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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

#131

Post by solarmist »

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…

The cart before the horse doesn’t sound very Apple like. They’re the kind to keep it private and mess with it until they find a use for it and get it working very well.

Instead they’d just find a way to make the battery bigger because they know people care a ton about that.

Also, everyone keeps talking about consciously moving your head around. Record yourself doing something on your computer for 5 minutes and watch how much your head already, unconsciously moves around. It’s a lot.

Yes it’s subtle, but it’s supposed to be. You’re meant to forget about it. It’s trying to more accurately reproduce our natural abilities.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#132

Post by cies »

StavrosK wrote: post #103
Someone1234 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I and many others running good high end gear can repeatedly score well on these tests. I, too, run high-end gear and cannot. The problem scope isn't simply reproduction accuracy, it is also one of taste: Different compression can elevate/alter parts of the sound, and your opinion may not lean to the highest bit rate but rather some other coloring of the music. The fact you've run this test "repeatedly" actually hur…

Why does any of this matter? The point of a blind ABX test (and the whole question) is to see whether you can tell the difference between two formats. If you can, you can. Personally, I stop being able to tell somewhere around 200 kbit MP3s (with cheap equipment), anything above that is wasted space. You can run the tests as much as you want, if the hypothesis is that "people can't tell the difference between lossles…

> I stop being able to tell somewhere around 200 kbit MP3s (with cheap equipment)

Yups. Me too. Even with cheap professional equipment I cannot hear the difference of lossless vs >= 192kbps MP3.

> anything above that is wasted space.

Unless you want to mix/remix/etc. Changing the pitch brings out the artifacts.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#133

Post by RIMR »

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…

I took the test, and it pretty conclusively proved to me that I cannot detect the difference.

And even if I could detect the difference, I am not convinced that the improvement in bitrate would actually result in any increased enjoyment.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#134

Post by jayd16 »

toxik wrote: post #94
PaulHoule wrote: post #74

I don't believe it. If I read that right they claim that they can deliver "spatial" audio via headphones using a multi-channel/object-based Dolby Atmos (as opposed to a binaural recording or something that else that is mixed for two channels ahead of time) For years there has been talk about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function and for years I have tried demos that are unimpressive, particular…

There's a questionable assumption in the HRTF article, namely that the transfer function is the same (or similar) for different people in different environments. I don't think the same HRTF would sound convincing indoors and outdoors, even. Let alone differences in ear shapes and sizes.

Sony is working on a version that uses an image of your ear to find a better match. They talked about it in a few PS5 talks.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#135

Post by teolandon »

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…

What's interesting to me is that they put J Balvin's statement about lossless audio in the section about spatial audio.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#136

Post by StrictDabbler »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #88
alfalfasprout wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Of course, it's not only the compression that's at stake-- it's also the mastering quality. HN threads on lossless music so often descend into "well, you couldn’t hear the difference". But historically a key reason for people to prefer e.g. SACD releases of recordings is not because one can hear the extra frequencies of this format, but because the SACD release – being targeted at people with a good stereo and sile…

Absolutely agreed. People spend so much time arguing about whether we're "past the limits of human perception" on sound or video. They want to quote Nyquist and check frequencies.

Spend a million dollars on audio equipment. Turn on your speakers, play some chamber music in insane multi-channel high-res audio, and invite a friend over.

Your friend does not think you hired a string quartet. Your friend thinks you have nice speakers.

If your friend is naive and easily fooled, do an A/B test by actually hiring a quartet and alternating with the speakers.

There are a thousand compromises between the source of music and your ear. What is worth paying for is a recording where those compromises were made well. The compression level is a very small part of the picture.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#137

Post by andybak »

marcan_42 wrote: post #89
alfalfasprout wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is largely because MP3 is a crappy, old format. Try high-bitrate Opus on most samples and you're a lot less likely to get above-chance results on an ABX test, pretty much ever, at high bitrates. Ultimately though, lossy compression is always program-dependent ("program" here means the song, not the app). The encoders use psychoacoustic algorithms, and there is no way to prove they will perform well on all sample…

MP3 with a good compressor and reasonable bitrate has repeatedly shown to be indistinguishable from uncompressed. The reason to avoid mp3 is to be able to squeeze the bitrate and save on storage bandwidth - but that has mattered less year on year.

I'm personally baffled and irritated by this move from Apple. They'll be selling healing crystals next.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#138

Post by intrasight »

yRbfmm1rVg8K5TR wrote: post #33
xd1936 wrote: post #16

Can't wait to listen to 192kHz/24-bit on my AAC Bluetooth AirPods

You may have missed this footnote at the bottom: > Due to the large file sizes and bandwidth needed for Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless Audio, subscribers will need to opt in to the experience. Hi-Res Lossless also requires external equipment, such as a USB digital-to-analog converter (DAC).

I saw that too, but they didn't really give any context. Is Apple saying that the iPhone DAC is insufficient? Or Macs? Or something else?

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#139

Post by dinglefairy »

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 suppose there's something to this 'head turning' experience, but what immediately came to my paranoid mind was all that sweet juicy private data that they will likely have access to. knowing what you look at/are doing while you listen to music. your entire bodies movement is related to the way your head moves. the only people i picture that do nothing while listening to music, just sitting there actively listening, are hifi guys in their hifi chairs.

why spend resources on this though? how do you set the 'reference' point? the source of where the music is supposed to come from? if you're at a concert and turn your head left and right, there's not much change in where the source sounds like it's coming from. even if you turn around, the sound at a concert is so consuming that even turning barely makes a directional difference. the next best thing after a wall of sound is four walls of sound.

when you think about it, we have basically perfected many things. i see a lot of pervasive technology going more towards using customers as products rather than providing more value to them. in other words, the added feature/value becomes the way to harvest more granular data.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#140

Post by tobyhinloopen »

dahfizz wrote: post #91
clydethefrog wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Once upon a time, iTunes would automatically rip a CD for you. It would even name the tracks, artist, and get the album art for you and integrate it all into your regular itunes library. I don't know if they still do (or if apple even makes cd drives anymore).

You can totally still do that with an external CD reader.

Source: I totally still do that with my CD collection.

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