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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

#371

Post by ksec »

breakfastduck wrote: post #317
ksec wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Key point would be, could you hear any difference in those test? If you could, then yes there is a quality differential, rather you got it right or wrong may be subject to taste. But at least we established there are differences. But when we say 128Kbps are sort of CD Quality or CD being no-difference to 320Kbps mp3, they generally refers to vast majority of consumers, not audio experts. I think most cons…

128kbs is absolutely noticeable drop imo. I can't see any reason for 128kbs service unless you're absolutely starved for data. There is no other advantage.

>I can't see any reason for 128kbs

A lower price tier? Or even a Freemium model. Considering most of them are already available on Youtube. As strange as this may sound I dont think Streaming is the business model that will save Music industry. And despite the headlines ( whatever MSM likes to print these days ) most artist's real income are from somewhere else.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#373

Post by picardythird »

unfamiliar wrote: post #209
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 and many others running good high end gear can repeatedly score well on these tests. Every time this comes up someone says this. I've never seen anyone actually doing it. e.g. a video of setting up a double blind test of this and someone actually passing consistently. When I've challenged people IRL who claim the same thing the response is always "Well, obviously I can't do it with any of the audio gear that eith…

Factors: - Quality of audio equipment - The experience of the listener - The nature of the audio

It’s quite obvious that the average listener listening to a 128kbps podcast stream is not the issue here. Nor is the average listener listening to a 320kbps stream of a loud, noisy pop/rock album.

But there are certain types of music where it’s much more apparent. I have a trained ear and so I can’t speak for everyone. There are certain types of music where I can’t tell the difference. But some classical piano albums on Spotify sound terrible to me. The artifacts of the conpression are more obvious on sensitive, detailed music.

All this to say that a random seection of people failing an online test to some random audio isn’t a comprehensive answer to this question.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#374

Post by simias »

coliveira wrote: post #358
numpad0 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>There's still no way to replicate the sound quality of being close to an orchestra.

That's why I always tend to bail out of audiophile discussion but I'll bite: why?

What's so special about the soundwaves going into your ears when you sit close to an orchestra that couldn't be reproduced with good audio equipment?

If you're talking about the experience itself of siting next to performers then I wholeheartedly agree, but that's the problem, it's no longer something that can be measured and objectivized.

And that's entirely fine, but I think there's a trend among some people (and especially the type of people who frequent this forum) that deem that if a feeling or emotion can't be objectivized then it's effectively worthless or irrational or something like that, so you see people grasping at straws to justify their emotions with a pseudo-scientific explanation. I find that frankly sad and quite toxic in a way.

Music is art, the enjoyment we derive from it can't be measured in kilobits per second. That doesn't mean that we need to make up pseudo-facts about acoustics to justify our preferences.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#375

Post by eeegnu »

falcolas wrote: post #170
solarmist wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but commercial spatial audio is in its infancy. We’re maybe in the 1920’s if you compare it to video. So as the techniques expands and people adjust and both sides gain experience we’ll be able to compensate for the perceived shortcomings by exaggerating effectively to make it seem better than our natural spacial hearing.

Fair warning, any attempts in this area will have to take your individual ear shape into account to be accurate. Our brains have learned how sounds change based on the frequency changes due to our individual ear shapes, and any software that wants to emulate true spatial sound will have to take this into account.

This sounds like a very interesting project, especially if it could be done just by taking pictures of both your ears (I'm not sure if that's sufficient to capture all of the topology.) Generating a sufficiently large dataset to learn how that topology relates to sound perception sounds incredibly expensive though.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#376

Post by foo_barrio »

jorvi wrote: post #245
unfamiliar wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I and many others running good high end gear can repeatedly score well on these tests. Every time this comes up someone says this. I've never seen anyone actually doing it. e.g. a video of setting up a double blind test of this and someone actually passing consistently. When I've challenged people IRL who claim the same thing the response is always "Well, obviously I can't do it with any of the audio gear that eith…

Not only that, biology is also against them. Somewhere between 25-30 years of age, your hearing already dips 17KHz.

I am almost 40 and can easily hear pure ones over 17khz but can't differentiate pure noise with or without anything above 13khz.

Right around 18.5khz there's a sharp falloff on pure tones no matter how much I pump the volume. I use a loudness meter that shows me the freq spectrum to confirm that my speakers and headphones are producing a pure constant tone.

On the tests at: "https://www.audiocheck.net/blindtests_frequency.php?frq=14" I can get 10/10 on the 10khz and 11khz test, 9/10 on the 12khz test and then it's just guessing at 13khz and higher.

High hats tend to fall around 16khz and I have been able to differentiate on audio tests just by listening to high hats but that has more to do with how aggressive the codec is and not necessarily my hearing capability. I enjoy piano music and using the Apple afconvert tool I've been able to get piano tracks down to under 100kbps and they sound fine to me which is pretty amazing.

I cannot use some of the more popular Berydynamic headphones because they sound too trebly and some pop songs are physically painful for me to listen to (eg the marimbas at the start of Ed Sheeran's Shape of You are like ear daggers on the 880 headphone and unlistenable on the 990's). I wonder if some of that brand's popularity comes from older ladies/gentlement being able to hear treble in the music that they otherwise wouldn't hear at all.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#377

Post by sbaildon »

unfamiliar wrote: post #268
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 "…

> Apple can add feature after feature, but if Music continues to [random issue most people have never encountered], it's close to useless. I've started to feel like "Apple Music as a music library" was really only intended as a bridge for people like you and me that were reluctant to abandon their obsessively curated their music library for the brave new world of streaming music. After a few years of it my listening…

I've certainly grown less particular about maintaining "my library". But when I hit shuffle, encounter a great song, navigate to the album, and find it mangled, it's... frustrating.

I wish Apple would provide an API that can upload to iCloud Music Library

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#378

Post by est31 »

beefman wrote: post #367
MrRadar wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who have never heard of Ambisonics, it's a surround-sound format based on taking the concept of differential stereo and extending it to three dimensions. Differential stereo is of course where instead of storing/transmitting each channel independently (as on audio cassettes or uncompressed digital audio formats like CDs) you store/transmit a sum of the two channels (L+R) and a difference (L-R) (as on vinyl…

Do we know how Apple's Spatial Audio works? And what is its relationship to Atmos?

Dolby Atmos allows you to specify multiple channels together with spatial metadata. The Ambisonics support for opus is quite similar. The spec allows the encoder to specify an arbitrary matrix used for mixing of the audio. If you read Apple's blog post, it seems they use the Dolby Atmos format instead of their own homegrown solution.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#379

Post by xkjkls »

Ashanmaril wrote: post #220
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…

Being able to discern a difference in a side-by-side test doesn't really mean much. You can tell which of 2 similar shades of blue is lighter next to each other, but if you were to look at one and then another a day apart you probably couldn't say which was lighter

It's a good point about optimization of certain things in general. Like, yeah, someone might post a study that in an anechoic chamber you can tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed audio, but how much of a difference is that making for people in the real world? Often when I listen to music, I'm at the gym, or the office, surrounded by all sorts of background noise that is going to impact my experience way more than compression.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#380

Post by hiq »

ksec wrote: post #200
Someone1234 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I and many others running good high end gear can repeatedly score well on these tests. I, too, run high-end gear and cannot. The problem scope isn't simply reproduction accuracy, it is also one of taste: Different compression can elevate/alter parts of the sound, and your opinion may not lean to the highest bit rate but rather some other coloring of the music. The fact you've run this test "repeatedly" actually hur…

I think the Key point would be, could you hear any difference in those test? If you could, then yes there is a quality differential, rather you got it right or wrong may be subject to taste. But at least we established there are differences. But when we say 128Kbps are sort of CD Quality or CD being no-difference to 320Kbps mp3, they generally refers to vast majority of consumers, not audio experts. I think most cons…

> I am wondering if there is a market for an even cheaper Music Streaming Services that target lower quality, 128Kbps music.

If you control the client and are able to update it, I think you're better off switching to opus or similar.

96kbps opus is actually quite good for music already: https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Opus#Music_encod...

I guess the question then is whether there's a market for 48kbps opus music. But that'd be assuming that a big part of the costs are bandwidth. I'd bet that's not the case.

Also imagine how little traction you'd get once people associate your brand with poor music quality. I don't think you can compete by being 2€/month cheaper.

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