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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

#711

Post by foobarbecue »

foobarbecue wrote: post #571

I enjoy actual 5.1 music which was briefly a thing in the 200s. There are a few albums recorded this way -- Tipper's Surrounded, Opeth, one or two Mastodon, a Muse album or two. I've seen a lot of BS marketing stuff with stereo + some effects being labelled as 5.1 or 7.1. What is Dolby Atmos? I went to https://www.dolby.com/technologies/dolby-atmos/ but it doesn't really tell you. In my dreams it is music recorded wi…

I'm not sure why I didn't think to go to wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Atmos says it's a format that stores up to 128 audio channels with 3d spatial information for each. Pretty cool!

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#712

Post by jolux »

rapjr9 wrote: post #707
jolux wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My buddy can do it. I didn’t believe him at first but he scored better than me, consistently. We’re both musicians but he’s more into lossless audiophile stuff. We tested it out in our college dorm freshman year. Speakers were the built in ones on my MacBook Pro. I will say that the difference is extremely minor and he has said he only cares about lossless for the sake of having original media in high quality, so he…

I think this is what confuses many people when they do their own tests, they don't know what to listen for and expect a more general sound quality difference over all parts of the recordings. The differences are actually in particular kinds of sounds, like high hats or piano, and only at specific moments, and only in specific music. For music that is all distortion all the time likely no one can tell the difference.…

Yeah, it's not a general loss of quality. He actually showed me a really cool YouTube video that explained what is lost with compression, where the person making the video played the same passage of a song compressed and uncompressed, and then showed visually the parts of the waveform that were clipped, and then played the clipped parts isolated. It was a lot of high-pitched, tinny noise, presumably from the upper end of the high hat cymbals and stuff. Wish I still had it handy.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#713

Post by breakfastduck »

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.

We shouldn't destroy the industry even more just so that some people can get it even cheaper than they can already.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#714

Post by Ericson2314 »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #700
floatingatoll wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what I get for not saying “in Homebrew”!

I mean it was perfectly clear in context. That's why I wrote the "Well..." dependent clause; I know I'm providing the better way for homebrew.

oops "not providing the better way for homebrew." (edit window.)

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#715

Post by Wowfunhappy »

crazygringo wrote: post #699
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ghosting, maybe, although I almost never notice it on my projector. But, isn't "full brightness" just a function of how bright you make the projector? Which is to say, you could make a projector that's twice as bright as mine (mine isn't amazing, it cost less a a grand) and in 3D it would have the brightness of my 2D setup.

In theory, but there are good reasons why cinemas and home projectors don't "just" double (or really, need to quadruple because of how the shutters work). Heat dissipation requirements go up hugely because the bulb is so much hotter. You simply can't buy a home projector that is 4x brighter. I looked into it earlier this year -- they simply don't exist. Because if they did, the fan noise required to cool the bulb wou…

You could also have multiple projectors. :) Or a bright TV.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#716

Post by chuchana »

tarsinge wrote: post #213
Someone1234 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I and many others running good high end gear can repeatedly score well on these tests. I, too, run high-end gear and cannot. The problem scope isn't simply reproduction accuracy, it is also one of taste: Different compression can elevate/alter parts of the sound, and your opinion may not lean to the highest bit rate but rather some other coloring of the music. The fact you've run this test "repeatedly" actually hur…

MP3 compression is not the same thing has compression the audio effect. Compressed music in the effect sense can be enjoyable and is a matter of taste, but hearable MP3 compression artifacts is nearly always crap.

For those unfamiliar with the other definition referenced here: dynamic range compression (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression)

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#717

Post by jancsika »

astrange wrote: post #703
jancsika wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which song on which album? I'm asking because I literally want to listen to it in a mono context and experience what bad things happen as a result.

I was going to say Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - title track and Within You Without You. But it turns out they want you to listen in mono anyway! https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/inside-track-sgt-pep...

Exactly!

Going further with another Beatles tune-- listen to the mono mix of "Helter Skelter" and tell me what in the first 10 seconds clues you in to the fact that a) it was recorded in 1968 and b) that it's even in mono! And don't cheat by comparing it to the stereo version.

In any case-- compare that experience to video recording/playback quality. I can't even show digital videos recorded in, say, 2004, to a young audience because the general quality is already considered complete crap. My own confirmation bias can't even fill in the rift. Standard DV stuff from that era-- even if it's something I care deeply about-- simply looks blurry to me now.

The funny thing to me is that silicon valley still markets improvements in audio fidelity/spatialization as if they are the same qualitative jumps in quality as video improvements. Ok, I get it that VR probably necessitates sounds emanating from behind your head. Fine. But generally speaking there is a ton of hype around audio that simply isn't warranted, at least for a consumer or even prosumer audience. It's not blockchain-level hype, but still...

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