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

Spatial Audio

lefsetz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 138 posts

Re: Spatial Audio

#101

Post by kiawe_fire »

Some mixes are very off, but I’ve loved most of them so far.

In fact I hope that more artists start recording and mastering for this from the start going forward.

That said, as a layman non-audiophile who doesn’t know the technical engineering details, I can’t help but wonder if the biggest win for me is an apparent lack of compression.

I don’t mean “bitrate and file size” compression, but rather the “take the soft stuff and loud stuff and cram them together” compression.

The thing I’ve hated about music from around 2010 onwards is just how much all the instruments and vocals blend together, especially in rock and pop music where all of the drums become as “snappy” as the snare and none of the instruments sound distinct. Everything sounds crisp, to the point that nothing sounds crisp.

At times, and with some albums, it actually becomes exhausting to listen to.

I noticed immediately with Apple’s Atmos mixes I have to crank the volume up a couple extra notches, but when I do I hear everything more distinctly, much like many of the albums from the 70s, 80s and 90s before everything had to be compressed and made louder.

But, like I said, I don’t know what I’m talking about or if there’s anything to this, but I’m so far getting more out of the average Atmos mix than I am of the average stereo mix.

Then the question becomes, if the artist intended for everything to sound one way but I enjoy it more the other way, who’s right?

Re: Spatial Audio

#102

Post by logbiscuitswave »

Cybotron5000 wrote: post #55
sidechaining wrote: post #50

Slightly related. But I’ve had single-sided deafness all my life (which means all I’ve experienced is mono audio) and now with this shift from stereo to spatial. I was wondering if some kind HN users could fill me in on what I’m missing out. (By listening to stereo tracks in mono and observing how it sounds or anything that could give me a picture of that— is it crowded? Distorted? Etc). The only pertinent study I co…

There’s been some wonderful recordings that were designed solely/primarily for mono playback (early Motown/rock n roll/blues for example) that IMHO actually kind of benefit somehow from lack of stereo separation. If mixed well, the instruments can blend really well and work as one unit and there’s kind of an energy and punch to the speaker/s working as one... Early stereo records often had rather drastic left/right p…

> Early stereo records often had rather drastic left/right panning (eg. some Beatles stuff) or had to hedge their bets in case they were played back through eg. mono radios/badly set-up stereos and so on…

Many early stereo mixes were so bad because the stereo mix literally just put half the channels into L and the other half into R. For Beatles’ stereo mixes you would lose basically half the song by changing the balance full L or R. This was the case for many other early mono to stereo masters. Capitol Records’ Duphonic process also added a slight delay between the two channels to give a feeling of depth. It almost certainly didn’t reflect what the original producers or engineers would have ever intended.

For many classic albums that got this “fake stereo” treatment if you were lucky you would eventually end up with a proper stereo remaster done decades later. For example, hearing the original the properly remastered stereo version of Pet Sounds released in 1997 is a drastic improvement over the Duophonic stereo mix from 1966.

Re: Spatial Audio

#103

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

lux wrote: post #77
basisword wrote: post #40

This sounds like the kind of thing someone would write when the world switched from mono to stereo. Quite a few parts of it are completely wrong too not to mention insulting ("... more music is being made by individuals in bedrooms, home studios, on a budget. They have neither the equipment nor the skill to mix in Dolby Atmos"). Apple has done quite a poor job showcasing it so far. Some of the tracks they've put in t…

Totally agree but wanted to add a point I found interesting doing some spatial audio work which is synths tend to spatialize poorly compared to more organic instruments. You can dirty them up with additional effects like distortion or an exciter, but I think it’s something to do with the evenness of the waveforms compared to the real world variance of a string or vocal cord vibrating.

There is a sixty-year tradition now of pieces for instrumentalists + tape or live electronics, where it is the synthesized material that is spatialized through loudspeakers around the audience.

Re: Spatial Audio

#104

Post by balls187 »

bigtones wrote: post #82
balls187 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No idea where the author got the information they wouldn't. Being misinformed. Apple Lossless HD Audio, which was recently announced, is not currently supported by wireless (read: bluetooth) headphones.

Apple Lossless HD Audio is not spatial audio. They're two different things. Lossless HD Audio is uncompressed audio at around 9216 kbps. Spatial Dolby Atmos audio is compressed audio at between 384 and 768 kbps

Yes, that was my point--when the author said spatial audio was not bluetooth compatible, they were likely confusing that of Lossless HD Audio.

Re: Spatial Audio

#105

Post by ntSean »

smoldesu wrote: post #60
ntSean wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a musician, I agree that there is a level of respect required for the original mix. Though, in the case of Spacial Audio, this isn't a matter of "gimmicky" sound, this is headphones reproducing the effect that loudspeakers already have. This isn't new and has been in audio engineering circles for a long while ( https://goodhertz.co/canopener-studio/ ) but Apple has added 6dof head tracking which makes the…

I was with you until you said that "Apple has added 6dof head tracking which makes the effect truly awe-inspiring", and I laughed so hard I spit out my coffee. Thank you so much.

Gave me a good chuckle too. Have a great day!

Re: Spatial Audio

#106

Post by systoll »

salamandersauce wrote: post #49
drcongo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing one of the main points, which is someone using other headphones is still getting the atmos version, but in normal stereo - and when that happens, large parts of the balance of the mix are lost as he explains in the section on What's Going On. So it's not the original track as the artist, mix engineer and masterer intended you to hear.

I don't think that's true? There's nothing special about Apple's implementation of Dolby Atmos over headphones besides the head tracking bit (and that's not needed for music) that need their headphones. If you set Dolby Atmos to "Always On" in the settings it will give you the Atmos headphones mix regardless of what headphones being used. Airpods and Beats are still just stereo headphones. Atmos works pretty well ove…

It’s supported in the beta version of Apple Music for Android.

Re: Spatial Audio

#107

Post by xioxox »

EMM_386 wrote: post #92

If anyone wants to hear a sample of this, you can find it here: https://www.dolby.com/technologies/dolby-atmos/ It's pretty impressive with headphones.

Personally, I didn't feel it was particularly great. All the sound seemed to come from in front of me and sounded like the stereo effects occasionally used in music tracks. Perhaps it's due to the shape of my head and ears not matching their model, as suggested in some of the comments above.

Re: Spatial Audio

#108

Post by noahadavis »

lux wrote: post #77
basisword wrote: post #40

This sounds like the kind of thing someone would write when the world switched from mono to stereo. Quite a few parts of it are completely wrong too not to mention insulting ("... more music is being made by individuals in bedrooms, home studios, on a budget. They have neither the equipment nor the skill to mix in Dolby Atmos"). Apple has done quite a poor job showcasing it so far. Some of the tracks they've put in t…

Totally agree but wanted to add a point I found interesting doing some spatial audio work which is synths tend to spatialize poorly compared to more organic instruments. You can dirty them up with additional effects like distortion or an exciter, but I think it’s something to do with the evenness of the waveforms compared to the real world variance of a string or vocal cord vibrating.

Sorry, but I completely disagree. If what you were saying was true, then physical synths would have the same problems in live performances. I think the problem is not the instrument, but rather how people are used to using the instrument. If you're used to mixing synths for stereo, then your ideas for how to make a synth sound good beyond stereo are much weaker.

Also, there's so much you can do to the sound of a synth and so many powerful synths out there. If you're complaining about the sound being too smooth or simple, you just haven't played around with powerful synths often enough.

Re: Spatial Audio

#109

Post by DoingIsLearning »

On a side note I would much rather see spatial audio applied to resolve the unidirectional audio mess of video-conferencing.

The ability to resolve who is saying what in simultaneous conversation is in my opinion a much bigger problem than trying to get really high resolution video during calls.

Re: Spatial Audio

#110

Post by can16358p »

There's nothing wrong with spatial audio, it's beautiful. There's something terribly wrong with Apple trying to force audio that wasn't meant to be spatial into being spatial.

If the original artist intended the audio to be spatial, it has enormous potential and I'm pretty much sure there will be more and more artists doing that, creating a new category. But taking our good ol' perfectly-sounding stereo songs and turning them into spatial just for the sake of marketing, not good.

Post reply on HN