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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

#41

Post by agloeregrets »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #11

This is honestly quite exciting and I’m actually tempted to use get Apple Music to try this. However, it’s not really clear to me how I can play these tracks. Can I use my existing Dolby Atmos setup? If so, what kind of hardware do I need to connect? Can I use a HDMI dongle for my iPad, for example, to connect it to my receiver? Or is this only an Apple-specific thing that only works on Apple speakers. I’m afraid I a…

For one thing, Apple has a custom Dolby Atmos Implementation on their headphones that ties the accelerometers in the AirPods to detect head position and then adjust sound strength to places where you turn your head. Supposedly when watching movies with Atmos or 7.1 it's incredibly immersive. They just announced their new iMac with 'Atmos' (I want to see how this works) as well however. You probably could connect over HDMI as you state.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#44

Post by tobyhinloopen »

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…

I have plastic shiny disks that are DRM free. They’re actually pretty great, lossless, and no monthly fees.

They are called _Compact Discs_ and you can get them pretty cheap these days!

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#45

Post by axxl »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #28

Since most of the music is consumed on headphones, I'm not sure if spatial music will appeal to many. What I would really like to see in purchased music is individual soundtracks for each instrument/vocal (which I can mix as per my taste) and one default mix made as per the producer's taste. This would not only help with music practice, karaoke,

You can make spatial audio work with headphones, as those various fun YouTube demos show. Furthermore Apple's headphones have support for it including directional audio support. If you haven't tried it it's pretty spectacular, with the only downside being the sound so convincingly seems to be coming from my iPad I need to verify that I am in fact sending the audio to my airpods.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#46

Post by Someone1234 »

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 measure head movements in order to adjust the audio accordingly, and new audio formats to make it work.

This may sound interesting if you haven't tried it, but it results in: Either you keep your head stationary and get the non-Spatial Audio sound (i.e. what they optimized for 90%+ of their audience) or whipping your head around to "enjoy" the effect (which is largely a movement accurate degradation).

It feels like cart-before-the-horse tech wherein they figured out they can do this thing, and now want to work backwards into what it may be useful for.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#47

Post by willejs »

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.

Spotify have it in the works, for release later this year. https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-02-22/five-things-to-know-...

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#49

Post by yRbfmm1rVg8K5TR »

Invictus0 wrote: post #31

> By default, Apple Music will automatically play Dolby Atmos tracks on all AirPods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip, as well as the built-in speakers in the latest versions of iPhone, iPad, and Mac. What does it mean to have spatial audio on a pair of headphones? I thought spatial audio meant you needed a 5 speaker setup or similar.

Spacial Audio is the name of an Apple feature avaiable when using their headphones with an iPhone/iPad. It using "head tracking" so when you move or turn your head it changes the sound to make it seem like you are moving around a room with surround sound.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#50

Post by capableweb »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #19

This had been rumored for about a month, but that it was a FREE upgrade was completely unexpected. We thought this would be a higher tier.

Not sure who "we" are but many in the community do expect Apple to run all of their services as loss-leaders as currently they have a very small market share compared to Spotify et al, so not surprising to everyone at least that this was free.
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