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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

#531

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

adrianmonk wrote: post #446
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done blind tests and I can tell if I try really hard but I wouldn't even say that the mp3 sounds worse, just different. I focus on hi hats. I do collect lossless audio for archival reasons and the ability to convert from a non lossy source. I believe that high bitrate audio is entirely bullshit though- as Chris Montgomery has shown: https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml

> high bitrate audio Based on the opening part of that video, I think you must have meant to say high sampling rate.

Yes. Thanks. It's been awhile since I watched.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#532

Post by treeman79 »

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…

Audio is a deep rabbit rabbit hole. There is always a next level of quality. You can hear the difference, so always a reason to spend just a bit more. Then you have a 100k setup and someone is wondering why you just book the band directly.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#533

Post by dag11 »

spideymans wrote: post #414
darnfish wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Apple Music's "New Music Mix" is their version of Discover Weekly, it's under the Listen Now tab

The New Music Mix only releases one playlist a week. I believe Discover Weekly releases five playlists a week, each with their own moods. I much prefer Spotify's approach. However I do find that both services largely recommend the same music to me. They just have different mechanisms of surfacing it.

Discover Weekly is once a week: on Mondays. You're thinking of Daily Mixes, of which there are 6 that update throughout the week, one playlist per day.

To go along with Discover Weekly there's also a Release Radar playlist that updates every Friday with that week's new releases from your artists.

Spotify is so deeply engrained into my weekly schedule that I really look forward to the Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists bookending my work weeks.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#534

Post by wj »

hbosch wrote: post #419
ekingr wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still not sure. Indeed I have Funkwhale on the radar, but tbh I don't have a strong use case for streaming at home. Was thinking about putting it on my rPi -- but in the end it's even easier to just stream from my iPhone through Bluetooth (or a good old jack). My priority is to build a clean library with beets, transcode it in mp3 and feed it to iTunes, to have it on my iPhone & iPod.

Honestly, the Plex app is very decent for music libraries these days. Except for oddball VA releases and obscure mixtapes I find Plex to often be terrific at library management.

I've avoided using it because of concerns about library size. I want to move off of iTunes (launch a VM just for this) but nothing else seems to really handle managing a library. Currently trying out Airsonic but it is kind of slow and I can't edit tags with it.

Maybe time to give Plex a try for this.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#535

Post by Sebb767 »

qart wrote: post #410
simias wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's still no way to replicate the sound quality of being close to an orchestra. That's why I always tend to bail out of audiophile discussion but I'll bite: why? What's so special about the soundwaves going into your ears when you sit close to an orchestra that couldn't be reproduced with good audio equipment? If you're talking about the experience itself of siting next to performers then I wholeheartedly agree,…

> That's why I always tend to bail out of audiophile discussion but I'll bite: why? Disclaimer: I am definitely not an audiophile. The low frequencies that we feel with/through our bodies feel entirely different at a non-electric live concert as compared to what we feel through speakers. No headphones can reproduce such effects. For sure, there are speakers that can reproduce such sounds faithfully, but how often do…

> but how often do the audio production guys use such speakers, and how often do they try to control for the feeling in their bodies? Not often, I imagine.

Yes, but we're talking about 5 digit and up audio equipment and listening to the top operas of the world, which definitely do have guys that know how to record. Your 10$ (or 250$) headphones combined with a CD from a smaller producer will not get you all the way there, I agree, but once you're in the insane high-price audiophile world, this becomes possible.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#537

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

fullstop wrote: post #155
marcodiego wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

More and more phones are removing uSD card support. It's a losing battle. I don't want the plastic, the physical storage requirements, etc, of a CD. With digital I don't "own" the music, sure, but I've definitely lost more music in my life from scratched discs, people not returning CDs than I ever will through Spotify.

I’ve “lost” some of my favorite movies and music by then not being available on any streaming service.

I guess there are many reasons for this, but mainly I guess they are simply victims of copyright.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#538

Post by notyourwork »

tshaddox wrote: post #515
notyourwork wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still do this today though its a bit indirect. > Your Library --> Artists --> Click artist --> Liked Songs. The changes to library these services have made for simplification in my opinion are the wrong direction. I want more controls on how to filter/sift through my library, NOT less. Edit: Also, we're slowly diluting the definition of album. The industry is going away from it because artist release frequenc…

Library -> Artists only shows artists that you have followed, which is a totally separate mechanism than adding songs or albums to your library. Also, I don’t see the Liked Songs option anywhere on the artist page.

Ah you're right, the artist list there is followed artists. I didn't realize that is the case.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#539

Post by chorsestudios »

nwsm wrote: post #471

AirPod Pro and Max will not support it. https://www.imore.com/airpods-max-dont-support-apple-musics-...

Apple must have been aware of bluetooth data transfer restrictions when designing AirPod Max.. Seems odd that they didn't include onboard storage for lossless songs, or enable lossless support for AirPod Max while tethered to a MacBook.

If this is a codec issue as the article indicates is there any potential for a software fix?

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#540

Post by astrange »

pwagland wrote: post #95
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…

This is crux to the argument. If you know what to listen for, you can pick out the "bad bits", since you know that is where the issue lies. Once you know how to identify bad bits, then you'll be able to "hear" compression artefacts because you'll be primed for them. In A/B tests this is true, I _can_ reliably (not 100%, but way better than random) tell you which of A/B is compressed, and I can normally do this on som…

Being partly deaf might be what lets you hear the compression artifacts, because a lot of it relies on masking effects.
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