Apple Digital Masters
What is Apple digital master ?
lets talk about it from a listeners point of view and from a mastering enginner point of view .
Apple Digital Masters is a standart set by apple in order to deliver the highest quality music to the listeners .
musicians also wants their music to be deliver at the highest fidelity as possible.
according to apple , mastering engineers must deliver the master following apple guidlines .
Apple Music now offers to subscribers high resolution lossless versions of these masters using the Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC).
that’s good news for musicians and listeners as one
truth is that in order to get higher quality master the song should be recorded in high res,but thats another story.
up to recently apple masters was AAC files which means they were lossy.
dont get me wrong they sound great as AAC … only with ALAC [lossless ] they sound better .
lossy files means that some of the information ( frequencies ) was cut out during the convertion .
the reason is in order to make the file smaller there for faster and lighter to stream !
What are the “Apple Digital Masters” requirements ?
Apple Digital Master have 3 basic requirements but must have .
1 The master bit rate sshould be minimum 24bit or higher ,16 bit is not acceptable !
2 sample rates should be 44.1khz or higher ..48, 88.2, and 96 kHz.
3 no clipping !!
a lot of songs get rejected because of the clipping.
sometimes after converting file to AAC clipping
especially peak clipping .
in your DAW the song looks great but when converting it peaks get “louder” .
you can use plugins to see how the song will perform after conversion.
apple also have tools for this one of them is AURoundtripAAC .
What bitrate is Apple digital master ?
256 kbps AAC
apple recommends even asks us to deliver them high resolution WAV maser and they will convert it .
benefits from their encoding prosess to AAC or ALAC are that they use advanced anti aliasing filters
and 32bit flow files to ensure maximum master quality because a lot less info removed in the converting prosses unlike other lossy convertion to mp3 or aac used in home or online applications .
another side effect accure during converting your master is clipping and like we said apple reject masters that are clipping in a distortad way.
you can use special plugins to monitors the song if its clipping and limit the peaks if needed.
apple also have tools for that one of them is AURoundtripAAC that lets you see and hear how your master behave after conversion to AAC .
how to get Apple Digital Master ?
for best results make sure to follow this guidance from the recording phase .
up scaling your files afetr recording will not result in higher quality music !
even due some services or devices like bluetooth do not stream high resolution audio at the moment.
they are working to get there as you read this article.
At AMPG studios we will take care of all the tech side for you so you can focus on the music .
the mastering engineer also monitors the file to make sure it is not clipping .
- we are apple digital masters certified provider
- AMPG are on apple digital masters specialist list
Contact us we offer free mastering sample for new clients try it .