Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 717 posts

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#561

Post by bscphil »

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…

> 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.

On the whole your comment is great, but I think this point might be revealing of either your age or the last time your looked at mp3 encoders. LAME has been great for at least a decade now. Other than (possibly) extremely rare killer samples, you're unlikely to be able to ABX a LAME encoded track at 256 Kbps. I certainly can't, and I have pretty decent gear and have been listening to (and working on) music for a very long time.

Back in the 90s, all mp3 encoders were shit. Xiph's Monty, in the post you link, mentions being able to distinguish between them using only their results as a party trick. Even in the early 2000s you needed 256-320 Kbps to have a shot at transparency. But now, most music is transparent at `lame -V2` settings, which gives approximately 192 Kbps results. I can still ABX a very small number of songs (last I tested), but even these go away by `lame -V0`, which is the highest quality VBR mode. HydrogenAudio, a trustworthy source as far as "audiophile" claims go, says that anything from `-V0 to -V3` should be transparent under most conditions. https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php/LAME

AAC and Vorbis are certainly better codecs, achieving transparency most of the time at closer to 160 Kbps. Opus is even better. I've never been able to ABX a 128 Kbps track, and music sounds great even at 96 Kbps (for stereo!). There are supposed to be killer samples for all four, forcing them to require a higher bitrate to achieve transparency, but interest in finding these seems to have dropped.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#562

Post by m463 »

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…

loosely related...

  * your ability to sense walls in your environment from the sound of your footsteps reflecting off them and not walk into them
I think you can actually navigate in the dark by clicking your tongue or your fingers and detect obstacles. I know some blind people actually use this echolocation to help them get around. Might be fun to try.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#563

Post by DenverCode »

DavidVoid wrote: post #486
DenverCode wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone bored and looking to explore: https://dr.loudness-war.info/

Note that all entries that have the format Vinyl on that site can be ignored, as the dynamic range calculations don't work well on audio recorded from vinyl records.

Well, I'm glad I've been using it to pick out which pressings to target haha.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#564

Post by Slow_Hand »

For anyone here who is interested in the hi-fi audio experience and may be getting caught up in the debate over higher sampling rates and bit-depths, I'd like to suggest that any improvement Apple's hi-res audio is going to offer in sonic quality is nothing compared to the benefits of treating the acoustics in your listening space. Or conversely the destructive effects of NOT treating your room.

In an untreated room, moving your head to the side by a few inches will have a far greater effect on the frequency response of the recording. More than any gains you could get from upgrading to a hi-res streaming service. You have to have your speakers and your room in order before any of those differences will be appreciable. Additionally, if the reverb time of your room hasn't been controlled in the low frequencies a record with tight, articulate, bass is going to sound dense and muddy as those frequencies echo and build up in your room.

Just something to keep in mind when debating the merits of hi-res vs. a 44.1k mp3.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#565

Post by floatingatoll »

moogly wrote: post #429
floatingatoll wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been storing my FLAC files as ALAC for iTunes compatibility for the past decade. Max.app on macOS, while old and creaky looking, does a fine job of transcoding them and maintaining tags.

Now imagine storing it in FLAC and playing them everywhere, without having to transcode at all.

That's someone else's windmill to tilt, sorry.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#566

Post by gonehome »

darnfish wrote: post #363
gonehome wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Main thing I miss from Spotify is the discover weekly playlist. I started using Apple Music because Spotify’s attempts to ruin podcasts by making them exclusive to their platform irritated me. Discover weekly is a really great thing though and Apple Music’s stuff isn’t as good.

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

Yeah - it sucks in comparison. Not at all similar to anything in my library. It might as well be random.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#567

Post by web007 »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #557
CharlesW wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can't source anything except our own deliveries to Apple, but we've been delivering PCM since ~2018. Cool, I take your word for it. Thanks! The referenced document only talks about AAC masters, and the tools at https://www.apple.com/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/ only create AAC masters. The simplest explanation is that the public materials and tools are just sadly out of date.

I'm pretty sure nucleardog is correct and that Apple wants 24/96KHz minimum sent to them; the PDF you linked to actually says that under "Best Practices" -- "To take best advantage of our latest encoders, use only 24-bit sources and send us the highest-resolution master file possible, appropriate to the medium and the project." Then Apple encodes their AACs using the tools and methods described in that document. If I…

It's odd because I've read that before and made an assumption that it was talking about AAC mastering, but it only implies that. There's nothing that comes out and says what they want! There are some parts where they suggest higher fidelity sources, but mostly it comes down to:

    Apple Digital Masters Droplet 
    You can use the Apple Digital Masters Droplet to automate the creation of 256 kbps
AAC encodes.

There isn't actually anything about what you're supposed to send them, only the recommendation to use their tooling which seems geared to produce 256k AAC files.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#568

Post by websites420 »

capableweb wrote: post #199
websites420 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s sad that Apple is using an open source codec for their streaming service? Why?

No, it's not sad that Apple is using an open source codec, it's sad that Apple specifically created ALAC instead of just using FLAC that already exists. Instead of building hardware that can efficiently play FLAC, they created their own format in order to promote harder lock in to their walled garden. Fine, probably makes business-sense, but as someone who was brought up with the mindset of an open internet and web,…

>Instead of building hardware that can efficiently play FLAC, they created their own format in order to promote harder lock in to their walled garden.

I don't follow how ALAC promotes a harder lock into their walled garden. If you have a file in ALAC (not a streaming instance, an actual file), it can be converted losslessly to FLAC. Moreover, ALAC has been open source for almost 10 years. Android plays it fine, as does linux.

iPhones have supported FLAC natively since 2017. There's apps that play back FLAC files in the App Store.

So, overall, I don't see what's sad about it. Apple Music is a subscription service that's streaming DRM protected music. Whether it's FLAC or ALAC doesn't make a difference to the user.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#569

Post by alternatetwo »

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.

I did a blind test with a friend once, 192/320/lossless, and we both could definitely hear which file was 192 - but not which was 320/lossless.

Most of the compression in 320 mp3s is also in areas humans can't hear. I once created a 320 mp3 with a 16kHz cutoff instead of the 20kHz lame uses by default, and to me there was no audible difference - even inverting one and listening to the difference didn't produce anything audible (to me).

Of course nobody uses mp3 anymore, not even iTunes, they encode as 256 aac, which is a far superior codec and near lossless. I doubt anybody can hear the difference between the lossless file and the iTunes file.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#570

Post by alternatetwo »

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…

And the comparison would be against 256 aac (what iTunes uses currently), which is insanely good and much better than 320 mp3! Nobody can hear that!
Post reply on HN