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Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

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Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#351

Post by krrishd »

Someone1234 wrote: post #46

This is included/no additional cost which is fantastic. I do wonder if in the longer term if Apple's Spatial Audio with "dynamic head tracking" isn't the next 3D TVs/3D Content i.e. a gimmick. Taking traditional multi-source audio (Dolby/Atmos/etc) and jamming it into stereo is old tech, it doesn't work particularly well but is cheap to make/consume, thus mostly harmless. The new Spatial Audio is using gyroscopes to…

The fascinating thing about this spatial audio wave to me is that it was basically available almost a decade ago (because "binaural audio" has been available and fairly trivially usable for a while now).

I remember one of the first apps I downloaded on my iPod Touch in middle school (~2011) was a "binaural audio" app that catalogued spatial audio experiences (+ voice-acted stuff like getting a haircut, etc).

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#352

Post by shawnz »

StavrosK wrote: post #238
mimimi31 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>anything above that is wasted space Having lossless copies is still useful for storage and later transcoding. Even if you can't hear a difference between a 192kbit/s MP3 and a higher bitrate lossless file, you might be able to hear one after reencoding the MP3 using another lossy format.

Yes, I should have said "for casual listening".

Considering the proliferation of music remixing social media services (i.e. Tiktok) and the cheap price of storage, maybe even casual users can benefit from lossless these days.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#353

Post by floatingatoll »

post_break wrote: post #83
xd1936 wrote: post #16

Can't wait to listen to 192kHz/24-bit on my AAC Bluetooth AirPods

Yeah what's the point. No APT-X means this is like watching a bluray through RCA cables. Even the Airpods Max might not even be able to drive it through the 3.5mm to lightning adapter.

AptX Adaptive (2018+) is the only one that supports 96/24 at best, so well-shielded RCA cables from a wired DAC would probably degrade the signal less than the downmix for AptX Adaptive would, assuming your devices even support AptX Adaptive.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#354

Post by thetinguy »

Gaelan wrote: post #81
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…

> But, and this the article does not mention, is not what Apple Music wants you to do. The formats will be proprietary with DRM. For what it’s worth, music actually purchased on iTunes (not an Apple Music subscription) has been DRM-free for years. If this means iTunes-purchased songs are lossless now, that might be useful.

Apple Music files have DRM but iTunes purchases do not.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#355

Post by slownews45 »

afavour wrote: post #303
slownews45 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird because I've had the BEST experience with apple in terms of shared experiences. I go to share audio on my iphone, then I share with my wifes airpods. Seems to work fine.

Everyone is different, I suppose. A shared TV watching experience where we're both plugged into our own isolated audio and can't hear each other talk would be an awful experience for me.

Actually apple has a setting for this (at least on the pro's) which is called transparency. Works surprisingly well.

You get the TV / movie audio in ear, and then any other audio from outside.

We use it to keep an ear out for kids (bathroom breaks / falls off bed or whatever) and to chat with each other.

But yes - some people do hate apple products - so different uses I think for different folks.

My one MAJOR complaint is the volume of the mode switch sound on these things is way way too loud! Perhaps there is a setting for that I haven't found. Bong! in the ear is super annoying. Make it a click or something.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#356

Post by notyourwork »

ivraatiems wrote: post #35
vr46 wrote: post #12

Who knew I would be locked into Spotify not by the music quality, but by playlists, friends, apps using it, and their Discovery mechanisms. Apple and Tidal may have awesome quality, but apps like https://musicleague.app/ have gotten me through Lockdown, and it turns out that these value props are very strong. I always thought I would instantly switch to a service for its audio quality, but then again, I can also buy…

Agreed - Spotify's UI is bad and getting worse, and its quality is meh, but its discovery features are top notch and it has the biggest catalog. I have audiophile equipment - $900 MSRP Hifiman headphones, discrete DAC and amp - and I tried Tidal to see if I could hear a difference. 99% of the time, I can't... and Tidal's MQA format is questionable anyway. (Not sure about Apple's "ALAC" either.) I used a playlist impo…

> and it has the biggest catalog.

That's not entirely accurate. Amazon Music (unlimited) and Spotify catalogs are approximately same.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#357

Post by duhi88 »

mistersys wrote: post #328

It's weird, the only reason I can't use Apple Music is because it doesn't sync between devices. Apple being the company it is, it's just crazy to me that I can't pickup listening where I left off on my phone once I open my laptop. Aside: Also there's a ton of bugs, very poor job on the QA side of Apple Music Spotify has designed this feature amazingly. Sometimes, I wonder why companies don't steal good ideas from eac…

I never remember where the "recently listened to" section is. Seems like an easy thing to get right.

Still, I prefer Apple Music's album-focused library to Spotify's playlist-focused approach.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#358

Post by coliveira »

numpad0 wrote: post #326
StrictDabbler wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely agreed. People spend so much time arguing about whether we're "past the limits of human perception" on sound or video. They want to quote Nyquist and check frequencies. Spend a million dollars on audio equipment. Turn on your speakers, play some chamber music in insane multi-channel high-res audio, and invite a friend over. Your friend does not think you hired a string quartet. Your friend thinks you have…

> A/B test by actually hiring a quartet That's easy. The one with room echos, washed out highs, and missing bass is the live.

This may be true about popular music, because this is how we came to know this style of music - live performances (without proper sound engineering) sound worse. It is completely the opposite for classical music. There's still no way to replicate the sound quality of being close to an orchestra.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#359

Post by notyourwork »

treesknees wrote: post #40
vr46 wrote: post #12

Who knew I would be locked into Spotify not by the music quality, but by playlists, friends, apps using it, and their Discovery mechanisms. Apple and Tidal may have awesome quality, but apps like https://musicleague.app/ have gotten me through Lockdown, and it turns out that these value props are very strong. I always thought I would instantly switch to a service for its audio quality, but then again, I can also buy…

I'm sure other music services like Spotify will match Apple Music's lossless quality in order to keep competing for the audiophile market. Personally, lossless quality just sounds like a great way to blow through my data caps even faster. I'm sure some will love it, I question whether it's worth the extra bandwidth.

Amazon Music has had lossless for awhile.

https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=14070322011

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#360

Post by robbyking »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #38
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…

> 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 really interesting! I did the test you linked, and for all but one I picked the lowest bitrate version.

I'm using WH-1000XM3 headphones and am a lifelong musician with pretty mild tinnitus.

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