Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#411

Post by nucleardog » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #394

thrdbndndn wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you said is totally true but it's not relevant here. Apple already have all the lossless files on their server. Just that before they converted them to lossy format before sending to the user, and now they serve the original. There is no new master / new re-release involved in all these.

> Apple already have all the lossless files on their server. Just that before they converted them to lossy format before sending to the user, and now they serve the original. Do you happen to have a citation for when this changed? According to the "Apple Digital Masters" Technology Brief[1], the masters delivered to Apple have historically been AAC files. [1] https://www.apple.com/itunes/docs/apple-digital-masters.pd…

I might be misunderstanding, but I think that PDF is about how to master your music such that it will sound good after they convert it to AAC. It doesn't actually speak to the audio that's sent to them.

Can't source anything except our own deliveries to Apple, but we've been delivering PCM since ~2018. Likely earlier, that's just when the code got moved into source control. That actually predates the copyright on that PDF.

In general, of the maybe 150-odd DSPs we deliver to, as far as I know all but a handful have us deliver PCM. The remainder have us delivering flac.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#412

Post by Dah00n » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

VT_Dude wrote: post #370

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…

Theoretica Applied Physics and BACCH Labs audition this exact demo -- A/B test by actually hiring a quartet and alternating the musicians playing with the speakers silent and the musicians silently air-playing and with the speakers playing. With a perfect image you literally cannot hear the difference. https://www.theoretica.us/ https://bacch.com/

Unless you have bad hearing everyone would be able to hear the difference on speakers and live unless live is defined as someone playing far away on a scene or something, no matter how expensive equipment you have. It is impossible to have it sound like musicians playing in the same room. To even come close you would need several speakers per instrument playing in multiple directions and some playing sounds of the people moving, breathing and talking too. Not even a simple snare drum being hit at intervals can be reproduced by a normal stereo setup to sound as if it were in the same room unless it's at distance. Remember, we play music at home so the definition should be an orchestra two to three meters away, not an orchestra ten to twenty meters away up at a scene.

Someone with something to sell is a very unreliable source btw.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

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Post by mixmastamyk » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #371

breakfastduck wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

128k Opus is quite a bit better, if for some reason that bit rate is crucial.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

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Post by spideymans » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

darnfish wrote: post #363

gonehome wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Main thing I miss from Spotify is the discover weekly playlist. I started using Apple Music because Spotify’s attempts to ruin podcasts by making them exclusive to their platform irritated me. Discover weekly is a really great thing though and Apple Music’s stuff isn’t as good.

I think Apple Music's "New Music Mix" is their version of Discover Weekly, it's under the Listen Now tab

The New Music Mix only releases one playlist a week. I believe Discover Weekly releases five playlists a week, each with their own moods. I much prefer Spotify's approach.

However I do find that both services largely recommend the same music to me. They just have different mechanisms of surfacing it.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#415

Post by crazygringo » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

throwaway222145 wrote: post #176

xd1936 wrote: post #16

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

Pretty much. Even more so that the iPhone doesn't come with wired earbuds anymore. What's the point of lossless streaming here?

It's explicitly for non-Apple hardware, mainly.

They make that pretty clear. It's for audiophiles with the appropriate DAC and super high quality listening equipment, whether speakers or wired headphones.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#416

Post by temac » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #374

coliveira wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Maybe if you move your head just a little bit with a live orchestra, the change is different from what happens with a few speakers (and often in a different room)

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

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Post by lucas_codes » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #74

I don't believe it. If I read that right they claim that they can deliver "spatial" audio via headphones using a multi-channel/object-based Dolby Atmos (as opposed to a binaural recording or something that else that is mixed for two channels ahead of time) For years there has been talk about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function and for years I have tried demos that are unimpressive, particular…

I think you're being overly negative. Is it as good as real life? Of course not, but it's not terrible as you're making out. Try Google Resonance: https://cdn.rawgit.com/resonance-audio/resonance-audio-web-s...

Personally I find the horizontal angle localisation excellent - vertical is slightly hit and miss.

But it probably depends on the person, too - HRTF models assume an "average" head

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

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Post by rokweom » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #179

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 highly suggest that people check out/try out "ABX comparator" plugin for Foobar2000 player. You give it two files (say a 128kbps mp3 version and a lossless flac verison) and it runs you through a double blind test of the two versions, quizzing you along the way. It's not just "listen to A" "listen to B", it gives you lots of options to listen to them and compare them in different ways, including obfuscating what tr…

There's a great tool for creating online ABX tests: https://abxtests.com/

The guy who made it, jaakkopasanen, is also the author of other great audio tools - AutoEQ and Impulcifer.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#419

Post by hbosch » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

ekingr wrote: post #391

sbaildon wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your plan for streaming? Funkwhale?

Still not sure. Indeed I have Funkwhale on the radar, but tbh I don't have a strong use case for streaming at home. Was thinking about putting it on my rPi -- but in the end it's even easier to just stream from my iPhone through Bluetooth (or a good old jack). My priority is to build a clean library with beets, transcode it in mp3 and feed it to iTunes, to have it on my iPhone & iPod.

Honestly, the Plex app is very decent for music libraries these days. Except for oddball VA releases and obscure mixtapes I find Plex to often be terrific at library management.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

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Post by mixmastamyk » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #387

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…

The liberal use of adjectives when discussion audio quality is what sets my BS alarm off. Bigger. Stronger. Warmer. Not that these cannot meaningfully describe audio. But it tells me they cannot quantify the difference.

Right, I don't want those sorts of modifications to my audio. Clearer, more accurate, would be my preference. Which I'll modify at my end as I choose.