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Spatial Audio

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Re: Spatial Audio

#111

Post by dharma1 »

ntSean wrote: post #9
allears wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people like gimmicky things better, just like lots of people like to turn up the bass and treble all the way. But lots of us (and I'm a musician and audio engineer) appreciate high quality balanced distortion free audio, and want to hear the music the way the original artist intended. Just because you can make sounds bounce around in space doesn't make the music better, especially if the original recording wa…

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…

Apple AirPods pro/max headtracking is 3dof not 6dof - it tracks rotation but not location.

It would be fun to be able to walk around a virtual space to get closer to different sound sources/instruments but that’s not what’s on offer here.

Re: Spatial Audio

#112

Post by globular-toast »

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…

I'm confused. Did you even read the article? They are not talking about Atmos/spatial audio in general, they are talking about older mixes being "remixed" on mass without any input from the original artists and engineers.

Re: Spatial Audio

#113

Post by dharma1 »

I’ve tested a bunch of the spatial audio tracks on Apple Music with multiple high end headphones - you can make it work with any headphone if you set Atmos to “always on” in Apple Music. They sounded alright but I think you’ll need a real Dolby Atmos system with many speakers to really experience it properly. On headphones it just gets rendered via a binaural generic HRTF (with 3dof head tracking on the AirPod pro/Max).

It’s alright but not a game changer for me at least. Not that different to a regular binaural recording on headphones.

Nice to have Dolby Atmos baked into Logic Pro when it arrives, for creating Atmos mixes easily.

Re: Spatial Audio

#114

Post by aasasd »

gmueckl wrote: post #26

I don't know how the downmix for headphones is created in this case, but if it spatializes the individual objects correctly, this removes the in-head-localization artifact that unprocessed stereo on headphones suffers from naturally, especially for sounds with a center pan. We have just trained ourselves to accept that headphones make sounds appear inside our heads. And I am pretty certain that the author is mistakin…

> And why does it matter how expensive a certain pair of headphones is?

“Grown-ups love figures. When you describe a new friend to them, they never ask you about the important things. They never say ‘What's his voice like? What are his favourite games? Does he collect butterflies?’ Instead they demand ‘How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much does his father earn?’ Only then do they feel they know him. If you say to the grown-ups: ‘I've seen a lovely house made of pink brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof’, they are unable to picture such a house. You must say: ‘I saw a house that come a hundred thousand francs.’ Then they cry out: ‘How pretty!’”

Re: Spatial Audio

#115

Post by bloke_zero »

It seems weird to me that people would disregard the input of the artist and producer who will have painstakingly mixed the original - surely that is as much a part of the art form as the music in many cases? I'm thinking of records like "Bitches Brew" where you couldn't just go back to the master recordings and recreate them without Miles in the room.

Though I guess the early stereo mixes for e.g. The Beatles were often done without the band's input simply because no one was interested in the stereo mix - it was all about the mono mix. 2nd Engineer Richard Lush said “The only real version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the mono version.

https://www.analogplanet.com/content/sgt-peppers-lonely-hear...

The format controversy runs and runs!

Re: Spatial Audio

#116

Post by chrisseaton »

bloke_zero wrote: post #115

It seems weird to me that people would disregard the input of the artist and producer who will have painstakingly mixed the original - surely that is as much a part of the art form as the music in many cases? I'm thinking of records like "Bitches Brew" where you couldn't just go back to the master recordings and recreate them without Miles in the room. Though I guess the early stereo mixes for e.g. The Beatles were o…

I guess it's philosophical, but why should the original artist have the any say on how people re-interpret their art?

Re: Spatial Audio

#117

Post by mr_sturd »

kiawe_fire wrote: post #101

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 s…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Re: Spatial Audio

#118

Post by alliao »

just like all DSP, more process = more distortion. If the original track had spatial in mind, and the artists put thought into it and that's what they want then fine. If we're just reprocessing mono/stereo content into spatial using god knows what settings then that's uh not cool.

It's the same with Dolby Vision, if the creator took the effort then great. If not, then might as well let algorithm takeover from TV's chipset and render every scene with most detail preserved or highest dynamic range achieved. Technically impressive, artistically bankrupt.

Re: Spatial Audio

#119

Post by salamandersauce »

huslage wrote: post #75
salamandersauce wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't basically every Hollywood movie since DVD pay a licensing fee to Dolby (or DTS) for 5.1 or Atmos (or DTS:X) support? Theaters too even? And wasn't Dolby B NR insanely widespread on pre-recorded cassettes? Like so common that most albums on cassette from the 80s have the Dolby logo on them? I don't think its that weird. It's clearly been done in the past. Apple's limitations on what devices works sucks and it'…

Apple doesn't have any limitations to devices. It works fine in normal headphones as well as AirPods.

Yes they do. It doesn't work on PC or Android with any headphones.

Re: Spatial Audio

#120

Post by StavrosK »

can16358p wrote: post #110

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 tur…

It's a bit of an insult to the original artist, in my view. When I create something, it's an expression of my personality, and I the choices I make reflect my aesthetic. If you take it and remix it, that's fine, but don't put my name on it, it's "Song X (Apple Atmos Remix)" now.
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