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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

#121

Post by CannisterFlux »

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.)

Even on bog-standard Android, Ogg files tend not to be as well supported by random music programs compared to MP3. I re-ripped a few CDs in MP3 that I'd also foolishly done to ogg just have them play gapless in VLC I think it was (might have been some other app, I forget now), otherwise there was an annoying pause between tracks that had seemless blending between them. And another app I use to slow down or pitch shift tracks to play along to or transcribe didn't work with anything but MP3 for a long time, though that at least got an update.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#122

Post by te_chris »

fullstop wrote: post #66
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I can't carry a few thousand of those with me at all times, though. I hear what you're saying, but the convenience of a vast and portable library is compelling.

Why not both? Spotify is cheap. I spend a fair amount on vinyl and CD/SACD (SACD/CD for classical and the occasional jazz record, vinyl for everything else) and still keep a sub for spotify for work listening and being able to just check something out - although I guess YouTube can do that for free in most cases, and with electronic music, often the only streamable recording of a lot of records.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#123

Post by robbyt »

marcodiego wrote: post #112
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 cod…

Who are these people who can't hear the difference? And what sort of listen setup have you used to test this? Even my parents can hear the difference!

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#125

Post by josteink »

salamandersauce wrote: post #76
josteink wrote: post #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.

Because they can't guarantee the Apple TV is hooked up to Atmos capable speakers. With the headphones and built-in speakers they know they can fake Atmos. Not so on a random TV.

> Because they can't guarantee the Apple TV is hooked up to Atmos capable speakers.

Nonsense. Apple TV supports Dolby Atmos and can detect a compatible receiver/speaker when connected.

iTunes on Apple TV offers hundreds of movies with Atmos-audio after all.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#126

Post by marcodiego »

fullstop wrote: post #66
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I can't carry a few thousand of those with me at all times, though. I hear what you're saying, but the convenience of a vast and portable library is compelling.

Except for convenience, since they're DRM free I don't believe there is any, even legal, reason not to rip it to an SD-card.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#128

Post by klmadfejno »

sbarre wrote: post #116
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…

Why is that useful though? "It's like I'm really listening to a TV!". Isn't that what people try to avoid with expensive sound systems that offer surround sound?

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#129

Post by friedegg »

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.)

I ripped all of my CDs to FLAC, then I was able to convert those to Ogg Vorbis at the time for my portable player. Later I converted the FLACs to mp3s, and used Apple's iTunes Match, so I have access to them on various devices for $25/year.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#130

Post by josteink »

a4isms wrote: post #34
josteink wrote: post #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.

Perhaps Apple TV doesn’t have an H1 or W1 chip? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors

Apple TV supports Dolby Atmos for movies and anything else when connected to a capable output.

Why shouldn’t it work for music too?

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