to begin incorporating this new mastering discipline in to your work.As this is a cutting-edge subject and things are evolving every day, updates and discussions are available on the author's website, but the book remains an essential starting point.The enjoyment of the book is only spoiled by completely unrelated 'humorous' pictures of monkeys used as test subjects in the early days of NASA, which is in a bad taste that beggars belief.

Der Katz kompakt. Schon einige Jahre auf dem Buckel, aber immer noch hochaktuell. Wissen, das nicht nur Mastering Engineers, sondern auch Produzenten hilft.