Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#111

Post by pdpi » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #28

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,

> Since most of the music is consumed on headphones, I'm not sure if spatial music will appeal to many

The spatial sound implementation on the EarPods pro is amazing. When I first tried them with my iPad I had to take them off several times to make sure the sound was coming from the headphones. I can only assume this will be as good.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#112

Post by marcodiego » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

cies wrote: 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…

Personal experience: most people can not differentiate anything above 128kbps mp3. Some can, but don't care. A lot of people listen to music in noisy environments with lower quality blue-tooth devices that decrease audio quality even more and make it way harder to differentiate from anything better than 128kbps mp3. Most current music is heavily dynamic compressed leaving very little space to differentiate better codecs. And the new generation of listeners is getting so used to compression artifacts that a cleaner sound may feel strange and unfamiliar.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#113

Post by hulitu » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

CrankyBear wrote: post #101

alecmg wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any of these use FLAC? Or does everyone invent their own wheel?

Amazon uses FLAC.

Do you have any reference. Last time i cheched Amazon music HD was "bitrates up to xxx kbps". Up to for me starts at 0.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#114

Post by lukevp » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

alfalfasprout wrote: post #38

cies wrote: 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…

> 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". On the contrary, you can actually do these tests yourself ( https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/... ). I and many others running good high end gear can repeatedly score well on these tests. Of course, it's not only the…

You may be confusing data compression with dynamic range compression, since you mention dynamic range. Dynamic range compression (limiting / brick wall limiting) has nothing to do with data compression, which is just referring to the removal of unnecessary data that is not noticeable from a psychoacoustic perspective (eg humans can’t hear above 24khz so that data isn’t needed, etc.) here is more info on DRC and MP3: http://www.tonestack.net/articles/digital-audio-compression/...

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#115

Post by boardwaalk » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

Saint_Genet wrote: post #92

I sure hope spatial audio won't be the only way music will be delivered in the future. It'd be a complete nightmare for people like me who has severely impaired hearing on one ear.

I think most (Apple) devices have an accessibility setting that let you downmix multichannel audio to mono.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#116

Post by sbarre » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #46

This is included/no additional cost which is fantastic. I do wonder if in the longer term if Apple's Spatial Audio with "dynamic head tracking" isn't the next 3D TVs/3D Content i.e. a gimmick. Taking traditional multi-source audio (Dolby/Atmos/etc) and jamming it into stereo is old tech, it doesn't work particularly well but is cheap to make/consume, thus mostly harmless. The new Spatial Audio is using gyroscopes to…

> I do wonder if in the longer term if Apple's Spatial Audio with "dynamic head tracking" isn't the next 3D TVs/3D Content i.e. a gimmick.

For what it's worth, I have a pair of Audeze headphones that has 3D head tracking or whatever they call it, and I don't think it's a gimmick.

When I'm wearing those and watching a movie on my TV (or playing a game on my PC), the sound really does appear to be coming from in front of me (or beside/behind me depending on the channel or the mix), and if I turn my head, the sound stays put.

It's somewhat subtle, but it can make me forget that I'm wearing headphones and I personally find it really adds to the experience.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#117

Post by solarmist » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

dagmx wrote: post #87

reasonabl_human wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

All the time. Humans don't stay still. We move our heads regularly, where even small movements help our audiovisual spatial sense. It's just that our consciousness ignores these little movements and so we think we're largely still.

Yup. It’s like the fact that your eyes heck all over and I believe slightly vibrate in order to sample from slightly different positions to improve image quality.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#118

Post by StavrosK » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #82

cies wrote: 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…

Converting files to Ogg Vorbis a long time ago was something I regret. There is nothing special about the compression/quality as compared to a quality MP3 encoder or Apple's AAC encoder (maybe the only quality AAC encoder) but you are guaranteed to have to re-encode if you want to play on your sports watch, in your car, play on your smart speakers, etc.)

> There is nothing special about the compression/quality as compared to a quality MP3 encoder

Really? From tests I did way back in the day, the quality was comparable at around half the size. It's a shame Vorbis support isn't widespread though, given that it's royalty-free. Let's hope Opus has a better fate.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#119

Post by pdpi » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #53

agloeregrets wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've given Apple Music a try a few times. Every time, I've dropped it and gone back to Spotify — not because of the audio quality or network effects or anything, but just because the Apple Music UX is so freaking terrible. I don't doubt that this will sound amazing, but that will still not overcome the UI issues.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#120

Post by RIMR » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

So they're bringing spatial audio, a live-performance gimmick that is nearly impossible to accomplish with headphones, and lossless audio, a quality improvement undetectable by the human ear, and completely negated by bluetooth transmission...

Sounds like they're bringing nothing but more data consumption to the table.