Haywood said:
If 24-bit allows them to market lossless audio, I can deal with the bigger file size. Storage is cheap...............The reason I'm following this is that I am afraid that CDs will disappear over the next ten years and I don't want to be left with nothing but lossy options.
I hear ya!
The physical CD is dying. Well... music sales in general are dying, I suppose. But I do hate it when something I want isn't available on CD anymore, and the only download option is lossy.
Still, I'm not sure how 24-bit would affect my current equipment: An old iPod from 2004 and an Airport Express for music streaming. If Apple can make it easy for me to make a transcoded copy of that lossless 24-bit file into a lossy MP3 based around 16-bits for my iPod, then it's probably a good thing even if the added sonic benefit of 24-bit is questionable.
The article seemed to indicate iTunes was already compatible with 24-bit music files, which is news to me; but good to hear if true. (Does anyone here know for sure?) If so, I wouldn't mind trying it out. Plus, it would give me a chance to see if the optical output on my Airport Express is able to handle 24-bit files, or if I'd have to transcode those down to 16-bit, too. Unfortunately, the only 24-bit download I have is a FLAC version of a Tom Petty album that I got gratis; but I don't know how I'd go about converting FLAC to wave or ALAC even to try this test.