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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

#591

Post by Ericson2314 »

floatingatoll wrote: post #585
floatingatoll wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been storing my FLAC files as ALAC for iTunes compatibility for the past decade. Max.app on macOS, while old and creaky looking, does a fine job of transcoding them and maintaining tags.

Oh, if you're using homebrew and you want ffmpeg to support ALAC, you can do that. brew edit ffmpeg; add `depends_on "fdk-aac"` and `--enable-libfdk-aac`, `--enable-nonfree` to the relevant sections, remove the bottle section; then, brew reinstall ffmpeg. There's probably a better way to do this that doesn't trigger a merge conflict each time they update the bottle hashes (resolved easily with brew edit ffmpeg, repea…

> There's probably a better way to do this that doesn't trigger a merge conflict

Well if you want to try Nix, https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/9dba669e8a53f00114b53d... right out of the box :D

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#592

Post by bredren »

blackearl wrote: post #513
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 "…

I miss what.cd Despite what anyone thinks about music piracy, what.cd had hands down the best music organization I've ever seen. I wish they had just dropped the torrents and kept the indexing features

I miss Waffles.fm but even more so, Oink. I did What in the end.

These were rich, music-minded communities focused entirely on music.

They were made up of people who went against great friction to discuss artistic works with others willing to do the same.

I've paid for Apple Music since the onset and it has never come close to the weekly top seeded albums of these communities.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#593

Post by locusm »

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…

Apple tosses togethor lossless and high res in this article, it states that its whole catalog will be available in lossless format and also this "For the true audiophile, Apple Music also offers Hi-Resolution Lossless all the way up to 24 bit at 192 kHz".

It doesnt say if the high res tracks are included in a subscription which is interesting as competing services usually have a higher price tier for this. Services like Tidal & Qobuz differentiate themselves on high res but it is such a tiny percentage of their catalog thats its often a waste of effort.

And then there is the whole hardware support question, Android down samples everything and Apples codec over bluetooth isnt going to support anything high res anyway.

This all sounds like features for the average user (bigger numbers are better) where in reality it probably holds value for less than 1% of users.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#594

Post by joshspankit »

locusm wrote: post #593
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…

Apple tosses togethor lossless and high res in this article, it states that its whole catalog will be available in lossless format and also this "For the true audiophile, Apple Music also offers Hi-Resolution Lossless all the way up to 24 bit at 192 kHz". It doesnt say if the high res tracks are included in a subscription which is interesting as competing services usually have a higher price tier for this. Services l…

Apple’s own high-end headphones can’t even handle the lossless files.

I suspect like many things, that this is Apple’s attempt at providing a service that’s just valid enough that they can dry up the competitors then relax their quality and get back to selling the products they want to sell people.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#595

Post by crazygringo »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #521
crazygringo wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 act…

Oh sure I wasn't referring to comfort, just to the pure quality of the 3D experience.

A VR headset is the only solution I'm aware of that is full-brightness, zero-ghosting.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#596

Post by bredren »

nwsm wrote: post #471

AirPod Pro and Max will not support it. https://www.imore.com/airpods-max-dont-support-apple-musics-...

Pro's I get, but AirPod Max doesn't support lossless Apple Music even wired?

That's a pretty big miss. At the very least I would have expected them to include some large buffer to allow wireless playback.

I believe that the APMs were held back a long time from release. I had thought they were a year late.

If that's true, then it would make more sense that a plan for supporting lossless wouldn't be included.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#597

Post by joshspankit »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #591
floatingatoll wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, if you're using homebrew and you want ffmpeg to support ALAC, you can do that. brew edit ffmpeg; add `depends_on "fdk-aac"` and `--enable-libfdk-aac`, `--enable-nonfree` to the relevant sections, remove the bottle section; then, brew reinstall ffmpeg. There's probably a better way to do this that doesn't trigger a merge conflict each time they update the bottle hashes (resolved easily with brew edit ffmpeg, repea…

> There's probably a better way to do this that doesn't trigger a merge conflict Well if you want to try Nix, https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/9dba669e8a53f00114b53d... right out of the box :D

Though I had read about it already, your comment is the first time I’ve seen a compelling real-word reason for me to install Nix.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#598

Post by crazygringo »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #543
crazygringo wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either you keep your head stationary and get the non-Spatial Audio sound (i.e. what they optimized for 90%+ of their audience) I literally have no idea what you're talking about. Using Spatial Audio on my AirPods Pro is insanely better, and still very much spatial, even without actively moving my head. First, the sound appears to be coming from outside of my head, rather than between my ears -- no "headphone fatigu…

Does anyone happen to know of a non-headphone-specific solution for this, which actually does a good job? It doesn't need to work when I move my head, neither does the Virtual Barbershop[1] and yet the effect on my run-of-the-mill earbuds is still incredible. I'm open to little hardware boxes, software that modifies my computer's audio as it plays, a filter for ffmpeg, etc, as long as I can use whatever headphones I…

I've tried a bunch of them over the years, heck way back when there was an analog box you could buy that did it.

And there are still a ton -- heck, there's a checkbox built-in in VLC under Audio Effects > Filter > Headphone virtualization.

But none of them that I've tried come anywhere close to what Apple has done. I don't know why.

However, there is an official Dolby Atmos Surround Sound effect for Windows 10:

https://www.howtogeek.com/309853/how-to-use-dolby-atmos-surr...

I've never tried it, but if anything currently competes decently with Apple's version, that might be it.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#599

Post by joshspankit »

layer8 wrote: post #256
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. Indeed, here is such a test: https://gxip23wuyntw2qbzp2f7yfke6y-ac5fdsxevxq4s5y-www-heise... Even trained listeners using high-end equipment weren’t able to distinguish between CD and 256 kbps MP3 in double-blind tests.

The worst thing we ever did for audio quality was focus on short A/B tests. It seems like a decent idea, and works for big differences, but ears are not great at it.

Much better results would be had with 1 month of A, then switching to B.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#600

Post by shard »

alanbernstein wrote: post #454
coliveira wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To start replicating the sound of an orchestra, you'll at a minimum need one speaker at each location where a player is, playing a single channel (the instrument). But even this is simplifying things, because each instrument has a different body shape, different sound projection, which would need to be replicated by specialized speakers. Also, the room has an important effect on how the sound waves travel and hit you…

What if you only want to replicate the sound of an orchestra as heard by an observer at a specified point ? Why wouldn't two microphones be sufficient? That's how it's perceived, after all.

I suppose then you would need to have the transfer function of that specific observer's head and ears at that specific point. Perhaps some time in the future there will be personalization of the transfer function so that you can hear the sounds as you would hear it at that spot.
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