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Spatial Audio

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Re: Spatial Audio

#51

Post by salamandersauce »

hairofadog wrote: post #44

I'll say up front that I'm a non-audiophile, and so I'm offering my opinion from that point of view. I find the Spatial Audio / Dolby Atmos thing weird for a number of reasons. First, the dual branding seems clunky. "First I listened to music in mono. Then I listened to music in stereo. Then I listened to music in ____" I'd be willing to bet that even amongst people who care a lot about this stuff you'd have a hard t…

Doesn't basically every Hollywood movie since DVD pay a licensing fee to Dolby (or DTS) for 5.1 or Atmos (or DTS:X) support? Theaters too even?

And wasn't Dolby B NR insanely widespread on pre-recorded cassettes? Like so common that most albums on cassette from the 80s have the Dolby logo on them?

I don't think its that weird. It's clearly been done in the past. Apple's limitations on what devices works sucks and it'd be nice if we could buy these tracks DRM free to play on an Atmos speaker setup but they aren't the only ones to have this. Tidal has Spatial Audio, Amazon does too. Each does it a little differently as to what is supported annoyingly but hopefully as time goes on those limitations will go away.

Re: Spatial Audio

#53

Post by falcolas »

yoav wrote: post #47
falcolas wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because everyone using Apple music is forced to listen to it. Whether they like the remixes or not.

There’s actually a setting to choose

You can choose to enable spatial listening (as opposed to the stereo downmix), but you can't choose to use the original recording.

Re: Spatial Audio

#54

Post by danappelxx »

scoot wrote: post #20
danappelxx wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From footnote 8 on https://www.apple.com/apple-music/ > Works with AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, BeatsX, Beats Solo3 Wireless, Beats Studio3, Powerbeats3 Wireless, Beats Flex, Powerbeats Pro, and Beats Solo Pro. Am I missing something?

So, works with any headphones, as long as they have an apple brand sticker attached? There's nothing technologically special about most of these.

I’m assuming they also have some special hardware/firmware for the head tracking feature

Re: Spatial Audio

#55

Post by Cybotron5000 »

sidechaining wrote: post #50

Slightly related. But I’ve had single-sided deafness all my life (which means all I’ve experienced is mono audio) and now with this shift from stereo to spatial. I was wondering if some kind HN users could fill me in on what I’m missing out. (By listening to stereo tracks in mono and observing how it sounds or anything that could give me a picture of that— is it crowded? Distorted? Etc). The only pertinent study I co…

There’s been some wonderful recordings that were designed solely/primarily for mono playback (early Motown/rock n roll/blues for example) that IMHO actually kind of benefit somehow from lack of stereo separation. If mixed well, the instruments can blend really well and work as one unit and there’s kind of an energy and punch to the speaker/s working as one... Early stereo records often had rather drastic left/right panning (eg. some Beatles stuff) or had to hedge their bets in case they were played back through eg. mono radios/badly set-up stereos and so on… Something similar is still the case when engineers think about what their track might sound like coming through a crappy mono phone speaker with no bass at 128kbps/what have you… The advice I’ve always heard is that you should make sure that your mix would ‘fold down’, so to speak, to mono anyhow… So you should never rely on the listener being in the sweet spot (if you think about eg. a club where an audience member could be stood directly in front of one speaker, but barely hear another, or some listeners weird home setups with one speaker balanced on a bookcase and the other on a table or something). In most environments you get complicated reflections and build ups/absorptions of various frequencies due to the acoustics anyhow… Although with single-sided deafness you won’t get the effect of directionality from the delay between the sound hitting one ear before the other, I imagine you would still experience the attenuation of certain frequencies as the sound moves around your head, the height dependent effects and so on …I suppose it’s not a million miles away from if you were to close one eye - monoscopic as opposed to stereoscopic? Bass frequencies are mostly experienced more or less monophonically, so you’re not missing out there... I wonder if reverb effects/using impulse responses of different environments and volume adjustments might also help give some of the impression?

Re: Spatial Audio

#56

Post by Cybotron5000 »

gmueckl wrote: post #26

I don't know how the downmix for headphones is created in this case, but if it spatializes the individual objects correctly, this removes the in-head-localization artifact that unprocessed stereo on headphones suffers from naturally, especially for sounds with a center pan. We have just trained ourselves to accept that headphones make sounds appear inside our heads. And I am pretty certain that the author is mistakin…

…yes, related to ‘crosstalk’: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosstalk

Re: Spatial Audio

#57

Post by Cybotron5000 »

m3kw9 wrote: post #30

From what Apple say about spatial audio, you cannot just run it thru a converter. You need the tracks in their individual original recording before the mixing to be able to do it properly. So I’m not sure how a handful of chop shops are doing all that.

Yeah you’d need the multitrack original recordings to do a good job I’d say. There are tricks with eg. phase cancellation/spectral filtering and so on I suppose you could use to try and hack something together, but the results would vary greatly depending on the original material/skill of the engineer… A lot of multi-track recordings, especially older ones, have a lot of bleed between tracks which might complicate matters…

Re: Spatial Audio

#58

Post by balls187 »

bristleworm wrote: post #36

According to Apple, wireless headphones like the AirPods do support spacial audio. No idea where the author got the information they wouldn't. Apart from that, I get how an audio engineer would think that way, but for me, and I suppose most music listeners, what's important is that the sound is great. And personally I really like spacial audio.

> No idea where the author got the information they wouldn't.

Being misinformed.

Apple Lossless HD Audio, which was recently announced, is not currently supported by wireless (read: bluetooth) headphones.

Re: Spatial Audio

#59

Post by krapht »

sidechaining wrote: post #50

Slightly related. But I’ve had single-sided deafness all my life (which means all I’ve experienced is mono audio) and now with this shift from stereo to spatial. I was wondering if some kind HN users could fill me in on what I’m missing out. (By listening to stereo tracks in mono and observing how it sounds or anything that could give me a picture of that— is it crowded? Distorted? Etc). The only pertinent study I co…

I assume you have two eyes, right? What happens when you close one eye and only have monocular vision?

Not much, but it's a lot harder to judge distances correctly. You still can, if you use outside knowledge and perspective, but it's less accurate.

Same for stereo hearing. With two ears it's easier to locate where a sound is coming from. With one ear you can tell if something at constant volume is moving away or moving towards you based on loudness. With two ears you can tell if something at constant volume is stationary or circling around you.

Unfortunately I don't think there are words to describe it. You "just know", because it's an unconscious brain thing.

You could sort of simulate it by rotating your head 180 degrees and noticing how the sound changes. People with two working ears can do this without moving their head.

The effect for music is mostly: it's easier to separate instruments even if they are the same volume, if they are in different spatial locations so the brain can filter against it. Stuff can sound less "cluttered, muddy", but it doesn't help as much as you think in recordings because you as a listener can't move the microphone. I think it would be a bigger deal in small live shows, or music performed in virtual reality where a 3D engine can calculate the audio delay appropriately for each ear, and that difference is relevant because you the listener are close to the musician and possibly moving relative to them.

Re: Spatial Audio

#60

Post by smoldesu »

ntSean wrote: post #9
allears wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people like gimmicky things better, just like lots of people like to turn up the bass and treble all the way. But lots of us (and I'm a musician and audio engineer) appreciate high quality balanced distortion free audio, and want to hear the music the way the original artist intended. Just because you can make sounds bounce around in space doesn't make the music better, especially if the original recording wa…

Speaking as a musician, I agree that there is a level of respect required for the original mix. Though, in the case of Spacial Audio, this isn't a matter of "gimmicky" sound, this is headphones reproducing the effect that loudspeakers already have. This isn't new and has been in audio engineering circles for a long while ( https://goodhertz.co/canopener-studio/ ) but Apple has added 6dof head tracking which makes the…

I was with you until you said that "Apple has added 6dof head tracking which makes the effect truly awe-inspiring", and I laughed so hard I spit out my coffee.

Thank you so much.

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