Zappa's widow complains at music compression in iTunes

Jonny Evans
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September 22, 2008
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 Gail Zappa, the widow of Frank Zappa, is furious with iTunes and other digital music services, complaining the service offers music that is far too compressed - more so than the artist himself ever intended.

"It was Frank's concept to limit to a format so that it was accurately represented, that being 16-bit technology - CDs. He didn't want it compressed. So we're currently in a lawsuit over this issue," she said.

What Zappa's widow is stressing is that the music her husband made was meant to be heard at a certain quality - compressed, it's just not the same. "iTunes has been from the get-go massively compressed," she said, "That's fine perhaps if you're Britney Spears... but it's not fine for Frank Zappa's music, and he was interested in protecting that," she told the LA Times.

 

 

Musician Toby Marks (Banco De Gaia) has made similar complaints, saying on digital music compression rates: "I have literally spent my recording career trying to make things sound better. I recently got into 5:1 surround. I absolutely hate the fact that it’s possible to release music at the same quality it was created, yet the market has moved backward to something that’s little better than cassettes."


Comments (12)

AttK (not verified) | September 22, 2008 - 5:28am

I agree that m4a and mp3 compression schemes don't sound as good as a 16-bit CD or a modern 24-bit master. What's often overlooked is how crappy the mastering jobs are these days... if she had Frank's stuff "digitally remastered", that's probably where the problem lies moreso than in the "lossy" m4a or mp3 conversion.

It's an ongoing argument in the pro recording field about over-compressed mastering jobs... Quite commonly, the CDs you buy these days actually only carry 4 bits worth of dynamic range, and hardly take advantage of the entire resolution of the CD to start with! So, when these smashed files hit a "lossy" format, they sound even worse...

As an artist with material on iTunes, this was a trade-off I had to live with, and it was something I understood going into it. Fotunately, I didn't let the mastering engineer smash the crud out of my CD and the m4a files actually sound pretty good when compared to the CD.

Now going into a lawsuit due to crappy preparation? That's a total laugh... I love Zappa, but that lady is nuts...

AttK (not verified) | September 22, 2008 - 5:52am

I was just on Amazon checking Zappa CD's out... Over half his catalog is marked "original recording remastered"... There ya go!

micy (not verified) | September 22, 2008 - 5:57am

Frank Zappa surely always had state-of-the-art recording techniques, all the way up to being 24-bit already in the late '80. He had all his older records being updated (even including doing re-recordings, which infuriated some many of the fans) to modern standarts. So, I think it is a good and true move from Gail to try and get better quality in iTunes.

What should be mentioned though is that the back-catalogue of Frank Zappa's music is not on iTunes at all!!!. Zappa sold his back-catalogue to Rykodisk closely before his death to leave some money to his family. Rykodisk originally made Zappa's music available on iTunes. Then Rykodist was bought by Warner, Zappa's long term enemy in music publication. Warner pulled the Zappa catalogue from iTunes about three years ago.

What Gail's role is in all of this is unclear to me, but guessing from her other actions through the years, it seems more probable that she is trying to get more money from Warner, then that she is prohibiting publication because of quality issues, however important they are!

best
michael

AttK (not verified) | September 22, 2008 - 8:06pm

I hate to disagree with your comment, but I'm a recording geek and I just couldn't let this slide, sorry in advance...

I'm pretty sure 24-bit wasn't a reality back in the late 80's... Most of the machines of the era were 16-bit, if you're lucky. (I remember one of my older engineer friends saying they used to have to stack d/a converters just to get 16-bit early on!) The late 80's would have been the era of the Sony Dash machines and the Mitsubishi x32, both open-reel decks and probably cost more than my whole block to own one! Even today, the best 24-bit d/a can't do the theoretical 144dB dynamic range. (You're lucky to get 120dB of dynamics, and that's still pushing it...) Compare that to an analog open-reel machine with Dolby SR and you get over 150db of dynamic range... The big problem is in the mastering... scrunching a 110dB+ recording into a 96dB space. And actually, most CD's live in the top 12dB... so cramming 110dB+ into a 12dB space!!! (blame consumers for this; louder is always better...) You can't put it in that space without MASSIVE dynamic compression. And then, you turn it into a mp3 or m4a and it falls apart 'cause it's already so crunched out. Yuk!

deathByChiChi (not verified) | September 22, 2008 - 6:02am

This problem is actually self-correcting as storage capacities increase. I used to have a 6 gig hard drive, the highest capacity available, dedicated to music, and digitized my CDs at 128 kilobits/sec like everyone else, then moved to 192 Kb/sec and now digitize at 256 Kb/sec. Rhapsody sells the Led Zeppelin Complete files at 256 Kb/sec.

Kerry (not verified) | September 22, 2008 - 6:26am

If Apple sold DRM free Apple Lossless recordings for it iTunes Plus service then the issue would be moot. I do not buy on iTunes because the over compression to 128AAC sounds terrible in the few songs I did buy.

Now if they sold in Apple Lossless but built into iTunes real time re-encoding of the music to AAC in a bit rate of the users choosing (for iPods) then I would certainly be buying from iTunes.

But for now I am still waiting for higher quality digital music, and as another poster mentioned, a lot of music is mastered terribly in the first place. That does not help.

ActionOxford (not verified) | September 22, 2008 - 7:23am

I buy CDs and encode them with FLAC for archival (ripping with EAC), then encode those FLACs with LAME to use on my iPod/iPhone. I use 128 kbits, and to my (admittedly less-than-stellar) ear they sound excellent. And the file sizes allow me to store quite a bit of music. If I get a device with more memory one day, I can re-encode from the FLACs and I'm off and running again. This flexibility works for me, and the lack of flexibility makes me less inclined to buy from iTunes or the like.

But the idea of selling in a lossless format (Apple Lossless, as mentioned above) and then compressing to a lossy format on the fly at the bit rate you choose for the device (and amount of storage) you want - that would be extremely nice!

Especially if I could do it myself, using a high quality CD ripper.

jgaines (not verified) | September 22, 2008 - 7:57am

I hate to break it to her, but 16 bit is compressed when bounced to CD.

Coma (not verified) | September 22, 2008 - 8:03am

Wow, that woman rocks. She (just) suit a small (really small), local Zappa-Fanfestival here in northern Germany.

You know, a little come together of Zappa-Fans, there were Cover-Bands playing his music and such things. However i guess she wanted some piece of the cake ... so she went to law.

Honestly, why is everyone complaining about Yoko Ono when there is Gail Zappa?

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | September 22, 2008 - 8:57am

Well i like all my music at 128kb/sec, 192kb and 256kb, got to be better but right now is just taking all my space and i can't really hear the difference, the only difference i see is how much space is taking and i don't like that

idonotknowme (not verified) | September 22, 2008 - 3:45pm

If you want control of when, where, how, by whom and in what format "your" music is sold, then you need to own all rights and distribution agreements and all that crap. If you don't like it being on iTunes, then buy all the rights back from whomever owns them now and made the agreement with iTunes. Unless you are willing to do that, stop whining.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | September 23, 2008 - 1:28pm

I agree with her. I love Apple completely, but I do not purchase tracks from the iTunes music store. TV shows, yes, but not music. I did a lot of comparison testing early on (CD/ACC, ACC/MP3, CD/MP3) at various bit rates and found iTunes lacking in every respect. I much prefer LAME as an encoder. It has a "brighter" sound, more similar to a CD, which is, admittedly, a personal preference. I rip my CDs using LAME at 320kps (probably higher than necessary, as the difference between 256 kps and 320 is negligible, but I have a large external hard drive.) As for the rest I prefer to purchase from Digital7 or Other Music at 320kps sans DRM, but purchase a fair amount from Amazon and lots from eMusic at 256kps. I love eMusic. At least they encode with LAME—at a lower bitrate than I'd like, but you can't beat the price. Anyway ... my two cents.