Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#691

Post by Loughla » Tue, May 18, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #302

Loughla wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>otherwise there was an annoying pause between tracks that had seemless blending between them. Oh christ, this is my least favorite thing about newer audio formats. Some of the old albums were meant to be heard in one stretch; there are no gaps between tracks, because you're hearing a story. Then comes mp3 and digital audio, with a second pause between them. It just kills me. I get accused of being a hipster by my fa…

In my collection, this is most evident with Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea from Genesis.

I didn't really pick up on it until I decided to take my son through Thick as Brick and literally any album by Yes. They're just ruined by that small gap.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#692

Post by thirdsun » Tue, May 18, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #29

darksaints wrote: post #7

Unfortunately, you can't buy it. Only rent.

(I originally posted a reply that remarked that we can buy Apple Lossless music from iTMS - however I did a quick check and to my surprise Apple still doesn't offer DRM-free lossless content on iTMS: you can only get Apple Lossless by ripping your own CDs. The "Apple Digital Masters" products are not actually "masters": they're still compressed with lossy encoding: https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/7/20758633/apple-dig…

> Knowing Apple, I think they probably wanted to offer lossless but the record companies are still paranoid about lossless copies... philistines.

You can buy digital lossless audio files on countless stores. Sure, iTunes is a different scale compared to Bandcamp, but buying lossless digital audio files isn't exactly new.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#693

Post by thirdsun » Tue, May 18, 2021, 1:59 PM UTC

a4isms wrote: post #20

darksaints wrote: post #7

Unfortunately, you can't buy it. Only rent.

You can still “buy” albums digitally from Apple, and they are lossless, as they have been for almost-ever. The caveat being that you need a device capable of decoding ALAC files.

That's not true. You can't buy lossless ALAC files from Apple.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#694

Post by leviathant » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

tarsinge wrote: post #202

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'm actually quite skeptical random people with high end gear can hear the difference between 320kbps and lossless. It has more to do with ear training, mp3 compression is not really on the same axis than what high end gear give you (basic equipment can have a large frequency response).

On the topic of ear training and hearing differences most people don't hear, I had a recording I was mixing down that featured a squeaky kick pedal on the bass drum. I spent more time than I should have trying to scoop that out of the mix, and in the end, I could still hear the squeaky kick pedal, but no one else in the band could.

Later that week I put in a CD with songs I'd heard hundreds of times, and to my absolute horror, I could now hear the squeak of that drummer's kick pedal, like an icepick jabbing me in the ear. It had been there the whole time, pressed to millions of CDs, broadcast over countless radio stations, but only became apparent to me after intense focus on that particular sound.

I imagine that people who claim to hear the difference between 320kbps and lossless experience something like that. There may be a particular, narrow band of frequencies that sound slightly more modulated in 320 when compared to lossless, but unless you make a concerted, drawn out effort to find that, you'll never know. And if you do make that effort, you can end up ruining your otherwise pleasant experience for absolutely no good reason.

Anyway, after the kick pedal squeak incident, I switched to listening to wholly electronic music for the next month or so as a palette cleanser, and I haven't picked up on the squeak anywhere else since.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#695

Post by intrasight » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

ErneX wrote: post #151

intrasight wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw that too, but they didn't really give any context. Is Apple saying that the iPhone DAC is insufficient? Or Macs? Or something else?

They are saying exactly that, the DACs they ship are not ideal for hires audio.

I assume/hope that next-gen Airpods will have upgraded DACs/codacs that'll handle their new hi-res format.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#696

Post by jancsika » Tue, May 18, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

astrange wrote: post #551

jancsika wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name an example, and name the effect that was significant enough to the upshot of the song that mixing the stereo channels down to a single mono channel would lose prime information for the listener. I'm not saying there aren't examples, but I want to listen directly to an example you would consider severely degraded if heard in mono (i.e., stereo channels mixed down to mono and then just copied to two channels).

Beatles albums have a lot of hard pans on them as I recall.

Which song on which album?

I'm asking because I literally want to listen to it in a mono context and experience what bad things happen as a result.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#697

Post by jorvi » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

foo_barrio wrote: post #638

jorvi wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell you anything except that you have exceptional frequency reach for your age. ISO has actually standardized age-related hearing loss (yes, really), and they point to the same 17KHz point for even young adults. It actually makes me quite envious of you. I have sensitive ears - I can pick up very faint electrical circuitry sounds in screens or the delivery driver scootering into the beginning of our street d…

Ha! I literally just sat at my PC and saw your response at 3m old. Yea I've noticed I tend to test pretty well on all the official charts but really can't hear a difference in a lot of "audiophile" stuff people claim night/day differences. I had a beat up, 10+ year old pair of sennheizer hd600's that I never got tired of listening to. I finally had them refurbished and they don't sound as "easy" to listen to. One thi…

> I tend to test pretty well on all the official charts but really can't hear a difference in a lot of "audiophile" stuff people claim night/day differences.

Part of that is also your brain. Master sommeliers can tell you which vineyard the grapes in a wine came from, sometimes even which side of the vineyard. Yet give those sommeliers a white wine with red coloring mixed in, and they won't immediately notice.

I've actually met one other person that said what you say, if they really try they can hear a minute difference with cymbals and hi-hats in regards to lossless vs high bitrate lossy, but they also said they had to strainingly focus on the listening and they would never listen nor enjoy music that way.

> In both our cases I wonder how much of this is just our brains have learned to pick things out of the signals are ears give vs our ears actually being more/less capable than other people

A little bit of both, I think. Your ears are naturally more sensitive, so you put the volume on your speakers a lot lower, which teaches your brain to pick up low volume stuff better. I'm always worried the downstairs appartement can hear my 'loud' TV at night, but they've told me they can't hear a thing.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#698

Post by sbaildon » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

gevz wrote: post #510

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 wonder if it is specific to the country. I am accessing the US store and out of all link you posted I have no issues. All EPs and albums are complete and no tracks are missing.

That's right—in Apple's library they're completely fine. You can add them to your own library and they're fine. Then one day the copies in your library have their metadata messed with and everything is scattered with incorrect tags

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#699

Post by crazygringo » Tue, May 18, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #603

crazygringo wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh sure I wasn't referring to comfort, just to the pure quality of the 3D experience. A VR headset is the only solution I'm aware of that is full-brightness, zero-ghosting.

Ghosting, maybe, although I almost never notice it on my projector. But, isn't "full brightness" just a function of how bright you make the projector? Which is to say, you could make a projector that's twice as bright as mine (mine isn't amazing, it cost less a a grand) and in 3D it would have the brightness of my 2D setup.

In theory, but there are good reasons why cinemas and home projectors don't "just" double (or really, need to quadruple because of how the shutters work).

Heat dissipation requirements go up hugely because the bulb is so much hotter.

You simply can't buy a home projector that is 4x brighter. I looked into it earlier this year -- they simply don't exist.

Because if they did, the fan noise required to cool the bulb would be so loud you wouldn't even be able to hear the movie.

However, a lot of advances are being made with both laser and LED "bulbless" projectors... so it might actually be coming in the not-so-far future.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#700

Post by Ericson2314 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 9:01 PM UTC

floatingatoll wrote: post #602

Ericson2314 wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's probably a better way to do this that doesn't trigger a merge conflict Well if you want to try Nix, https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/9dba669e8a53f00114b53d... right out of the box :D

That’s what I get for not saying “in Homebrew”!

I mean it was perfectly clear in context. That's why I wrote the "Well..." dependent clause; I know I'm providing the better way for homebrew.