Live data from Hacker News

Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

apple.com

11–20 of 717 posts

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#11
This is honestly quite exciting and I’m actually tempted to use get Apple Music to try this. However, it’s not really clear to me how I can play these tracks. Can I use my existing Dolby Atmos setup? If so, what kind of hardware do I need to connect? Can I use a HDMI dongle for my iPad, for example, to connect it to my receiver?

Or is this only an Apple-specific thing that only works on Apple speakers.

I’m afraid I already know the answer and it only works on Apple stuff.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#12
Who knew I would be locked into Spotify not by the music quality, but by playlists, friends, apps using it, and their Discovery mechanisms.

Apple and Tidal may have awesome quality, but apps like https://musicleague.app/ have gotten me through Lockdown, and it turns out that these value props are very strong.

I always thought I would instantly switch to a service for its audio quality, but then again, I can also buy FLACs, ALACs, and CDs. Geez, my music spending has changed completely over the last decade.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#13

Maybe I was reading it all too quickly but they never seem to outline the format they'll actually use for the lossless songs. Anyone happen to know? Edit: Seems they are using their own format ALAC, sad but not surprising

From the article:

> Apple Music will also make its catalog of more than 75 million songs available in Lossless Audio. Apple uses ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) to preserve every single bit of the original audio file.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#14

Maybe I was reading it all too quickly but they never seem to outline the format they'll actually use for the lossless songs. Anyone happen to know? Edit: Seems they are using their own format ALAC, sad but not surprising

>Apple uses ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) to preserve every single bit of the original audio file

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#17

Maybe I was reading it all too quickly but they never seem to outline the format they'll actually use for the lossless songs. Anyone happen to know? Edit: Seems they are using their own format ALAC, sad but not surprising

It‘s ALAC, but more interestingly with optional ridiculously high sample rate of 196 kHz. I‘m not sure if the setting for that is up to the listener or up to the publisher.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#18
> By default, Apple Music will automatically play Dolby Atmos tracks on all AirPods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip, as well as the built-in speakers in the latest versions of iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Apple TV seems oddly missing in that list.

Edit: If anything is to be expected to be connected to a surround Atmos setup, it would be a TV-room audio-setup.

Edit 2: Confirmed supported.

Post reply on HN