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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

#311

Post by breakfastduck »

squarefoot wrote: post #231
StavrosK wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Lossless, and possibly upsampling before editing, but high end gear probably does that by default. As for bitrate compression, although I have a good musical ear, I can't find any appreciable difference from a high bitrate (320) mp3 and the corresponding lossless track, so no problems using mp3s to listen to music. I also managed to resample my entire portable playlist (yeah, making mp3s out of mp3s, I know in some c…

Not sure you're saving your ears by doing this compared to say, turning the volume down.

You can't 'uncompress' an MP3 back to having the dynamic range it had before.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#312

Post by reaperducer »

fullstop wrote: post #168
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then you have to have a place to keep thousands of CDs. Personally, I find that my time is worth $10/month to not do that.

Until your streaming service gets sold, goes out of business, "pivots," decides you or your worldviews aren't trendy, thinks you're a hacker, screws up your billing, drops support for your device, or any of the hundreds of other reasons the music suddenly stops.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#313

Post by ehsankia »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #179
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 highly suggest that people check out/try out "ABX comparator" plugin for Foobar2000 player. You give it two files (say a 128kbps mp3 version and a lossless flac verison) and it runs you through a double blind test of the two versions, quizzing you along the way. It's not just "listen to A" "listen to B", it gives you lots of options to listen to them and compare them in different ways, including obfuscating what tr…

+1 I have nothing against NPR but that has like 5 samples and absolutely nothing about methodology.

As far as I know, the goto test is: http://abx.digitalfeed.net/

They have a few other tests heres: http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#314

Post by nicoburns »

StrictDabbler wrote: post #136
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The more realistic scenario where it might actually make a difference is DJs playing on huge high-end club soundsystems where compression artefacts might not only effect what you can hear, but the reverberations you can physically feel, and where there might be post-processing effects applied to the source material that show up the compression artifacts.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#315

Post by ekingr »

sbaildon wrote: post #249

Apple can add feature after feature, but if Music continues to split albums without warning, it's close to useless. I can't curate a music library when I can't rely on my music not being jumbled around. Dropping music for licensing issues is one thing, but messing with metadata is beyond frustrating. For arbitrary reasons, Apple Music will: remove songs from albums and re-add them to your library as the "single" or "…

I agree so much! I switched to Apple Music 2 years ago when my hard drive failed. At the beginning it was alright, very convenient to have (almost) everything available on hand, in the same app as before. But now I can't stand it anymore. I have so many albums that randomly split all the time, version of tracks that change or become unavailable altogether. I'm moving away from streaming and am working on building back my music library (that I will be owning for good).

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#316

Post by a4isms »

afavour wrote: post #303
slownews45 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird because I've had the BEST experience with apple in terms of shared experiences. I go to share audio on my iphone, then I share with my wifes airpods. Seems to work fine.

Everyone is different, I suppose. A shared TV watching experience where we're both plugged into our own isolated audio and can't hear each other talk would be an awful experience for me.

Not only is everyone different, but we have different needs at different times. My partner and I use shared audio infrequently, but when we need it, we need it.

Our use case is watching something together in bed while the kids are going to sleep. We put our AirPods Pro in “Transparent” mode, which allows us to converse with each other just fine.

To say that “Your Mileage May Vary” would be putting it mildly. I accept that this feature may not be useful for you, in exactly the same way that Dark Mode in IOS is not useful for me, but seems to have its fans.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#317

Post by breakfastduck »

ksec wrote: post #200
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…

I think the Key point would be, could you hear any difference in those test? If you could, then yes there is a quality differential, rather you got it right or wrong may be subject to taste. But at least we established there are differences. But when we say 128Kbps are sort of CD Quality or CD being no-difference to 320Kbps mp3, they generally refers to vast majority of consumers, not audio experts. I think most cons…

128kbs is absolutely noticeable drop imo.

I can't see any reason for 128kbs service unless you're absolutely starved for data. There is no other advantage.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#318

Post by ehsankia »

sporkland wrote: post #310
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 could hear the difference on the first question on my pixel 5 phone speakers.

Try a proper ABX audio test like: http://abx.digitalfeed.net/

It is a bit lengthy, takes 5-10m, but it is a true blind A/B test with enough samples to be significant.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#319

Post by crazygringo »

afavour wrote: post #288
crazygringo wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think most of what you're saying applies to 3D TV, too. And that ended up being a dud. IMO the problem with both is that they're an awful shared experience, and a lot of TV watching is done by more than one person at a time.

3D has tons of drawbacks though -- the image is less than half as bright, glasses are clunky and not used for anything else, there's still serious ghosting effects. It's really half-baked, alas. Also there's only a tiny fraction of content in 3D. (The best way to view 3D movies, funnily enough, is in a virtual theater on the Oculus Quest 2.)

Spatial audio is different. It has zero downsides over existing headphones, and nearly all movies and TV episodes are mastered in 5.1 so the source signal is everywhere.

And it's not meant for a shared experience. That's what actual surround speakers in your living room are for. But these days tons of movies and TV are consumed privately with headphones, and so spatial audio simply recreates a similar surround experience on the headphones you're already using.

So I think it's pretty different -- just a pure positive upgrade. It doesn't have tradeoffs like 3D does.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#320

Post by djrogers »

unfamiliar wrote: post #268
sbaildon wrote: post #249

Apple can add feature after feature, but if Music continues to split albums without warning, it's close to useless. I can't curate a music library when I can't rely on my music not being jumbled around. Dropping music for licensing issues is one thing, but messing with metadata is beyond frustrating. For arbitrary reasons, Apple Music will: remove songs from albums and re-add them to your library as the "single" or "…

> Apple can add feature after feature, but if Music continues to [random issue most people have never encountered], it's close to useless. I've started to feel like "Apple Music as a music library" was really only intended as a bridge for people like you and me that were reluctant to abandon their obsessively curated their music library for the brave new world of streaming music. After a few years of it my listening…

100% agree. I still have a curated music library. Somewhere. I’m sure it’s still on that one hard drive.

But I’ve not thought twice about it in several years.

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