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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

#661

Post by est31 »

beefman wrote: post #508
est31 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dolby Atmos allows you to specify multiple channels together with spatial metadata. The Ambisonics support for opus is quite similar. The spec allows the encoder to specify an arbitrary matrix used for mixing of the audio. If you read Apple's blog post, it seems they use the Dolby Atmos format instead of their own homegrown solution.

Doing some reading just now, it seems Atmos is what's called an OBA (object-based audio) format. It's fundamentally lower-level than Ambisonics, which falls into the SBA (scene-based audio) category, so it should be possible to mix it down to Ambisonics. In fact I suspect the Atmos decoder does something like that on its way to creating signals for each speaker. OBA formats generally require more bandwidth than SBA f…

Maybe there is no first-class support in the main opus encoder for object based audio, but as I've said above you can encode arbitrary matrices, so you can encode arbitrary positions for channels. That's enough for stationary objects. Moving objects, I'm not sure if Atmos supports them, can't be encoded in a single opus stream, however one can chain multiple opus streams after another. I don't think you need high time resolution for moving objects, something like one stream per 100ms should be enough, 10 per second. So in theory, opus can get get very close to object based audio, even if the encoder right now only does ambisonics.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#662

Post by marcan_42 »

simondotau wrote: post #656
marcan_42 wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At normal listening levels, yup. I'm 30 and I can certainly hear the hideous 19 kHz anti-rat blasters they have all over shops in Tokyo (and I think they almost certainly cause ear damage and should be illegal - IIRC they are marketed as putting out 138dB SPL!) but I am rather unlikely to hear the difference between music low-passed at 19kHz and 20kHz.

> I am rather unlikely to hear the difference Especially if your hearing has been damaged by repeat exposure to 19 kHz at 138dB SPL.

I do try to run away or cover my ears when I run into them...

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#664

Post by [deleted] »

inapis wrote: post #338
unfamiliar wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple can add feature after feature, but if Music continues to [random issue most people have never encountered], it's close to useless. I've started to feel like "Apple Music as a music library" was really only intended as a bridge for people like you and me that were reluctant to abandon their obsessively curated their music library for the brave new world of streaming music. After a few years of it my listening…

I abandoned my music library after I went to Apple Music. But 5 years later I'm going back. The licensing issues and split albums OP mentioned have basically annoyed the hell out of me. Quite a lot of old music from my childhood is basically gone for good from Apple Music/Spotify. I have a smart playlist which basically lists all tracks which are no longer available on Apple Music and it has a 7 day playtime. Quite a…

[deleted]

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#665

Post by inapis »

FPGAhacker wrote: post #643
inapis wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I abandoned my music library after I went to Apple Music. But 5 years later I'm going back. The licensing issues and split albums OP mentioned have basically annoyed the hell out of me. Quite a lot of old music from my childhood is basically gone for good from Apple Music/Spotify. I have a smart playlist which basically lists all tracks which are no longer available on Apple Music and it has a 7 day playtime. Quite a…

You should be able to upload your library to Apple Music (visible to just you). It used to be called iTunes Match, but my understanding is it’s integrated to Apple Music now.

I did but those files are not immune to Apple Music's licensing issues or bugs. If the track was matched and not uploaded, then those albums can still be greyed out when they are pulled from the catalog. And iTunes match still is not accurate. A lot of times tracks in one album are matched to individual singles on apple music.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#666

Post by inapis »

movedx wrote: post #577
inapis wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I abandoned my music library after I went to Apple Music. But 5 years later I'm going back. The licensing issues and split albums OP mentioned have basically annoyed the hell out of me. Quite a lot of old music from my childhood is basically gone for good from Apple Music/Spotify. I have a smart playlist which basically lists all tracks which are no longer available on Apple Music and it has a 7 day playtime. Quite a…

> I abandoned my music library after I went to Apple Music. But 5 years later I'm going back. How do you deal with the cost? I pay $18/month for Apple Music (Family) and I can listen to thousands of tracks in a single day if I wanted to. That same experience would cost me thousands of dollars up front to kick start it. This also isn't to mention the fact that not all music is available to buy legally online. Dimmu Bo…

As someone else stated, you consume in a slow manner. The library is built up over time.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#667

Post by mackrevinack »

sbaildon wrote: post #381
ekingr wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree so much! I switched to Apple Music 2 years ago when my hard drive failed. At the beginning it was alright, very convenient to have (almost) everything available on hand, in the same app as before. But now I can't stand it anymore. I have so many albums that randomly split all the time, version of tracks that change or become unavailable altogether. I'm moving away from streaming and am working on building bac…

What's your plan for streaming? Funkwhale?

ive been looking into similar things like jellyfin, mopidy etc for a long time, but i find syncthing to be a lot easier to get my head around and i can use whatever audio player on each app or platform. as long as it can play m3u playlists then im good to go.

only downside is that if you have a really large music library you will have to use syncignore filters to stop some things syncing to devices that don't have enough space.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#668

Post by SilverRed »

StartupTree wrote: post #424

Lossless is MEANINGLESS because Bluetooth audio itself is a lossy compressed stream. How are Apple going to market lossless streaming to Airpods, when such a thing is technically impossible?

Lossless to airplay speakers would be possible.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#669

Post by sbaildon »

inapis wrote: post #665
FPGAhacker wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be able to upload your library to Apple Music (visible to just you). It used to be called iTunes Match, but my understanding is it’s integrated to Apple Music now.

I did but those files are not immune to Apple Music's licensing issues or bugs. If the track was matched and not uploaded, then those albums can still be greyed out when they are pulled from the catalog. And iTunes match still is not accurate. A lot of times tracks in one album are matched to individual singles on apple music.

Uploading your local collection directly into your iCloud Music Library should prevent Apple from messing with the data. I uploaded some albums months ago and they've been untouched by Apple so far.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#670

Post by thirdsun »

eecc wrote: post #433
simias wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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,…

I also thought the same, then I went to listen some orchestral performance at the Rome Auditorium. During an interval I was sitting in a shitty corner up on some balcony, pretty far; but I could hear the voice and discern the words of a girl chatting down in the platea next to an entrance. A single mouth, chatting, among hundreds other voices. During the concert you could hear the individual performers’ instruments,…

A critical factor in this experience was the actual room. Anyone dealing with audio and hifi will confirm how much great acoustics depend on a well treated room.

While most of us can't live in such a purpose-optimized room I think OP's point was that a bunch of high quality speakers in that very same auditorium might have yielded very similar results to your experience.

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