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Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

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Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#51

Since most of the music is consumed on headphones, I'm not sure if spatial music will appeal to many. What I would really like to see in purchased music is individual soundtracks for each instrument/vocal (which I can mix as per my taste) and one default mix made as per the producer's taste. This would not only help with music practice, karaoke,

I think we can strongly assume that airpods with spacial audio support are coming very soon. It's already a feature on the pro and max.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#52

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 a…

For one thing, Apple has a custom Dolby Atmos Implementation on their headphones that ties the accelerometers in the AirPods to detect head position and then adjust sound strength to places where you turn your head. Supposedly when watching movies with Atmos or 7.1 it's incredibly immersive. They just announced their new iMac with 'Atmos' (I want to see how this works) as well however. You probably could connect over…

Have you tried watching an Atmos/7.1 channels movie with the AirPods that support this?

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#53

This had been rumored for about a month, but that it was a FREE upgrade was completely unexpected. We thought this would be a higher tier.

Yeah, this was a hard kick to Spotify's gut.

Was it though? Don't think a lot of people go to Spotify for the quality but rather a lot of their other features, widespread support and discovery. Will take Apple a long time to catch up on that. The people caring about quality already have a ton of options outside of Spotify.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#54
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still “buy” albums digitally from Apple, and they are lossless, as they have been for almost-ever. The caveat being that you need a device capable of decoding ALAC files.

I had a look and I don't believe that's the case - are you referring to "Digital Masters"? If so, then those are actually encoded with lossy encoding.

On second review, you’re right.

They have allowed you to rip your own music to lossless for more than 15 years, but I only just found out that when using iTunes Match, they cheat and only store a high-resolution but lossy version on their service.

Thanks!

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#55
post #23

From the article: > J Balvin said: [...] With Lossless, everything in the music is going to sound bigger and stronger but more importantly, it will be better quality. [...] There have been tests showing we cannot hear the difference between minimally lossy audio (e.g. mp3 320kbps) and lossless. But Balvin can. And it sounds "bigger and stronger". The extra quality of lossless is nice when mixing/remixing the sound, a…

I have plastic shiny disks that are DRM free. They’re actually pretty great, lossless, and no monthly fees. They are called _Compact Discs_ and you can get them pretty cheap these days!

Where can I buy CDs of popular music?

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#56

> 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. What does it mean to have spatial audio on a pair of headphones? I thought spatial audio meant you needed a 5 speaker setup or similar.

Likely they are releasing a set of airpods soon with a kind of head-tracked positional audio. The pro and max can already do positional audio where the sound seems to be coming from a paired iPad no matter how you twist your head.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#57

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 a…

I would imagine at the very least an Apple TV 4K hooked up to your receiver would work. The Apple TV 4K does support Dolby Atmos and I can't imagine they wouldn't update it to support this. All they say so far is that you need Atmos compatible stuff for it to work.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#58

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 a…

For one thing, Apple has a custom Dolby Atmos Implementation on their headphones that ties the accelerometers in the AirPods to detect head position and then adjust sound strength to places where you turn your head. Supposedly when watching movies with Atmos or 7.1 it's incredibly immersive. They just announced their new iMac with 'Atmos' (I want to see how this works) as well however. You probably could connect over…

It sounds like a genuinely good idea for movies, but only for VR, right? How often do you turn your head while watching a regular movie?

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#59
post #23

From the article: > J Balvin said: [...] With Lossless, everything in the music is going to sound bigger and stronger but more importantly, it will be better quality. [...] There have been tests showing we cannot hear the difference between minimally lossy audio (e.g. mp3 320kbps) and lossless. But Balvin can. And it sounds "bigger and stronger". The extra quality of lossless is nice when mixing/remixing the sound, a…

I have plastic shiny disks that are DRM free. They’re actually pretty great, lossless, and no monthly fees. They are called _Compact Discs_ and you can get them pretty cheap these days!

Can I listen to this tracks on the go without carrying them with them and a special device to play them?
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