Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 717 posts

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#521

Post by Wowfunhappy »

crazygringo wrote: post #319
afavour wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of what you're saying applies to 3D TV, too. And that ended up being a dud. IMO the problem with both is that they're an awful shared experience, and a lot of TV watching is done by more than one person at a time.

3D has tons of drawbacks though -- the image is less than half as bright, glasses are clunky and not used for anything else, there's still serious ghosting effects. It's really half-baked, alas. Also there's only a tiny fraction of content in 3D. (The best way to view 3D movies, funnily enough, is in a virtual theater on the Oculus Quest 2.) Spatial audio is different. It has zero downsides over existing headphones,…

> (The best way to view 3D movies, funnily enough, is in a virtual theater on the Oculus Quest 2.)

I don't deny the drawbacks of stereoscopic 3D—even as a personal 3D fan, I'm not surprised it never caught on—but I don't think a VR headset is the best way to consume stereoscopic content. Because, well, you have to wear a headset!

I have a BenQ W1070 projector which supports stereoscopic 3D, and a Valve Index. For actual VR content, the Index is great, but for normal stereoscopic movies, using just the projector with a pair of special glasses is much more comfortable.

I do wish enabling 3D didn't dull the colors on the projector, but it's still clearly preferable to a headset IMO.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#522

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

wnevets wrote: post #404

Can you hear the difference between 8bit and 16bit audio? I can't and I have pretty good headphones. https://www.audiocheck.net/blindtests_16vs8bit.php

How is this relevant to the topic here?

Dynamic range in audio matters only if you actually have some. It's absolutely possible to have 16/24 or more bits of dynamic range available but have the music be pushed so hot as to not use more than a few actual bits. The test you linked is just an example of such music. Regardless, it's easily discernible, as the loudness is not matched between the test samples. I don't even need to listen more than 0.5s to get to 99.95% confidence.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#523

Post by chefandy »

haecceity wrote: post #383
JohnBooty wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like with kerning Kerning is a great comparison, I think. Studies have shown that well-compressed lossy audio is nearly indistinguishable from the originals. This is certainly true for me. I can sometimes pick out the compressed version if I know the track well and can look for specific details, but generally I'm absolutely not consciously aware of any compression artifacts. Similarly, I doubt most people could…

But the question is do they enjoy the book with excellent typography because they're told it's excellent or can they perceive the higher excellence and derive enjoyment thereof.

I can speak to this as a graphic designer.

In the Battle of Naboo in the Phantom Menace (2001, 115m budget,) you see a CGI battle between a million zillion CGI robots and CGI aliens with CGI force fields, etc. It's a proud display of state-of-the-art CGI capability, circa 2001.

To this day, when you watch Jurassic Park (1993, 65m budget,) you're looking at a fucking dinosaur.

Great typography is like great special effects in a movie (most of the time,)— the viewer shouldn't realize it's there. "Good typography is invisible" is the most commonly repeated maxim for typographers. Typography is good if it's readable, legible, all elements on the page serve their purpose without needing to be labelled or puzzled over, and the most noticeable thing on the page is the information being conveyed. (Postmodernism challenged this in some interesting ways but for most practical purposes, this still holds true.) A designer might notice the typeface choice, paper choice, tracking, leading, margins, kerning, paragraph 'rag,' line length/column width element hierarchy and placement. The user probably won't notice the greater reading speed, lessened eye fatigue, fewer incidents of losing their place, easier scanning for pertinent bits, and things like that. But it will certainly be there.

I remember the first time I listened to a perfect-condition vinyl of something that I had always only streamed— I was immediately struck by how much more spatially-open it was. I imagine that was pretty deliberately done by the producer and with the necessary high-end loss in lossily compressed music, it just doesn't make it through. Not sure if I would still be able to tell as much of a difference in my 40s as I did in my early 30s, but I think most people would be subtly more engrossed in the music, even if not consciously. That was also sitting at home directly in front of my modest but competent stereo. The real question is context. Will the listening devices convey those subtleties? I know a lot of people are using streaming services as sources for home audio these days, so maybe it would to them? Certainly wouldn't to me as I was listening to music while riding the subway. I might enjoy having it available for a nice sit-down critical listening session.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#525

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #228
KingOfCoders wrote: post #207

Wouldn't lossless Audio need to be some kind of analog? Or some fourier transformations? Isn't the quantization of digital already a loss over the continous nature of sounds? I have no clue about audio.

In this context, lossless just means "the same quality as it was originally recorded in, which is sufficiently high for all practical purposes". And since our hearing only goes up to 20kHz, if you record at a sample rate of 44.1kHz -- just above the Nyquist frequency -- you'll be able to faithfully reproduce the original audio to within the precision afforded by your bit depth (generally 16 or 24 bit). Sort of like h…

Small correction: "bit for bit identical sound data as it was rendered at the final stage of production (mastering)"†.

Technically, our hearing plays no role in this, the requirement is just preserving the same sampling rate and dynamic range.

†NB: industrial standard is preparing a master pack of different files from the same final render, including lossy mp3.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#526

Post by peeters »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #369
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…

These sorts of tests are BS in my opinion. How often are you listening to the same track 3 times across different quality settings in the same listening session? The only "real" test for these sorts of things is > You've got a new device. Your streaming app defaults to low-quality upon installation. How long until you notice this?

There are plenty of things that can poison the user experience that don't rise above the sub-conscious. Just because you don't notice something doesn't mean that if that thing is improved, you won't have a better experience. E.g. an added 15ms latency on a website.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#527

Post by eikenberry »

yingbo wrote: post #290
moogly wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The format is ALAC, it’s not proprietary but an open spec True. No one else bothers with it though, because why should they when FLAC exists? That makes ALAC, in practice, largely an Apple-only format.

As mentioned above, ALAC is an open source format, which has all benefits as other open source format e.g. FLAC.

The main benefit of lossless is the ability to convert to other formats, including other lossless formats that might have better longevity. So as long as you can convert it to FLAC once downloaded it is doing its job.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#528

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#529

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #401

Huh, what a weird thread! I thought most people would be listening to their own curated collection of mostly Bandcamp stuff, plus a bunch of exclusive vinyl and cassette releases. I didn’t realize that older folks (i.e. over 35) are still using services like Spotify and Apple Music!

It's astounding how a little bit of convenience gets people to abandon their habits and forgo their rights to own things. While at the same time pushing artists into zero-income servitude to the algorithm.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#530

Post by fullstop »

lozf wrote: post #516
fullstop wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I am just not that paranoid. I had cassettes until the late 90s, CDs until the mid-2000s, and Spotify since then. Spotify isn't going anywhere.

Spotify may not, but parts of their available catalogue do disappear, depending on licensing deals.

Yes, this happens once in a blue moon. I've bought one album because of this, and the content returned to Spotify within a few weeks of its departure.

It is still, for me, a cheaper and more flexible option despite licensing squabbles. It also gives me the opportunity to find new artists and give albums a few listens before deciding on whether or not they do it for me.

My views are USA-centric, perhaps licensing issues are more prevalent in other countries.

Post reply on HN