Audiophiles take note: Apple has quietly added a new section to iTunes called "Mastered for iTunes" that promises music the way "the artist and sound engineer intended."
The new section, which was added this week and brought to light by an Ars Technica report, includes Nirvana's Nevermind, Lana Del Rey's Born to Die and Beck's Sea Change, among other popular music titles. It also features a host of classical albums such as Philip Glass's Symphony No. 9 and Holst: The Planets. All the titles sell for the same amount as their non-Mastered counterparts — $9.99 for an album and $1.29 for individual songs.
In a white paper explaining the offering, Apple outlines why some music doesn't sound as good in a digital format as it did in analog.
"When the CD was first becoming a popular format, many older recordings were rushed to market. To make these recordings available as soon as possible, corners were sometimes cut. In several instances, the wrong master tapes were used or the CD was mastered poorly," according to the paper. "Many of these mistakes have since been identified and corrected, but even so, a number of record labels are remastering older material for rerelease in high resolution formats like DVD-A or SACD."
The paper goes on to describe how advances in encoding files for iTunes Plus and advances in digital mastering tools and techniques over the last five years have led to Mastered for iTunes.
"Delicate and artful remastering can let works of genius be experienced as they were meant to be and haven't been for years."
Compression, when overused to minimize the file size of a recording, is often responsible for the inferior sound as well. Apple will still compress files for iTunes, but is hoping the white paper will help recording engineers get better sound via iTunes.