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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

#141

Post by StavrosK »

cies wrote: post #132
StavrosK wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Certainly, you probably need lossless if you're going to do any sort of editing.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#142

Post by smoldesu »

ivraatiems wrote: post #35
vr46 wrote: post #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…

Agreed - Spotify's UI is bad and getting worse, and its quality is meh, but its discovery features are top notch and it has the biggest catalog. I have audiophile equipment - $900 MSRP Hifiman headphones, discrete DAC and amp - and I tried Tidal to see if I could hear a difference. 99% of the time, I can't... and Tidal's MQA format is questionable anyway. (Not sure about Apple's "ALAC" either.) I used a playlist impo…

>I have audiophile equipment - $900 MSRP Hifiman headphones, discrete DAC and amp - and I tried Tidal to see if I could hear a difference. 99% of the time, I can't... and Tidal's MQA format is questionable anyway. (Not sure about Apple's "ALAC" either.)

Comparing Spotify on high settings to the WAVs I have stored on my computer, the difference is hardly noticeable. I'm convinced that Spotify's sound depends more on the systems audio pipeline.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#144

Post by throw_nbvc1234 »

formerly_proven wrote: post #61
ivraatiems wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - Spotify's UI is bad and getting worse, and its quality is meh, but its discovery features are top notch and it has the biggest catalog. I have audiophile equipment - $900 MSRP Hifiman headphones, discrete DAC and amp - and I tried Tidal to see if I could hear a difference. 99% of the time, I can't... and Tidal's MQA format is questionable anyway. (Not sure about Apple's "ALAC" either.) I used a playlist impo…

ALAC and FLAC are technically very similar formats [1]. Both are bit-perfect. Compare with MQA which is utter garbage and has absolutely zero to do with losless. MQA is actually, objectively worse than 16 bit audio CDs. An abject failure backed by an aggressively anti-science company backed up by a bunch of lawyers. [1] Both encode a PCM stream using linear prediction while storing the difference between the predicto…

Just to add to this comment, the video breakdowns I've watched on MQA are interesting listens even as someone who doesn't use Tidal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRjsu9-Vznc -- Critque of MQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwZ5hDzQ5Jg -- in defense of MQA

At the end of the day, people should listen to what they think sounds good (is this an opinion?). If a placebo makes someone enjoy something more, is it really a placebo? If someone can't tell the difference between low quality recordings and high quality recordings, why should they go through the trouble of sourcing the high quality stuff.

It's so easy to lose track of the subjective nature of audio in all of the objective details.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#145

Post by marcodiego »

robbyt wrote: post #123
marcodiego wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

For a quick result: http://systmuwi.de/Pdf/Technical%20Reports/TechnicalReport_M... page 16.

And about people getting used to compression artifacts: https://web.archive.org/web/20090315092806/radar.oreilly.com... and https://gizmodo.com/ipods-and-young-people-have-utterly-dest...

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#147

Post by tobyhinloopen »

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.

I use a disk drive to sync the discs to my music library and bring them with me :)

I can format it to MP3, or ALAC, of FLAC, or whatever I like, and I can play them on devices that are made today, or 40 years ago.

But secretly I just use Spotify for it’s discover features, and then buy CDs of the albums I like.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#148

Post by boardwaalk »

Someone1234 wrote: post #93
dagmx wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really difficult (almost impossible) to keep your head perfectly still.

Indeed, so you're getting degradation/distortion of the audio source most of the time . That's why most people try it a couple of times then turn it off.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I turned it off not because of any degradation/distortion, but because the tracking wasn’t that great (on multiple fairly recent devices) and one ‘hiccup’ where you move your head but the audio sticks in place is a bigger minus than any plus from the spatial audio itself.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#149

Post by ErneX »

jayd16 wrote: post #134
toxik wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They said they might do that in the future, but who knows. PS5 ships with 5 profiles you can test and see which feels best.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#150

Post by josteink »

mikestew wrote: post #63
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.

The fine print seems to have a slightly different story by my reading: “How can I listen to Dolby Atmos music? All Apple Music subscribers using the latest version of Apple Music on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV can listen to thousands of Dolby Atmos music tracks using any headphones (emphasis mine). When you listen with compatible Apple or Beats headphones, Dolby Atmos music plays back automatically when available…

> or by connecting your Apple TV 4K to a compatible TV or audiovisual receiver

Great. That’s all I needed to hear.

I wonder why they made so basic information so hard to obtain.

I even searched the page simply for “TV” looking for that and couldn’t find it.

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