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Apple Music Sing

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Re: Apple Music Sing

#201

Post by kapp_in_life »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #48
joegahona wrote: post #5

Is this akin to karaoke? (The word never appears on the page.) > Apple today announced Apple Music Sing, an exciting new feature that allows users to sing along to their favorite songs with adjustable vocals1 and real-time lyrics. Users can already "sing along to their favorite songs" -- this feels like a wasted opportunity in the first sentence to explain the differentiator. It feels like they're misusing/misunderst…

I came here with that question, why don't they call this karaoke? Wondered if "karaoke" is trademarked? (or patented?!) It doesn't seem to me likely that they didn't think their audience would know the word "karaoke" at this point, but I don't know.

Probably because they're trying to push the "Apple Music Sing" branding, even though everyone will call it karaoke anyways.

Re: Apple Music Sing

#202

Post by yamtaddle »

js2 wrote: post #149
anonuser123456 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the old Apple TV 4K is not powerful enough for displaying text on a TV, even though any old iPhone is? Honestly, it might not be. My Apple TV 4k seems slow as molasses with performance more like an AMLogic 905. Not sure if it’s because it doesn’t have enough RAM, the flash is slow or the CPU is just way under powered. Yes, they advertise it as an A12Z or whatever, but it’s a binned part that wasn’t acceptable f…

I have owned nearly every generation of Apple TV. Other than the original model, I wouldn't describe any of them as slow as molasses. On the contrary, they are consistently the fastest streaming devices I've owned, and I'm comparing to things like Roku (built-in to a TCL), FireTV, and Android TV across a number of devices (Shield Pro, Hisense U6G, Zidoo Z9X). (Technically the Zidoo uses Android, not Android TV.) I cu…

Yeah, I switched from a Shield to the prior gen of Apple TV 4K in part because the Shield was often laggy as hell (also the UI layout was a mess, also the damn ads, also it was significantly buggier) and AFAIK that's about the most powerful non-Apple box on the market. ATV's way better on that front. Frankly a low-end-but-not-quite-bottom-end Roku machine feels snappier and more-reliable than the Shield did (though not as good as the Apple TV)

Re: Apple Music Sing

#203

Post by notpushkin »

reaperducer wrote: post #172
Thorrez wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense when there's audio that Apple hasn't seen before. With Apple Music Sing, it makes more sense to do that processing once in the datacenter.

it makes more sense to do that processing once in the datacenter. Since Apple is all about on-device processing with so many of its features, going back-and-forth to the data center doesn't seem to be its style these days. That's more of a Google thing. And no one can accuse Apple of telling its advertisers that you start your day with Funky Cold Medina.

There's a reason Apple's preferring on-device processing: user privacy. This doesn't make sense for music (stems, lyrics) since it's not listener's data.

Re: Apple Music Sing

#204

Post by notpushkin »

incanus77 wrote: post #169
notpushkin wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adjustable vocals: Users now have control over a song’s vocal levels. They can sing with the original artist vocals, take the lead, or mix it up on millions of songs in the Apple Music catalog. I think this only requires pre-making two audio files per track, and simultaneously streaming these. Real-time lyrics, Background vocals and Duet view are all nice features too, but the hardest part processing-wise is analys…

> I think this only requires pre-making two audio files per track, and simultaneously streaming these. That’s the understatement of the century. “this only requires […] simultaneously streaming these”

Well, it is indeed tricky but not requires-dedicated-chip tricky :-)

Re: Apple Music Sing

#205

Post by jjtheblunt »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #152
pilsetnieks wrote: post #8

> and can be enjoyed on iPhone, iPad, and the new Apple TV 4K But the old Apple TV 4K is not powerful enough for displaying text on a TV, even though any old iPhone is? I get that they want to push device and service adoption but they should pick a lane, either push users to upgrade devices, or push to sign up to paid services. Pushing for both at the same time is greedy.

What's worse is that the Apple Music app on Mac doesn't even have lyrics (and is ridiculously bad in many other ways). It feels like they are slowly abandoning the platform.

Have you used an Apple Silicon macbook of any version? THey're clearly NOT abandoning the platform, because they are kick ass.

Re: Apple Music Sing

#206

Post by colmmacc »

nkozyra wrote: post #117
colmmacc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AAC is already interleaved multi-channel. Two-channel L/R is obviously very common for music, but spatial audio and Dolby Atmos comes with more channels (up to 128, which can be arranged and binned into "beds"). 5.1 (6 channels) and 7.1 (8 channels) are also common for video. Having dedicated/isolated vocal tracks as a channel very trivial in the format. I'd expect this is how it's done, and not ML, because Apple hav…

Channel and spatial/binaural tracks I'd expect, but separated tracks for instruments/vocals is a lot more time consuming and the kind of thing that studios/producers/masterers would bluster at enough that I wouldn't expect it to come close to giving Apple the volume they'd likely want. It absolutely could be done, I just think that Apple would want very good coverage and studios would be very slow to provide this for…

Apple need the labels either way. They can't just go creating new derived works without a license, and the artists and producers would far prefer to avoid the artifacts of something that is overly automated.

It's already become pretty common for studios and labels to make stems available (stems are full multi-track files that can be used with a DAW) to industry insiders and even the public sometimes. There's a community of remixers, samplers, even a small cottage industry of YouTubers who work with these regularly. It wouldn't take them more than a few minutes per track to annotate which channel is vocals.

Re: Apple Music Sing

#207

Post by insane_dreamer »

joegahona wrote: post #5

Is this akin to karaoke? (The word never appears on the page.) > Apple today announced Apple Music Sing, an exciting new feature that allows users to sing along to their favorite songs with adjustable vocals1 and real-time lyrics. Users can already "sing along to their favorite songs" -- this feels like a wasted opportunity in the first sentence to explain the differentiator. It feels like they're misusing/misunderst…

Yes, it is; not clear why they didn't just say that.

Re: Apple Music Sing

#208

Post by vlunkr »

Here's a question, is it copyright infringement to serve modified versions of a song? We know that attempts to censor movies have not held up in court, how is this different? Did all the publishers agree to this in their contract with Apple?

Re: Apple Music Sing

#209

Post by notpushkin »

Closi wrote: post #145
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they're using ML, I don't imagine they'd do it on-device. They don't even do voice recognition on-device by default.

> [Apple says it is] relying on an on-device machine learning algorithm that processes the music in real-time. The tech builds on Apple’s noise-cancellation expertise and other developments it’s made for FaceTime, the company said. Source: https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/06/apple-music-is-getting-a-n...

I stand corrected as well!

Wonder why they take this approach though, as it is clearly over-engineering (if I correctly understand that the goal is just to make vocals volume adjustable).

Re: Apple Music Sing

#210

Post by insane_dreamer »

hunter2_ wrote: post #106
joegahona wrote: post #5

Is this akin to karaoke? (The word never appears on the page.) > Apple today announced Apple Music Sing, an exciting new feature that allows users to sing along to their favorite songs with adjustable vocals1 and real-time lyrics. Users can already "sing along to their favorite songs" -- this feels like a wasted opportunity in the first sentence to explain the differentiator. It feels like they're misusing/misunderst…

Karaoke is where some other artist performs and records the song, without vocals, in the style of whoever popularized the song. This Apple feature seems to be where the same popular recording gets used, which has vocals, and then some magic processing reduces the vocals. There has always been software to sorta-kinda suppress vocals from existing recordings, but it usually ends up sounding like trash (artifacts of all…

> Karaoke is where some other artist performs and records the song, without vocals, in the style of whoever popularized the song.

that's more the definition of "cover" than "karaoke" (which is a live sing-along at a bar or at home)

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