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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

#271

Post by layer8 »

crazygringo wrote: post #243
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…

> Either you keep your head stationary and get the non-Spatial Audio sound (i.e. what they optimized for 90%+ of their audience) I literally have no idea what you're talking about. Using Spatial Audio on my AirPods Pro is insanely better, and still very much spatial, even without actively moving my head. First, the sound appears to be coming from outside of my head, rather than between my ears -- no "headphone fatigu…

> the sound appears to be coming from outside of my head, rather than between my ears

It’s a pity that Apple doesn’t provide that feature as a simple option that one can apply to any audio source.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#272

Post by Jcowell »

Mandelmus wrote: post #201
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…

This Apple Music “spatial audio” just means Dolby Atmos. It is not the same gyroscope-based spatial audio that they use on Apple TV.

Apple TV doesn’t have Spacial Audio. Only iPads and iPhones.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#273

Post by germinalphrase »

crazygringo wrote: post #243
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…

> Either you keep your head stationary and get the non-Spatial Audio sound (i.e. what they optimized for 90%+ of their audience) I literally have no idea what you're talking about. Using Spatial Audio on my AirPods Pro is insanely better, and still very much spatial, even without actively moving my head. First, the sound appears to be coming from outside of my head, rather than between my ears -- no "headphone fatigu…

Can you offer a good example video? I’ve done some binaural recording in the past, but my reaction so far to Apple’s spatial audio has been… kinda meh.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#274

Post by 45ure »

StavrosK wrote: post #118
PaulHoule wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>It's a shame Vorbis support isn't widespread though, given that it's royalty-free.

Spotify currently uses Ogg Vorbis on desktop and mobile, and AAC for the web player.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#276

Post by whywhywhywhy »

schmorptron wrote: post #152

Wow, I've been using Apple Music on trial to see how it's different from spotify and with this news + Spotify now selling pseudo-ads in the forms of playlist and recommendation algorithm placements for less artist royalties I'll stay with Apple for sure. One thing that really differentiates it is that the curated playlists seem a lot more cared for than with Spotify. I've found so many of the pre-made playlists that…

>Spotify now selling pseudo-ads in the forms of playlist and recommendation algorithm placements for less artist royalties

Hard to take artists demands to be paid better seriously when they keep agreeing to things like this.

Honestly they are their own worst enemy at times.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#277

Post by lloeki »

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…

There is also the theoretical case of double lossy encoding, e.g with Bluetooth headsets.

Something not perceivable when listening to AAC decoding directly punched into a wired headset vs reencoding for BT transport which could transform previously unhearable compression artifacts into the perceivable range (think editing a jpeg and resaving as jpeg often produces artifacts)

I have not seen any tests for that.

(Of course if the device is able to push the AAC stream to the headset this does not happen. This kind of thing is quite opaque and hard to get info about as to which hardware or combination of hardware would support that)

> So a very well mastered track with plenty of dynamic range will still sound noticeably better on high performing speakers or headphones

I'm quite convinced that a good part of vinyl being reputably better comes from that, especially with the virtuous loop of audiophiles being the main audience for modern vinyl, which calls for good mastering.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#278

Post by jolux »

unfamiliar wrote: post #209
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…

> I and many others running good high end gear can repeatedly score well on these tests. Every time this comes up someone says this. I've never seen anyone actually doing it. e.g. a video of setting up a double blind test of this and someone actually passing consistently. When I've challenged people IRL who claim the same thing the response is always "Well, obviously I can't do it with any of the audio gear that eith…

My buddy can do it. I didn’t believe him at first but he scored better than me, consistently. We’re both musicians but he’s more into lossless audiophile stuff.

We tested it out in our college dorm freshman year. Speakers were the built in ones on my MacBook Pro. I will say that the difference is extremely minor and he has said he only cares about lossless for the sake of having original media in high quality, so he can make compressed versions in whatever format he wants without losing quality. He rarely actually listens to lossless audio. What he recognized was minor clipping on some high-hat hits, and after he pointed it out I could notice it too if I really tried.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#279

Post by agloeregrets »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #239
agloeregrets wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't think it would affect spotify much. If anything it probably would totally kill Tidal.

Spotify was launching a lossless music tier at what was thought to be around $20/mo.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#280

Post by agloeregrets »

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.

Spotify was launching a lossless music tier at what was thought to be around $20/mo.
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