[HN Gopher] Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio
___________________________________________________________________
Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 592 points
Date : 2021-05-17 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| tjmehta wrote:
| This is impressive bc Apple can create an elevated listening
| experience for owners of AirPods and HomePods.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| This is included/no additional cost which is fantastic.
|
| I do wonder if in the longer term if Apple's Spatial Audio with
| "dynamic head tracking" isn't the next 3D TVs/3D Content i.e. a
| gimmick.
|
| Taking traditional multi-source audio (Dolby/Atmos/etc) and
| jamming it into stereo is old tech, it doesn't work particularly
| well but is cheap to make/consume, thus _mostly_ harmless. The
| new Spatial Audio is using gyroscopes to measure head movements
| in order to adjust the audio accordingly, and new audio formats
| to make it work.
|
| This may sound interesting if you haven't tried it, but it
| results in: Either you keep your head stationary and get the non-
| Spatial Audio sound (i.e. what they optimized for 90%+ of their
| audience) or whipping your head around to "enjoy" the effect
| (which is largely a movement accurate degradation).
|
| It feels like cart-before-the-horse tech wherein they figured out
| they can do this thing, and now want to work backwards into what
| it may be useful for.
| Mandelmus wrote:
| This Apple Music "spatial audio" just means Dolby Atmos. It is
| _not_ the same gyroscope-based spatial audio that they use on
| Apple TV.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| In theory they could apply the gyroscope based movement to
| Dolby Atmos based music as well. But who wants to turn 90
| degrees left and have the songs soundstage not also shift
| with them?
| Jcowell wrote:
| Apple TV doesn't have Spacial Audio. Only iPads and iPhones.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Apple TV the streaming service. Not Apple TV the hardware
| or Apple TV the app or any other Apple TV that apple makes.
| Jcowell wrote:
| The streaming service is Apple TV+ while the App is TV
| and the device is called Apple TV.
| tshaddox wrote:
| https://dcurt.is/apple-tv-all-the-way-down
| sbarre wrote:
| > I do wonder if in the longer term if Apple's Spatial Audio
| with "dynamic head tracking" isn't the next 3D TVs/3D Content
| i.e. a gimmick.
|
| For what it's worth, I have a pair of Audeze headphones that
| has 3D head tracking or whatever they call it, and I don't
| think it's a gimmick.
|
| When I'm wearing those and watching a movie on my TV (or
| playing a game on my PC), the sound really does appear to be
| coming from in front of me (or beside/behind me depending on
| the channel or the mix), and if I turn my head, the sound stays
| put.
|
| It's somewhat subtle, but it can make me forget that I'm
| wearing headphones and I personally find it really adds to the
| experience.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Why is that useful though? "It's like I'm really listening to
| a TV!". Isn't that what people try to avoid with expensive
| sound systems that offer surround sound?
| kjakm wrote:
| With the AirPods + Apple TV content spatial audio makes it
| sound like the audio is coming through more than just the
| two channels. It's much more natural sounding that stereo
| in headphones.
| sbarre wrote:
| I find positional audio is more immersive.
|
| I never claimed this was useful, I said I found it
| enjoyable and having had this headset for 3+ years now, I
| can say that - speaking for myself - this is not a
| "gimmick" that I've grown tired of or turned off.
| dagmx wrote:
| It's really difficult (almost impossible) to keep your head
| perfectly still.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Indeed, so you're getting degradation/distortion of the audio
| source _most of the time_. That 's why most people try it a
| couple of times then turn it off.
| boardwaalk wrote:
| I can't speak for anyone else, but I turned it off not
| because of any degradation/distortion, but because the
| tracking wasn't that great (on multiple fairly recent
| devices) and one 'hiccup' where you move your head but the
| audio sticks in place is a bigger minus than any plus from
| the spatial audio itself.
| dagmx wrote:
| I'm not sure agreeing with my point backs up what you're
| saying.
|
| I'm saying we turn our heads regularly, so the Spatial
| audio works well most of the time.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I am agreeing that you cannot keep your head completely
| still, and then pointing out that that fact means Spatial
| Audio is constantly causing audio adjustments with
| seemingly no basis which degrades the listening
| experience.
|
| The argument that Spatial Audio makes more tiny
| adjustments is an argument against Spatial Audio, not an
| argument for it.
| dagmx wrote:
| Why do you think it degrades the listening experience?
|
| The mixes are already made for surround sound. It's not
| arbitrary, so not "no basis" like you say. It's taking a
| surround mix and anchoring the audio sources.
| solarmist wrote:
| The cart before the horse doesn't sound very Apple like.
| They're the kind to keep it private and mess with it until they
| find a use for it and get it working very well.
|
| Instead they'd just find a way to make the battery bigger
| because they know people care a ton about that.
|
| Also, everyone keeps talking about consciously moving your head
| around. Record yourself doing something on your computer for 5
| minutes and watch how much your head already, unconsciously
| moves around. It's a lot.
|
| Yes it's subtle, but it's supposed to be. You're meant to
| forget about it. It's trying to more accurately reproduce our
| natural abilities.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > The cart before the horse doesn't sound very Apple like.
| They're the kind to keep it private and mess with it until
| they find a use for it and get it working very well.
|
| Force Touch.
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| It's working very well on iPhones and Apple Watches and has
| great use cases. It was axed on newer iPhones because of
| discoverability issues and little amount of people being
| even aware it exists and how to use it.
|
| I still miss force touch on keyboard to move cursor around
| (instead of pressing spacebar, holding it and waiting)
| dinglefairy wrote:
| i suppose there's something to this 'head turning' experience,
| but what immediately came to my paranoid mind was all that
| sweet juicy private data that they will likely have access to.
| knowing what you look at/are doing while you listen to music.
| your entire bodies movement is related to the way your head
| moves. the only people i picture that do nothing while
| listening to music, just sitting there actively listening, are
| hifi guys in their hifi chairs.
|
| why spend resources on this though? how do you set the
| 'reference' point? the source of where the music is supposed to
| come from? if you're at a concert and turn your head left and
| right, there's not much change in where the source sounds like
| it's coming from. even if you turn around, the sound at a
| concert is so consuming that even turning barely makes a
| directional difference. the next best thing after a wall of
| sound is four walls of sound.
|
| when you think about it, we have basically perfected many
| things. i see a lot of pervasive technology going more towards
| using customers as products rather than providing more value to
| them. in other words, the added feature/value becomes the way
| to harvest more granular data.
| krrishd wrote:
| The fascinating thing about this spatial audio wave to me is
| that it was basically available almost a decade ago (because
| "binaural audio" has been available and fairly trivially usable
| for a while now).
|
| I remember one of the first apps I downloaded on my iPod Touch
| in middle school (~2011) was a "binaural audio" app that
| catalogued spatial audio experiences (+ voice-acted stuff like
| getting a haircut, etc).
| Pulcinella wrote:
| I think the key thing has been enough processing for
| dynamic/real time spatial audio via HRTF. Despite being
| "just" audio, applying a HRTF can be pretty processing
| intensive, especially for a mobile device. Those binaural
| audio experiences were all pre-computed.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Binaural audio recordings are usually made with a Binaural
| microphone that records sound in a similar configuration to
| how human ears work. Or they're just synthesized directly as
| a stereo signal (that's usually how those "binaural beats"
| music is made). They're nothing more than a stereo file, and
| the audio has just been recorded in a certain way that mimics
| the human ear and head. This is why the virtual surround
| sound from binaural recordings sounds so convincing, but only
| when wearing headphones.
|
| Spatial audio is a more generalized term. Let's say you're
| filming an action movie and have a scene where a robot comes
| from foreground-right, kicks a car, and the car flies over
| the camera and makes a loud crashing sound behind the camera.
| You can't just stick a binaural microphone on set and record
| that because it's almost all CGI. There is no actual sound of
| a robot kicking a car to be recorded. Instead your foley
| artists and sound design team will record and modify dozens
| (even hundreds) of sound sources and combine them together in
| software that supports a sort of virtual 3d environment, and
| save it in a format capable of representing this (like Dolby
| Atmos).
|
| You can then take that Dolby Atmos data and in realtime
| compute how to map your virtual sound-sources onto things
| like a 64-speaker Dolby Atmos array in an movie theater, or a
| 12-speaker home theater Dolby Atmos setup, or apply an HRTF
| to convincingly map that audio to 2 headphones. A Binaural
| audio signal is restricted to stereo and intended to be
| placed directly in the ears.
| krrishd wrote:
| TIL, thanks for the explainer.
| astrange wrote:
| The most important thing about spatial audio in AirPods
| is that they have head tracking, and so sound will appear
| to be coming from the same places if you move your head
| around. It doesn't work nearly as well without that.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _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 fatigue". It's
| vastly more comfortable and realistic.
|
| Second, while dialog comes from straight ahead, sound effects
| like doors opening, cars honking etc. clearly come from angles,
| and things like wind come from all around, like an actual
| surround sound experience.
|
| Third, because the dialog tracks are separated from other
| sounds spatially, the dialog is _easier to understand_ as well.
| I used to sometimes put on subtitles for certain material to
| understand fully in normal stereo -- I never have to anymore
| with spatial audio.
|
| > _Taking traditional multi-source audio (Dolby /Atmos/etc) and
| jamming it into stereo is old tech_
|
| I've used all that old tech too, and for whatever reason
| Apple's spatial audio is leagues better. I'm not sure if it's
| something about being optimized for known headphone
| characteristics, or the head tracking, or something clever with
| the inward-facing microphones, or all of the above, but it's
| _nothing_ like that old tech.
|
| > _now want to work backwards into what it may be useful for._
|
| It's useful for listening, end of story. I'm honestly mystified
| why you think it's a gimmick. I can't even imagine going back
| to listening to movies and TV without it. (I project from my
| iPad onto a screen, connect my AirPods Pro, and it's basically
| like being in an actual cinema, but without waking anyone else
| up at night from booming surround sound.)
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| 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 want and the spatial
| effect is high quality.
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA
| afavour wrote:
| 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.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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, and nearly all movies and TV episodes
| are mastered in 5.1 so the source signal is everywhere.
|
| And it's not meant for a shared experience. That's what
| actual surround speakers in your living room are for. But
| these days tons of movies and TV are consumed privately
| with headphones, and so spatial audio simply recreates a
| similar surround experience on the headphones you're
| already using.
|
| So I think it's pretty different -- just a pure positive
| upgrade. It doesn't have tradeoffs like 3D does.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > (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.
| slownews45 wrote:
| It's weird because I've had the BEST experience with apple
| in terms of shared experiences. I go to share audio on my
| iphone, then I share with my wifes airpods. Seems to work
| fine.
| afavour wrote:
| Everyone is different, I suppose. A shared TV watching
| experience where we're both plugged into our own isolated
| audio and can't hear each other talk would be an awful
| experience for me.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Actually apple has a setting for this (at least on the
| pro's) which is called transparency. Works surprisingly
| well.
|
| You get the TV / movie audio in ear, and then any other
| audio from outside.
|
| We use it to keep an ear out for kids (bathroom breaks /
| falls off bed or whatever) and to chat with each other.
|
| But yes - some people do hate apple products - so
| different uses I think for different folks.
|
| My one MAJOR complaint is the volume of the mode switch
| sound on these things is way way too loud! Perhaps there
| is a setting for that I haven't found. Bong! in the ear
| is super annoying. Make it a click or something.
| a4isms wrote:
| Not only is everyone different, but we have different
| needs at different times. My partner and I use shared
| audio infrequently, but when we need it, we need it.
|
| Our use case is watching something together in bed while
| the kids are going to sleep. We put our AirPods Pro in
| "Transparent" mode, which allows us to converse with each
| other just fine.
|
| To say that "Your Mileage May Vary" would be putting it
| mildly. I accept that this feature may not be useful for
| you, in exactly the same way that Dark Mode in IOS is not
| useful for me, but seems to have its fans.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _and can 't hear each other talk_
|
| That's what transparency mode is for. You can hear each
| other perfectly.
|
| You don't need noise cancellation as much when you're at
| home. It's more for the subway, planes, etc.
| [deleted]
| layer8 wrote:
| > the sound appears to be coming from outside of my head,
| rather than between my ears
|
| It's a pity that Apple doesn't provide that feature as a
| simple option that one can apply to any audio source.
| armincerf wrote:
| It gets activated on any audio source in a surround sound
| format, it can't be applied to stereo sources because
| stereo audio doesn't contain any positional info
| layer8 wrote:
| It's possible to apply Dolby Headphone (or similar
| systems) to any stereo signal, to get rid of the "in your
| head" sound.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Can you offer a good example video? I've done some binaural
| recording in the past, but my reaction so far to Apple's
| spatial audio has been... kinda meh.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Hamilton on Disney+ is my go-to to test/show off spatial
| audio. It really does sound like the audio is coming from
| specific places on the stage.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I remember the first thing I tried when it came out was the
| first episode of _See_ on the Apple TV+ app. It 's a great
| showcase for it.
|
| It's sci-fi drama so has a lot of really immersive audio,
| Apple TV+ supports spatial audio, and the first episodes of
| Apple's series are free so it's easy to try.
|
| Try toggling the Spatial Audio option as you're watching to
| really get a sense of the difference. It's huge.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| See is amazing for it, even though I'm not a big fan of
| the show. It's so heavily based on sounds and audio that
| they really went all out on the audio for it.
| christoph wrote:
| Most of the content on Disney+ sounds great in my
| experience. The Guardians of the Galaxy 2 intro scene is a
| good demo scene.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > I do wonder ... if Apple's Spatial Audio with "dynamic head
| tracking" isn't the next 3D TVs/3D Content...
|
| But first, back in 1972, there was Quadrophonic. Twice as good
| as stereo!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadraphonic_sound
| intellix wrote:
| My Sony headphones came with "360 Reality Audio" and I honestly
| cannot tell the difference with it on/off. Always the same with
| audio and without hearing this I can already tell that I won't be
| able to tell the difference.
| ricokatayama wrote:
| the question here is: how to convert the current songs to the
| atmos format. For now we have few artists with the standard, but
| it's almost mandatory to have the whole catalog if they want to
| make it popular
| kjakm wrote:
| Some sort of computerised/automated conversion process would be
| awful given the mix has such an important artistic role in the
| song.
|
| Maybe, in the same way we've seen artists go back and remaster
| entire collections, we will see them do something similar for
| atoms?
| gauravphoenix wrote:
| Just got this email from Amazon Music-
|
| We have some great news for you - going forward, there will be no
| extra charge for HD as part of your Amazon Music Unlimited
| subscription. You will continue to have full access to all of
| your HD content, but at no additional cost. This change will be
| reflected in your next billing cycle.
| pnt12 wrote:
| Sometimes, the free market does work.
| Hippocrates wrote:
| Reading the comments on this (on macrumors and Reddit as well)
| has been funny. Some people seem thrilled with the quality
| options. Others point out that the difference is indiscernible
| without xyz equipment. Anywho, this seems objectively better than
| what spotify and tidal are offering, and is free. I'm happy with
| that. Very excited for the spatial audio in music. The way it
| works in video is mind blowing.
| schmorptron wrote:
| Wow, I've been using Apple Music on trial to see how it's
| different from spotify and with this news + Spotify now selling
| pseudo-ads in the forms of playlist and recommendation algorithm
| placements for less artist royalties I'll stay with Apple for
| sure.
|
| One thing that really differentiates it is that the curated
| playlists seem a lot more cared for than with Spotify. I've found
| so many of the pre-made playlists that I enjoy, and with Spotify
| you just can't really do that since you never know what's really
| there because the curator liked it and what's there because the
| label paid for it. Fun fact: The Apple Music Android app is
| suprisingly decent!
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >Spotify now selling pseudo-ads in the forms of playlist and
| recommendation algorithm placements for less artist royalties
|
| Hard to take artists demands to be paid better seriously when
| they keep agreeing to things like this.
|
| Honestly they are their own worst enemy at times.
| tyrust wrote:
| Perhaps the ones making these demands aren't the ones that
| have these agreements.
| fossuser wrote:
| Main thing I miss from Spotify is the discover weekly playlist.
|
| I started using Apple Music because Spotify's attempts to ruin
| podcasts by making them exclusive to their platform irritated
| me.
|
| Discover weekly is a really great thing though and Apple
| Music's stuff isn't as good.
| darnfish wrote:
| I think Apple Music's "New Music Mix" is their version of
| Discover Weekly, it's under the Listen Now tab
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah - it sucks in comparison. Not at all similar to
| anything in my library. It might as well be random.
| spideymans wrote:
| The New Music Mix only releases one playlist a week. I
| believe Discover Weekly releases five playlists a week,
| each with their own moods. I much prefer Spotify's
| approach.
|
| However I do find that both services largely recommend the
| same music to me. They just have different mechanisms of
| surfacing it.
| dag11 wrote:
| Discover Weekly is once a week: on Mondays. You're
| thinking of Daily Mixes, of which there are 6 that update
| throughout the week, one playlist per day.
|
| To go along with Discover Weekly there's also a Release
| Radar playlist that updates every Friday with that week's
| new releases from your artists.
|
| Spotify is so deeply engrained into my weekly schedule
| that I really look forward to the Discover Weekly and
| Release Radar playlists bookending my work weeks.
| djrogers wrote:
| > One thing that really differentiates it is that the curated
| playlists seem a lot more cared for than with Spotify.
|
| Completely agree. This was Beats Music's raison d'etre, and
| Apple Not only maintained the playlist curation
| team/process/whatever, but have made it bigger and better.
|
| My favorite playlists get regularly updated - seemingly by the
| same person, or someone with extremely similar tastes in music,
| and I love it.
| galaxy2prime wrote:
| Yeah that's why I could never return to Spotify after using
| apple music for about a year now.
|
| Spotify seems to be pushing out playlist after playlist without
| giving much afterthought. The quality is just not there , some
| seem to be auto-generated and a lot of playlist are
| duplicate/similar to each other.
|
| Apple's playlist are regularly manually curated and you can
| know the theme just by glancing through their succinct titles.
| clydethefrog wrote:
| This has been my reason to switch to. Apple Music feels more
| "orderly". They often have detailed essays from album releases
| and I love that you can filter by label - something that is
| pretty handy if you like electronic underground music.
| roody15 wrote:
| DRM = no thanks
| sbaildon wrote:
| 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 "deluxe"
| versions; split albums and intersperse tracks between both; and
| duplicate songs in albums.
|
| The albums usually still exist in Apple Music--I just have to go
| out of my way to remove the mangled music and re-add the album.
| Problem is, there is no warning or notification it happened.
|
| Examples:
|
| [1] https://pasteboard.co/K2kdUN3.png This album is totally
| messed up. Multiple track 3 with different titles, one
| unavailable, missing tracks that were re-added to my library as
| singles.
|
| [2] https://pasteboard.co/K2keFBV.png One song pulled out into a
| greatest hits compilation and duplicated
|
| [3] https://pasteboard.co/K2kfc0b.png All tracks, except 1,
| removed. The album still exists in Apple Music.
|
| [4] https://pasteboard.co/K2kfBTR.png Originally added the
| original version of Camp by Childish Gambino to my library--here
| it's split between deluxe and basic, with tracks arbitrarily
| mixed between both.
|
| [...and many more]
| gevz wrote:
| I wonder if it is specific to the country. I am accessing the
| US store and out of all link you posted I have no issues. All
| EPs and albums are complete and no tracks are missing.
| ekingr wrote:
| 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 back my
| music library (that I will be owning for good).
| sbaildon wrote:
| What's your plan for streaming? Funkwhale?
| ekingr wrote:
| Still not sure.
|
| Indeed I have Funkwhale on the radar, but tbh I don't have
| a strong use case for streaming at home. Was thinking about
| putting it on my rPi -- but in the end it's even easier to
| just stream from my iPhone through Bluetooth (or a good old
| jack).
|
| My priority is to build a clean library with beets,
| transcode it in mp3 and feed it to iTunes, to have it on my
| iPhone & iPod.
| hbosch wrote:
| Honestly, the Plex app is very decent for music libraries
| these days. Except for oddball VA releases and obscure
| mixtapes I find Plex to often be terrific at library
| management.
| wj wrote:
| I've avoided using it because of concerns about library
| size. I want to move off of iTunes (launch a VM just for
| this) but nothing else seems to really handle managing a
| library. Currently trying out Airsonic but it is kind of
| slow and I can't edit tags with it.
|
| Maybe time to give Plex a try for this.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I use LMS (Lightweight Music Server), which is xSonic
| compatible: https://github.com/epoupon/lms
|
| I run all songs / albums through MusicBrainz Picard
| before putting them in the music directory structure so
| they're fully tagged. It only misses some of the more
| local / esoteric stuff I've got.
| sirn wrote:
| Second about this. I thought Plex would be overkill at
| first, but Plex is fantastic for streaming personal music
| library over internet (especially with Plexamp). One of
| its best feature IMO is you can make it automatically
| transcode music to Opus when streaming over cellular or
| download them locally as-is, saving all headaches of
| syncing to iDevices.
| blackearl wrote:
| 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
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Yeah good times, I'm nostalgic about managing my own music
| collection using directory structures, everything consistent
| and well-organized. Tagging metadata using musicbrainz,
| listening with foobar2000.
|
| Nowadays I've been sucked into the Spotify vacuum because of
| convenience, but I do miss out on more obscure music. And I
| have no idea how to find that, except from sites like
| SoundCloud and mixcloud, but their UX is horrible for this
| purpose.
| knoebber wrote:
| Bandcamp is great for this. You can buy albums from indie
| artists and download in your preferred format, DRM free.
| movedx wrote:
| How do you deal with the cost of building a library of legal
| music? 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 Borgir, for example, use
| Nuclear Blast and I struggle to find retailers online that can
| sell me MP3s outside of iTunes. I don't want to have to deal
| with (read: rip) CDs and vinyl is a joke at 3x the price (not
| to mention simply being a dead format.)
|
| So how are you going to curate a library, legally, so that the
| artist is supported, assuming you have at least 20-30 artists
| you like.
| aeontech wrote:
| I've definitely seen this happen as well. It's extremely
| frustrating. Looking at your screenshots, I'm guessing these
| were all albums that were matched to your existing library?
|
| Just curious, looking for them, I see this:
|
| [1] seems ok here: https://music.apple.com/us/album/yung-
| gravity-ep/1500799523
|
| Is there another version of it on AM?
|
| [2] I can't find on Apple Music - I'm guessing it's also an
| upload from your library?
|
| [3] seems ok here:
| https://music.apple.com/us/album/outrun/1440873249
|
| [4] Does deluxe version have more or different tracks? I see
| explicit and normal version, but they seem to have same
| tracklist? https://music.apple.com/us/album/camp/1450829373
| cglong wrote:
| I've been thinking about switching away from Spotify
| specifically for this feature. Thank you for the warning.
| unfamiliar wrote:
| > 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 habits have changed and I've
| more or less let go and stopped worrying about the drudgery of
| maintaining "my library".
| sbaildon wrote:
| I've certainly grown less particular about maintaining "my
| library". But when I hit shuffle, encounter a great song,
| navigate to the album, and find it mangled, it's...
| frustrating.
|
| I wish Apple would provide an API that can upload to iCloud
| Music Library
| inapis wrote:
| 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
| good chunk of my library is basically greyed out and when
| these albums return they are basically messed up, if not
| outright replaced with other versions.
|
| The reliability and simplicity of my own music library can't
| come back soon enough. I'll still keep AM and Spotify for
| discovering new music though.
| movedx wrote:
| > 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 Borgir, for example,
| use Nuclear Blast and I struggle to find retailers online
| that can sell me MP3s outside of iTunes. I don't want to
| have to deal with (read: rip) CDs and vinyl is a joke at 3x
| the price (not to mention simply being a dead format.)
|
| So how are you going to curate a library, legally, so that
| the artist is supported, assuming you have at least 20-30
| artists you like.
| djrogers wrote:
| 100% agree. I still have a curated music library. Somewhere.
| I'm sure it's still on that one hard drive.
|
| But I've not thought twice about it in several years.
| deergomoo wrote:
| This bug is so old it predates Apple Music! I was an early
| iTunes Match subscriber and the same damn thing happened. I
| believe music is "moved around" on the back end as rights
| change hands, contracts expire, and new versions of albums
| become available. Which then just wreaks havoc across your
| library, as evidently whatever system attempts to keep things
| in line is pretty awful at it.
|
| All it needs is a toggle for "do not replace tracks". I would
| much rather see a message saying "this track is no longer
| available" and then make the decision myself than have to spend
| time unpicking whatever chaos it caused.
| mlacks wrote:
| Its too bad that Sony - among others - have been doing their own
| interpretation of this for a long time, but don:t have the
| marketing budget or presence of mind in the broader market for
| people to notice. The Apple machine (i use an iPhone and M1 mini
| - love them) is just so OP
|
| Sony 360 Reality Audio https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/what-is-
| sony-360-reality-au...
| astrange wrote:
| Sony and the other Japanese companies have been busy committing
| audio crimes by claiming their products are "Hi-Res Audio
| certified", which means nothing except they want you to replace
| everything, so you shouldn't encourage them.
| Jaygles wrote:
| I think that's pretty typical in the world of audio in general.
| The average consumer has to do some fairly extensive digging in
| order to really understand what is available to them product
| and feature wise. What's new, what's old, etc.. And the info is
| almost always through third party reviewers.
|
| I'm not so sure more marketing dollars would change that. Apple
| has the uncanny ability to generate immense amounts of buzz
| whenever they announce something.
| verytrivial wrote:
| > For the true audiophile, Apple Music also offers Hi-Resolution
| Lossless all the way up to 24 bit at 192 kHz.
|
| Wow, I can finally justify upgrading my iPhone charging cable to
| gold plated, low-oxygen wires.
| astrange wrote:
| A good upgrade would be putting carpets everywhere or setting
| up your smart home so you can turn off the fridge so the
| compressor sound won't interfere with your speakers.
| StartupTree wrote:
| 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?
| bertman wrote:
| "It just FEELS better. You'll know it when you hear it."
| _djo_ wrote:
| High-res lossless audio requires a USB DAC and isn't compatible
| with any BT headphones according to Apple.
| dannyw wrote:
| The target audience for high-res loseless audio won't be
| playing from Bluetooth anyway, so that's not really
| surprising (or a loss).
| hbosch wrote:
| Apple aren't marketing lossless streaming to AirPods.
|
| There are lots of hardwired devices ready to playback in hi-res
| via phone or Mac, surely. And AirPods Max support spatial audio
| already and are apparently good quality.
|
| I would expect the future of the H1 chip's audio streaming
| quality to soon be much better than Bluetooth.
| IshKebab wrote:
| It's also meaningless because modern codecs are completely
| transparent at quite low bitrates. Lossless is only important
| for archival purposes.
| kjakm wrote:
| They aren't marketing it to AirPods. They're marketing the
| spatial audio for the AirPods. They even call out that for the
| highest quality lossless you need a DAC.
| olilarkin wrote:
| Here is a dance music track originally mixed in 5th order
| ambisonics, decoded to a dolby atmos "bed" that you can try with
| the airpod pros. The audio has lost some fidelity and it would be
| better to mix direct to atmos in this case. I look forward to
| hearing some professional atmos mixes on apple music when this
| launches!
|
| https://twitter.com/olilarkin/status/1353171949204221953?s=2...
| zuhsetaqi wrote:
| Do traditional iTunes purchases also get the better sound
| quality?
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| 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.
| tootie wrote:
| Short answer: no. Digital audio can reproduce analog audio
| flawlessly already. Chris "Monty" Montgomery has some excellent
| videos on the topic that I was coincidentally listening to just
| this morning. This Verge article sums it up and links to his
| really excellent talks.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/6/9680140/chris-montgomery-...
| sergio wrote:
| I understand that the lossless part is only the compression
| from the original digital file: what you play is bit by bit
| what the publisher uploaded. Just like BMP vs JPEG. Not about
| maintaining the analog resolution.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| 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 how a RAW image is
| considered lossless because it contains every single pixel
| captured, even though it can only represent finitely many
| distinct colors and cannot zoom in infinitely far with no
| degradation.
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| 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.
| sbr464 wrote:
| I hate how they nerf features like this for the iMac Pro. It's
| perfectly capable, yet excluded from Apple TV Atmos decoding and
| most likely this also.
| dashezup wrote:
| You would notice that the main difference between lossy and
| lossless formats is that lossless format keeps all of the stuff
| while lossy formats partially or wholly drop 20kHz+ if you
| compare with the spectrogram of them.
|
| And there are good reasons to listen to lossy ones instead of
| lossless ones, you probably can't hear 20kHz+ sound but it will
| reduce your headroom if it's there, this especially matters when
| you play it in high volume because the vibration of the 20kHz+
| sound cause could cause audio distortion. MQA is the proprietary
| audio encoding which deals with such problem, although it seems
| to be a bit debatable.
|
| Lossless formats are especially important for music
| storage/archive/remixing. But I really can't hear the difference
| between opus-128k (vbr), mp3-320k (vbr/cbr) and lossless ones.
|
| I just encode lossless music to opus 128k to listen to when it's
| possible. opus is a very decent audio format, it's wildly used
| for VoIP. I wouldn't go any higher than 128k for opus because
| it's recommended in Opus wiki[1], and I've compared the
| spectrogram between opus 128k (VBR) and mp3 320k (CBR) and there
| are only very a few of differences.
|
| [1] https://wiki.xiph.org/Opus_Recommended_Settings
| duped wrote:
| It's more like 17k, and the energy above 20k is almost so low
| it probably isn't adding much headroom. Not that you need it
| anyway.
| xbar wrote:
| Apple, what I heard you say is that too few 512GB iPhones are
| selling.
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| 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!
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| 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.
| poloniculmov wrote:
| Are artists going to release proper spatial mixes? Is Apple Music
| a big enough market to move them in this direction?
| napolux wrote:
| ~250MB per song.
|
| Be careful with your data plan :)
| floatboth wrote:
| Is there any open source spatial audio thing out there? Or is
| everything just some proprietary magic with a brand like Dolby?
| est31 wrote:
| opus has an ambisonics profile:
|
| * https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8486
|
| * https://jmvalin.ca/opus/opus-1.3/
| MrRadar wrote:
| For those who have never heard of Ambisonics, it's a
| surround-sound format based on taking the concept of
| differential stereo and extending it to three dimensions.
| Differential stereo is of course where instead of
| storing/transmitting each channel independently (as on audio
| cassettes or uncompressed digital audio formats like CDs) you
| store/transmit a sum of the two channels (L+R) and a
| difference (L-R) (as on vinyl records or analog FM
| broadcasts). Monophonic devices can just reproduce the sum
| channel and ignore the difference channel. Stereophonic
| devices can recover the two stereo channels through simple
| signal processing: (L+R) + (L-R) = 2L, (L+R) - (L-R) = 2R.
|
| Ambisonics essentially asks the question of "what if we
| _also_ stored a front-back and a top-bottom signal? " It
| turns out this is sufficient to fully represent 3D spatial
| audio. Additionally, unlike traditional "5.1/7.1"/etc. audio
| formats which assume a fixed speaker placement, digital
| signal processing can be used to adapt the audio to any
| number of speakers in any location in a space or use an HRTF
| to produce virtualized 3D audio for headphones.
|
| Ambisonics had the misfortune of being invented in the 1970s
| before digital signal processing made the necessary audio
| signal processing for making practical use of it cheap and
| easy to implement, so inferior (but cheaper to implement)
| formats like Dolby Pro Logic ended up winning in both the
| consumer and professional spaces. From an open source
| perspective, though, this makes Ambisonics compelling because
| all of the important patents related to it should be well
| past their expiration by this point.
| beefman wrote:
| Do we know how Apple's Spatial Audio works? And what is its
| relationship to Atmos?
| est31 wrote:
| 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.
| beefman wrote:
| 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 formats. The
| benefit is that the end user can customize the mix (e.g.
| mute certain sources). In the case where there are many
| mutually-exclusive objects (e.g. dialog in different
| languages), the bandwidth advantage of SBA diminishes...
| nikisweeting wrote:
| And now 7 years into Handoff existing, we still don't have
| Handoff/Continuity for music.
|
| Drives me nuts that Spotify's works so well and Apple Music (by
| the company that invented handoff) doesn't have it at all.
| rektide wrote:
| Semi-worth pointing out that Google has done a couple spatial
| audio/ambisonics things over the years. The seemingly-abandoned
| VR initiative has/had spatial audio[1], provided by the open
| source Resonance Audio[2] library they open sourced, Omnitone for
| spatial audio on the web[3]. Omnitone dates back to 2016[4]!
|
| Not nearly the follow through/uptake. As usual I part blame
| Google, but in large part, it's just hard to get adoption of good
| tech!! Both from consumers, but more so, the 3rd party software
| market.
|
| In general, I'm more excited for computational audio's potential
| to combine let's say "ad hoc" arrangements of speakers, for it's
| ability to acoustically map out rooms & deliberately create sound
| fields, than I am these kind of top down, high control systems
| like Atmos or VR where a heavily constrained, normalized set of
| speakers is used to recreate one specific audio experience. It
| feels like we're at 3D VR concert again, where you get to stand
| in one spot & look around. Immersive, so long as you are ok
| taking the role of a frozen obelisk in the scene.
|
| [1] https://developers.google.com/vr/discover/spatial-audio
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWbaEr_mXRE
|
| [3] https://googlechrome.github.io/omnitone/
|
| [4] https://audioxpress.com/article/google-discovers-
| ambisonics-...
| tootie wrote:
| Spatial audio has been around since at least the 90s. More
| recently, Bose has been pushing their "AR" eyewear which is
| sunglasses with tiny speakers and an IMU.
|
| https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/smart_products/sp_frames...
| aejnsn wrote:
| I have been loyal to Spotify for almost a decade now as a paying
| customer. But they cannot even fix a bug on CarPlay with large
| playlists or improve their navigation in CarPlay to search
| playlists with text input. Loads of European cars have a text
| input mechanism (not touchscreen). Better yet, why not a voice
| search capability? I am tired of asking for simple app navigation
| features that should be no-brainers. I don't know what Spotify is
| working on, everything feels like a second thought for the last
| few years. But this news from Apple makes me want to jump ship.
| 734129837261 wrote:
| I want to like Spotify, but their recent Mac OS app update
| (also Windows) has made the entire thing a pain in the ass to
| use. There is no search box anymore, I need to fucking click on
| the search menu item first. And when you look at an artist's
| page you no longer see their albums with songs, you know, that
| which makes it easy to find a song whose name you've forgotten
| and when you don't know in which album it is...
|
| Apparently this took them a few year to get out.
|
| I also wonder what the fuck they're doing over there. It really
| feels like they have like 2 junior developers working for them.
| nwsm wrote:
| AirPod Pro and Max will not support it.
|
| https://www.imore.com/airpods-max-dont-support-apple-musics-...
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| I can't believe it.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Not sure if sarcasm or not.
| chorsestudios wrote:
| Apple must have been aware of bluetooth data transfer
| restrictions when designing AirPod Max.. Seems odd that they
| didn't include onboard storage for lossless songs, or enable
| lossless support for AirPod Max while tethered to a MacBook.
|
| If this is a codec issue as the article indicates is there any
| potential for a software fix?
| dawnerd wrote:
| BT 5.0 in theory could probably stream lossless so it is a
| bit weird they didn't consider it. Maybe they did and it
| wasn't really stable enough longer distances.
|
| But not being able to be tethered without using a digital to
| analog to digital adapter is so silly. Come on apple.
| eh9 wrote:
| They'll support spatial audio, but they won't support lossless,
| which would need additional hardware. It's worth noting that
| you wouldn't use wireless tech for hi-res audio streaming
| anyway.
| sbr464 wrote:
| It would be nice to see broader surround sound support in
| browsers. It's odd how phones and a $150 Apple TV can play
| surround/Atmos effortlessly, yet so many compatibility issues
| exist in the browser/desktop devices.
| dannyw wrote:
| Wow, Apple catering to the audiophiles with loseless audio. There
| goes the entire value proposition of Tidal.
|
| The pros / geeks are having more influence on Apple's product
| strategy.
| jancsika wrote:
| Someone name an album where I'd miss something significant if the
| album had been recorded in mono.
| adrian_b wrote:
| While in modern music I do not remember songs with impressive
| stereo effects, most of the albums that I was listening when I
| was young, both rock music albums and classical music albums,
| were severely degraded when listened in mono.
| jancsika wrote:
| Name an example, and name the effect that was significant
| enough to the upshot of the song that mixing the stereo
| channels down to a single mono channel would lose prime
| information for the listener.
|
| I'm not saying there aren't examples, but I want to listen
| directly to an example you would consider severely degraded
| if heard in mono (i.e., stereo channels mixed down to mono
| and then just copied to two channels).
| astrange wrote:
| Beatles albums have a lot of hard pans on them as I recall.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| None of Apple's current generation headphones supports lossless
| audio. Not even the Airpods Max:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/17/22440788/apple-airpods-ma...
|
| Wondering what's the point, then.
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| For anyone here who is interested in the hi-fi audio experience
| and may be getting caught up in the debate over higher sampling
| rates and bit-depths, I'd like to suggest that any improvement
| Apple's hi-res audio is going to offer in sonic quality is
| nothing compared to the benefits of treating the acoustics in
| your listening space. Or conversely the destructive effects of
| NOT treating your room.
|
| In an untreated room, moving your head to the side by a few
| inches will have a far greater effect on the frequency response
| of the recording. More than any gains you could get from
| upgrading to a hi-res streaming service. You have to have your
| speakers and your room in order before any of those differences
| will be appreciable. Additionally, if the reverb time of your
| room hasn't been controlled in the low frequencies a record with
| tight, articulate, bass is going to sound dense and muddy as
| those frequencies echo and build up in your room.
|
| Just something to keep in mind when debating the merits of hi-res
| vs. a 44.1k mp3.
| jachee wrote:
| My "listening space" seldom exceeds an inch from my head.
| Either AirPods Pro or Sennheisers right in/on my ears. That's
| going to be the target audience of the majority of these
| changes.
|
| I choose 'phones because my music taste diverges too much from
| my wife's to make open air play an option, if I want to
| maintain peace.
| wnevets wrote:
| 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
| ZoomZoomZoom wrote:
| 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.
| thomed wrote:
| Some music videos already seem to support Spacial Audio:
| https://music.apple.com/gb/music-video/alone-live/1444596368
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I don't believe it.
|
| If I read that right they claim that they can deliver "spatial"
| audio via headphones using a multi-channel/object-based Dolby
| Atmos (as opposed to a binaural recording or something that else
| that is mixed for two channels ahead of time)
|
| For years there has been talk about
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function
|
| and for years I have tried demos that are unimpressive,
| particularly in favorable areas such as video games. Sure, with
| practice you can learn "sounds like I have a head cold" means
| "the audio source is supposed to be above my head" but it's
| nothing like real life.
|
| I invite you to test out your own "spatial audio" abilities in
| your environment, including: * locating sound
| sources within a few degrees and pointing at them * your
| ability to estimate how far away sounds are * your ability
| to sense walls in your environment from the sound of your
| footsteps reflecting off them and not walk into them
|
| Every "spatial audio" technique (even binaural) is a pale shadow
| of your ability to localize sounds in an environment and
| simultaneously map the sound and the space that reflects the
| sound around it.
|
| What's certain is that the signal is going to get heavy
| processing that will damage it -- the whole point of HRTF is that
| the timbre of the sound is distorted by your outer ears fairly
| violently as a function of angle. The distortion is real, but the
| spatial perception isn't. (Other spatial audio tricks run into
| problems with coherence -- if you have two copies of the same
| note combined electronically or acoustically they will be in
| phase in some places and out of phase in other places... Just
| like the "speckle" you would see if you diffused a laser pointer
| and tried to use it like a flashlight)
| solarmist wrote:
| Sure, but commercial spatial audio is in its infancy. We're
| maybe in the 1920's if you compare it to video. So as the
| techniques expands and people adjust and both sides gain
| experience we'll be able to compensate for the perceived
| shortcomings by exaggerating effectively to make it seem better
| than our natural spacial hearing.
| falcolas wrote:
| Fair warning, any attempts in this area will have to take
| your individual ear shape into account to be accurate. Our
| brains have learned how sounds change based on the frequency
| changes due to our individual ear shapes, and any software
| that wants to emulate true spatial sound will have to take
| this into account.
| eeegnu wrote:
| This sounds like a very interesting project, especially if
| it could be done just by taking pictures of both your ears
| (I'm not sure if that's sufficient to capture all of the
| topology.) Generating a sufficiently large dataset to learn
| how that topology relates to sound perception sounds
| incredibly expensive though.
| solarmist wrote:
| Sure, but I'd bet that accounting for a handful of shapes
| (maybe less than 10) could cover 90% of the differences.
| We've applied that principle to everything else in the body
| pretty well so far. It will take a good bit of time to
| figure out what those shapes might be though.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| To get there people have to have a clear perception of what
| "the gap" is between what is and what's possible -- like the
| error signal in a negative feedback loop.
|
| In reality people will think a service sounds better if Dr.
| Dre, Jay-Z or Neil Young is behind it.
|
| If people watch a bad orchestra playing in good clothes or
| they watch a good orchestra play in bad clothes they'll
| likely think the well dressed orchestra sounds better.
|
| A world like that just doesn't have the capacity to improve.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| Spot on about the orchestra. A chap used to know used to
| work for Midas and said that visuals affect perception of
| quality significantly. They had a problem with a digital
| desk where the UI was running at very slow framerates and
| the customer complained that it sounded terrible. If they
| turned around and listened without looking at the screen
| they thought it sounded absolutely fine - merely seeing the
| flickery slow framerates made them believe it SOUNDED
| terrible.
|
| And you're right about the inability to improve. Try
| reading up above where people are arguing that they can't
| hear the difference between a WAV and a 128 kbps MP3....!!
| Either their hearing is absolutely shot or they are
| listening to silence.
| m463 wrote:
| loosely related... * your ability to sense
| walls in your environment from the sound of your footsteps
| reflecting off them and not walk into them
|
| I think you can actually navigate in the dark by clicking your
| tongue or your fingers and detect obstacles. I know some blind
| people actually use this echolocation to help them get around.
| Might be fun to try.
| dinglefairy wrote:
| we need ray tracing for audio! also, materials handling.
|
| maybe these early attempts are not great examples yet, but
| headed in the right direction. spatial sound i think makes
| sense in applications like gaming or, say, a vr chat room or
| something, but music? you don't want spatial music. you want a
| nice warm hug from the music or you want to be fucked by it,
| you want to be inside the music or it to be inside you; from
| every possible angle.
|
| we are really drowning ourselves in these first world problems
| with hyper gimmicky useless crap. stick to the basics and do it
| better. keep it simple stupids.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I have made some extremely realistic sound recording by using
| binaural microphones that are positioned inside my ear canals.
| Using my own head retains a lot of that sensory information.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You don't have to believe it, it's been working since last
| October.
|
| I understand your skepticism, but their implementation works
| and it's amazing.
|
| Is it _exactly_ like real life? Of course not. To address your
| points: * Yes, you can absolutely locate sound
| sources within a few degrees, it's astonishingly accurate
| * No, you can't really estimate sound distance. It's absolutely
| coming from outside your head, but all sounds like it's kind of
| just a generic 5 ft away or something * Of course you
| can't walk around your environment blind with them, it's not
| trying to
|
| You say the spatial perception isn't real, but it _absolutely
| is_. And I have no complaints about distortion -- yes obviously
| the waveform is different, but I perceive zero perceptual
| degradation in quality. It doesn 't introduce any unwanted
| artifacts that I can notice, at least.
|
| I highly suggest you try it with AirPods Pro and existing Apple
| TV+ content.
|
| And remember, it's trying to simulate a real-life surround
| sound speaker setup. Not simulate real life itself. Movies
| aren't _mastered_ to sound like real life, they 're mastered to
| give a spatial audio component to the movie.
| djrogers wrote:
| > I invite you to test out your own "spatial audio" abilities
| in your environment, including: * locating sound sources within
| a few degrees and pointing at them
|
| I haven't tried the other two, but with a pair of AirPods Pro
| and a video source that support spatial audio, this is
| ridiculously easy to do, and 100% accurate. I don't know what
| witchcraft they've employed, but I can easily pick up my iPhone
| with my eyes closed based on where the audio is 'coming from'.
|
| Also, with SA turned on, because it sounds like the audio is
| coming from outside your head instead of from your headphones,
| it's much more enjoyable to listen to even without a bunch of
| surround sound stuff. Things like dialog sound much more
| 'normal'.
| toxik wrote:
| There's a questionable assumption in the HRTF article, namely
| that the transfer function is the same (or similar) for
| different people in different environments. I don't think the
| same HRTF would sound convincing indoors and outdoors, even.
| Let alone differences in ear shapes and sizes.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| That assumption is baked into almost all the implementations,
| except for some which take measurements of your ears.
|
| To be fair I haven't tried one of those systems, but few
| people ever have and few people ever will because:
|
| 1. It's a hassle to measure your ears
|
| 2. All the problems with distortion wrecking timbre will
| still be there.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Sony is working on a version that uses an image of your ear
| to find a better match. They talked about it in a few PS5
| talks.
| ErneX wrote:
| They said they might do that in the future, but who knows.
| PS5 ships with 5 profiles you can test and see which feels
| best.
| mlacks wrote:
| Its out. WMX-100M4s and a tidal/ deezer/ nugs subscription
| are all you need.
|
| https://electronics.sony.com/360-reality-audio
| diimdeep wrote:
| I bet that personalized HRTF is locally encrypted and
| can't be reused outside these services. is anyone know
| for sure?
| rokweom wrote:
| That's cool. Is it out for PS5 yet?
| lucas_codes wrote:
| I think you're being overly negative. Is it as good as real
| life? Of course not, but it's not terrible as you're making
| out. Try Google Resonance: https://cdn.rawgit.com/resonance-
| audio/resonance-audio-web-s...
|
| Personally I find the horizontal angle localisation excellent -
| vertical is slightly hit and miss.
|
| But it probably depends on the person, too - HRTF models assume
| an "average" head
| fudged71 wrote:
| When is Spatial Audio just going to be the default across iOS?
| All interface sounds and media.
|
| Also how much of the Apple Music library is actually spatial
| audio? It's not a great experience when only a subset of videos
| have the full experience for example
| dharma1 wrote:
| Recommendations for a Dolby Atmos speaker setup? Looks like this
| works with external speakers through Apple TV 4K
| greenmana wrote:
| These days I tend to navigate more towards services that pay more
| to the artists for streams. In this I've found Tidal to be a good
| combo of lossless and master level audio with also a higher
| amount of money going to the musicians per stream. It actually
| also has pretty good suggestions and other stuff once you've
| first used for a little while, which was the biggest reason I've
| stayed with Spotify til now.
| nxc18 wrote:
| Their tech, at least on iOS, needs investment.
|
| I had to drop Tidal after trying for a month. CarPlay was a
| disaster, it just didn't work well, very laggy, things didn't
| always play, it wasn't great about handling offline playlists.
|
| Separately, they will log you out randomly, locking you out of
| your offline library. Spotify has never done this to me. I had
| to buy WiFi on a flight, unnecessarily, to unlock the offline
| library that I painstakingly downloaded earlier that day.
| capableweb wrote:
| Maybe I was reading it all too quickly but they never seem to
| outline the format they'll actually use for the lossless songs.
| Anyone happen to know?
|
| Edit: Seems they are using their own format ALAC, sad but not
| surprising
| bidirectional wrote:
| Why is it sad? It's a streaming service, I'm not sure why
| format would matter.
| capableweb wrote:
| Apple now optimize their hardware for playback of ALAC. If
| they went with FLAC, they would probably optimize their
| hardware for FLAC instead, meaning others could also take
| advantage of their optimizations.
|
| But that's exactly why they went with their own format, so
| they can claim it's more battery efficient or something,
| compared to others who use open standards but the hardware is
| not optimized for it.
| imeron wrote:
| It's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless
| Willamin wrote:
| > Apple uses ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec)
| ripdog wrote:
| >Apple Music will also make its catalog of more than 75 million
| songs available in Lossless Audio. Apple uses ALAC (Apple
| Lossless Audio Codec) to preserve every single bit of the
| original audio file.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Apple Music will also make its catalog of more than 75
| million songs available in Lossless Audio. Apple uses ALAC
| (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) to preserve every single bit of
| the original audio file.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless
| treesknees wrote:
| >Apple uses ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) to preserve every
| single bit of the original audio file
| kall wrote:
| It's ALAC, but more interestingly with optional ridiculously
| high sample rate of 196 kHz. I'm not sure if the setting for
| that is up to the listener or up to the publisher.
| websites420 wrote:
| It's sad that Apple is using an open source codec for their
| streaming service? Why?
| capableweb wrote:
| No, it's not sad that Apple is using an open source codec,
| it's sad that Apple specifically created ALAC instead of just
| using FLAC that already exists. Instead of building hardware
| that can efficiently play FLAC, they created their own format
| in order to promote harder lock in to their walled garden.
| Fine, probably makes business-sense, but as someone who was
| brought up with the mindset of an open internet and web, it's
| sad to see Apple continue to fight against open standards.
|
| Friendly reminder of the site guidelines:
|
| > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't
| cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer,
| including at the rest of the community.
|
| Specifically, I never said I'm sad that Apple is using an
| open source codec. I specifically said I'm sad that they are
| using ALAC instead of the already existing open standards.
| websites420 wrote:
| >Instead of building hardware that can efficiently play
| FLAC, they created their own format in order to promote
| harder lock in to their walled garden.
|
| I don't follow how ALAC promotes a harder lock into their
| walled garden. If you have a file in ALAC (not a streaming
| instance, an actual file), it can be converted losslessly
| to FLAC. Moreover, ALAC has been open source for almost 10
| years. Android plays it fine, as does linux.
|
| iPhones have supported FLAC natively since 2017. There's
| apps that play back FLAC files in the App Store.
|
| So, overall, I don't see what's sad about it. Apple Music
| is a subscription service that's streaming DRM protected
| music. Whether it's FLAC or ALAC doesn't make a difference
| to the user.
| RIMR wrote:
| So they're bringing spatial audio, a live-performance gimmick
| that is nearly impossible to accomplish with headphones, and
| lossless audio, a quality improvement undetectable by the human
| ear, and completely negated by bluetooth transmission...
|
| Sounds like they're bringing nothing but more data consumption to
| the table.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Apple is now listed at the "Dolby Atmos Music" page here:
|
| https://www.dolby.com/experience/music/
| darksaints wrote:
| Unfortunately, you can't buy it. Only rent.
| yingbo wrote:
| Apple has the digital music "selling" device, which is called
| iTune music. This complain is more like go to avis and complain
| they only rent cars but not selling them.
| [deleted]
| a4isms wrote:
| You can still "buy" albums digitally from Apple, and they are
| lossless, as they have been for almost-ever. The caveat being
| that you need a device capable of decoding ALAC files.
| Angostura wrote:
| Alas, ALAC
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| I had a look and I don't believe that's the case - are you
| referring to "Digital Masters"? If so, then those are
| actually encoded with lossy encoding.
| a4isms wrote:
| On second review, you're right.
|
| They have allowed you to rip your own music to lossless for
| more than 15 years, but I only just found out that when
| using iTunes Match, they cheat and only store a high-
| resolution but lossy version on their service.
|
| Thanks!
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| (I originally posted a reply that remarked that we can buy
| Apple Lossless music from iTMS - however I did a quick check
| and to my surprise Apple _still_ doesn 't offer DRM-free
| lossless content on iTMS: you can only get Apple Lossless by
| ripping your own CDs. The "Apple Digital Masters" products are
| not actually "masters": they're still compressed with lossy
| encoding: https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/7/20758633/apple-
| digital-mas... - I guess this explains why services like Tidal
| and Pono are still around.
|
| Knowing Apple, I think they probably wanted to offer lossless
| but the record companies are still paranoid about lossless
| copies... philistines.
| SSLy wrote:
| It's not like Tidal is good either:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRjsu9-Vznc
| turtlebits wrote:
| Tidal offers FLAC. I don't completely understand the
| associated formats via their quality settings, but
| definitely have downloaded FLAC when caching content to a
| device.
| SSLy wrote:
| Alright, yes, it uses the container, but files that are
| scrambled with MQA are worse quality than CD-rips. Even
| if no MQA decoding is involved.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Curious if this will be available on Windows and macOS when using
| a Dolby-capable receiver. It seems to be AirPod-only from the
| press release itself?
|
| Also curious if this will at some point also apply to Apple
| iTunes Match (the precursor to Apple Music) which lets you own
| rather than "rent" your music.
| donatj wrote:
| That's what I'm wondering as well. I used iTunes Match to
| actually replace a lot of my 20 year old 128k rips.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Wow lossless audio, I was shocked when I tried an iphone 12 that
| itunes, imusic, music app whatever you call it did not nativelt
| support OGG/lossless format.
|
| iTunes used too, I know the old iPods used too.
| user-the-name wrote:
| The entire Apple ecosystems supports ALAC for lossless audio.
| josteink wrote:
| You get lossless if you play it through Plex.
| nathancahill wrote:
| They support Apple Lossless, .m4a/.alac same as the old iPods.
| symlinkk wrote:
| No one uses ALAC, the industry standard is FLAC and has been
| that way for years, it's pure arrogance that they continue to
| refuse to support it.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Yes, that's it, FLAC.
|
| I'm also shocked on the apple ecosystem how you load files
| onto an individual app in itunes/that folder in Finder for
| the iphone/ipad.
|
| Well, I guess not really shocked, it is Apple.
| parasubvert wrote:
| "no one uses ALAC" except every iPod, iTunes, iOS user that
| wants lossless playback for the past 17 years.
|
| I suspect quite a few people use ALAC.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Right, you're repeating my point, no one uses it unless
| Apple forces it on them.
| astrange wrote:
| iOS Music.app does support FLAC, but desktop iTunes does
| not, so it won't sync them. (That's why everything says
| it doesn't support it.)
|
| You can play them in other apps like Safari and Files.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Does anyone have any idea how spatial audio will work
| _orientation-wise_ with music?
|
| Existing spatial audio on iOS+AirPods puts the center channel
| (dialog) coming from your device, which makes sense since you're
| actively looking at it.
|
| But I listen to music while walking around the house. I'm
| constantly changing orientation.
|
| Does this mean the center channel will always be directly in
| front of me and therefore the "band" will always be
| moving/panning with me?
|
| That seems like it would destroy a big part of the spatial audio
| appeal in movies, that the sound stays in the same physical
| location when you move your head. But if they don't, how do they
| decide where the sound comes from?
| ihuman wrote:
| > Existing spatial audio on iOS+AirPods puts the center channel
| (dialog) coming from your device, which makes sense since
| you're actively looking at it
|
| It doesn't do this directly. It resets the center when you keep
| your head still. Your head stays still when you're watching a
| video on your phone, so it sets the center to where your phone
| is. Try looking away from your phone after it centers the audio
| on your phone. After a few seconds, you'll hear the center
| "move" to where you're currently looking.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yes, that's true, thanks -- I was just simplifying. (In fact,
| it's why spatial audio works when I watch content from my
| iPad on my projector.)
|
| So let me rephrase: I'm often listening to music while
| constantly turning, like prepping in the kitchen, vacuuming
| the house, etc.
|
| Movies can rely on you looking at the screen and figuring out
| your orientation. If you're actively moving about, what will
| the music's orientation be?
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| This is honestly quite exciting and I'm actually tempted to use
| get Apple Music to try this. However, it's not really clear to me
| how I can play these tracks. Can I use my existing Dolby Atmos
| setup? If so, what kind of hardware do I need to connect? Can I
| use a HDMI dongle for my iPad, for example, to connect it to my
| receiver?
|
| Or is this only an Apple-specific thing that only works on Apple
| speakers.
|
| I'm afraid I already know the answer and it only works on Apple
| stuff.
| turtlebits wrote:
| I've been also wondering the same. I have HomePods in stereo
| pair and have been trying to figure out how to play surround
| content on them that is not in the Apple ecosystem (via Apple
| TV).
| salamandersauce wrote:
| I would imagine at the very least an Apple TV 4K hooked up to
| your receiver would work. The Apple TV 4K does support Dolby
| Atmos and I can't imagine they wouldn't update it to support
| this. All they say so far is that you need Atmos compatible
| stuff for it to work.
| mvanaltvorst wrote:
| (AirPods Pro | AirPods Max) + (Mac | iPad | iPhone) or Apple TV
| + HDMI. I don't think the Apple Watch + AirPods are supported
| unfortunately, might be due to battery/performance reasons.
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| There's Dolby Atmos for Mobile Devices[0]. It does require
| extra processing, so maybe extra hardware, but it's not unique
| to Apple.
|
| [0]https://professional.dolby.com/tv/dolby-atmos-for-mobile-
| dev...
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is answering any of my questions. Am I
| missing something?
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| I meant to say that if you device supports Dolby Atmos then
| it should work. This spatial audio from Apple is just Dolby
| Atmos, not some special apple thing (besides being streamed
| via the Apple Music service).
| Glide wrote:
| You're not...
|
| I would think Apple TV + hdmi should do the trick. There
| doesn't seem to be a technical reason this can't be done
| seeing as atmos does work on Apple TV, but.... I would
| rather have my TV off when just having music on.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| For one thing, Apple has a custom Dolby Atmos Implementation on
| their headphones that ties the accelerometers in the AirPods to
| detect head position and then adjust sound strength to places
| where you turn your head. Supposedly when watching movies with
| Atmos or 7.1 it's incredibly immersive. They just announced
| their new iMac with 'Atmos' (I want to see how this works) as
| well however. You probably could connect over HDMI as you
| state.
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| Have you tried watching an Atmos/7.1 channels movie with the
| AirPods that support this?
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| It sounds like a genuinely good idea for movies, but only for
| VR, right? How often do you turn your head while watching a
| regular movie?
| dagmx wrote:
| All the time. Humans don't stay still. We move our heads
| regularly, where even small movements help our audiovisual
| spatial sense.
|
| It's just that our consciousness ignores these little
| movements and so we think we're largely still.
| solarmist wrote:
| Yup. It's like the fact that your eyes heck all over and
| I believe slightly vibrate in order to sample from
| slightly different positions to improve image quality.
| dagmx wrote:
| Yeah, our eyesight is not very good without that saccade
| motion.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Below some movement threshold you go completely blind in
| just a few seconds.
|
| One of the standard stare-at-the-dot-machine optometry
| tests is enough to make my vision start to gray out.
| solarmist wrote:
| Yeah, your body adjusts to stimulus very quickly to
| minimize it.
| kjakm wrote:
| If you're interested in what this might sound like (spatial
| audio) the announcement video uses it. To watch it you need to be
| using your iOS device + AirPods:
|
| https://music.apple.com/gb/music-movie/spatial-audio-on-appl...
| fudged71 wrote:
| I'm on the latest iOS beta with AirPods Pro. In Chrome the
| media element won't open. When I open in Safari it takes me to
| the Apple Music app, which can't play the trailer because I
| don't have an account.
|
| It's like they're warning me the problems with walled gardens.
| ihuman wrote:
| Do you have Apple Music disabled in the Music app? I don't
| subscribe to apple music, and the link originally didn't work
| for me. After I turned "Show Apple Music" back on, the link
| worked.
| ihuman wrote:
| Does that only have spatial audio on iOS 14.6? I'm on 14.5.1,
| and I just hear regular stereo, even though spatial audio works
| for me in the TV app.
| Jcowell wrote:
| Not in beta, or works for me.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > This means Apple Music subscribers will be able to hear the
| exact same thing that the artists created in the studio.
|
| They really meant, "able to hear the exact same recording that
| the artists created in the studio." They didn't mean, "able to
| hear the exact same music that the artists created in the
| studio."
|
| But even this isn't true. Many people can't hear the entire range
| of a recording, anyway.
| vr46 wrote:
| Who knew I would be locked into Spotify not by the music quality,
| but by playlists, friends, apps using it, and their Discovery
| mechanisms.
|
| Apple and Tidal may have awesome quality, but apps like
| https://musicleague.app/ have gotten me through Lockdown, and it
| turns out that these value props are very strong.
|
| I always thought I would instantly switch to a service for its
| audio quality, but then again, I can also buy FLACs, ALACs, and
| CDs. Geez, my music spending has changed completely over the last
| decade.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Less quality is their windows software. I am currently on a 3
| month trial with Apple Music. I'm not sure why I was surprised,
| but it doesn't run very well on either Windows or Android.
| iTunes... is what it is, and the website version hogs CPU like
| no other even with the tab in the background. If I'm going to
| let a subscription service become my music library then I need
| it to run on anything!
| can16358p wrote:
| Apple Music is bY far THE buggiest software on my Mac,
| including all Apple and non-Apple software.
|
| So it's not just Windows version.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I switched from Apple Music to Spotify for around 12 months,
| starting before but mostly overlapping with the pandemic
| lockdowns. I found their playlists, auto-play features, and
| discovery better than Apple Music's. Spotify links are
| ubiquitous on social media and elsewhere, which is nice
| (although Apple isn't far off either). And their Spotify
| Connect ecosystem is pretty nice: I loved how I could click the
| speaker button in the Spotify app on my iPhone and stream my
| music to the "Everything" group that plays simultaneously on
| all 3 Amazon Alexa speakers I have in my apartment. Apple
| Music's integration with Alexa speakers is nearly non-existent.
|
| But I ended up switching back to Apple Music because of
| something that seems so minor but is so fundamental: _Spotify
| on iPhone simply does not let you browse your entire library by
| artist_. You can search your library and find anything you
| want, of course, but there is simply no way to serendipitously
| browse all the artists in your library. You can "follow"
| artists and browse all those artists, but that's a separate
| system from your music library, and when you click on an artist
| you just get the standard Spotify artist page (rather than a
| list of that artist's albums that you have in your library).
| For me this ended up being a dealbreaker and meant that during
| my Spotify trial I listened to much less music than usual
| because I simply couldn't browse my library effectively.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| I swear Spotify used to let me browse my library by Artist
| and only show me the songs I've liked/added for each Artist.
| But now when I view my library and navigate to an artist, I
| just get the public artist page.
|
| You're not the only one. This alone is making me want to
| switch away from Spotify.
|
| Why is it so hard to browse my library by artist?!
| notyourwork wrote:
| You can still do this today though its a bit indirect.
|
| > Your Library --> Artists --> Click artist --> Liked Songs.
|
| The changes to library these services have made for
| simplification in my opinion are the wrong direction. I want
| more controls on how to filter/sift through my library, NOT
| less.
|
| Edit: Also, we're slowly diluting the definition of album.
| The industry is going away from it because artist release
| frequency becomes more important in the streaming system. You
| have to stay relevant by releasing new music so album's are
| fewer songs with less duration. Lower duration also increases
| revenue because we pay per stream not by mean time listened
| to artist. :/
| tshaddox wrote:
| Library -> Artists only shows artists that you have
| followed, which is a totally separate mechanism than adding
| songs or albums to your library. Also, I don't see the
| Liked Songs option anywhere on the artist page.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Ah you're right, the artist list there is followed
| artists. I didn't realize that is the case.
| nxc18 wrote:
| For me it is Spotify Connect, and I still can't believe no one
| has copied.
|
| I'm in the process of getting my speakers set up with airplay,
| which might be my one way out. It still won't be as good as
| Spotify Connect. I just hate that Spotify is deliberately
| trying to make my Mac and iPhone worse (e.g. Spotify is the
| only reason Rosetta is running on my M1 Mac) as part of their
| little war with Apple.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Agree, it's really nice to start streaming from my computer
| to my Sonos speakers and know that I can close out the app
| and it will keep playing. And if I need to change it from
| across the room, I can just pick up my phone.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| If you have Sonos speakers you can do all of that for any
| music streaming service that they support
| crazygringo wrote:
| Seriously.
|
| It's also one of the cleverest examples I've ever seen of
| turning a limitation into a feature.
|
| Spotify didn't want multiple people sharing a single account,
| which is relatively easy to implement by preventing multiple
| devices from listening to different tracks at the same time.
|
| But so they just synced the same stream across all connected
| devices, and boom -- no longer a limitation, now it's a
| feature! And a genuinely useful (even indispensable for me)
| one at that.
|
| I can't think of any other similarly clever solution by any
| other company where a limitation is genuinely turned into a
| benefit, but I wonder if anyone else here can.
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| I ended up extracting the binary for the Spotify iOS app and
| side loading it on my M1 MacBook. It works pretty well, and
| eliminates need for rosetta.
| zubspace wrote:
| This musicleague website is probably the worst landing page
| I've ever seen.
|
| What the heck is it? And why should I log in? What company is
| behind it? What has it to do with Spotify? What's their target
| audience? Did they intentionally remove all information on that
| page? Is it an app for a smart phone? Or maybe I'm just too
| old..
| hbosch wrote:
| I agree. No idea what this is or how it benefits me at all,
| so of course I did not connect my account. From Google for
| the curious:
|
| "Music League is a weekly game which lets you share songs
| with friends and score points for whoever's track slaps the
| most.
|
| Each week you're given a theme, eg. "a song that gets you on
| the dancefloor", "a song you've loved from this year", and
| you have a week to make your submission. The tracks are then
| all automatically added to an anonymous Spotify playlist
| which you and your league listen to, before voting for which
| track you like the best.
|
| You have 10 points to dish out and - for the wannabe music
| critics among you - comments to leave on each song. When you
| reach the deadline, the points are tallied and a winner
| declared."
|
| Not really interested.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Sounds fun to me. At my old work, we used to have "song of
| the week" contest every Friday, where everyone would post
| the most ridiculous, over the top, goofy videos of actual
| songs (think Top of the Pops pisstakes, overly earnest
| power ballads, hair metal, bad 90s fashions, etc) and
| everyone would vote for their favorite. There were some
| pretty amazing selections.
|
| I do agree that their landing page is pretty lacking.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Agreed - Spotify's UI is bad and getting worse, and its quality
| is meh, but its discovery features are top notch and it has the
| biggest catalog.
|
| I have audiophile equipment - $900 MSRP Hifiman headphones,
| discrete DAC and amp - and I tried Tidal to see if I could hear
| a difference. 99% of the time, I can't... and Tidal's MQA
| format is questionable anyway. (Not sure about Apple's "ALAC"
| either.) I used a playlist importer to get my playlists to
| Tidal, and about 90% of my tracks made it - with some obvious
| mismatches/songs not found for unclear reasons. (There were
| also, in fairness, a few songs Tidal did have which the import
| tool missed.)
|
| But Tidal just doesn't seem to have the radio and discovery
| features I use to find new music. If I used it, I'd have to
| constantly sync all my tracks (by paying for an external
| service) and risk losing some of them, for an audio quality
| difference that even most audiophiles seem to admit is
| negligible unless you're in ideal listening conditions with a
| track you know extremely well.
|
| So even though they're constantly making things worse, I will
| stick with Spotify for now.
| infensus wrote:
| Though I generally agree, one ridiculous thing Spotify does
| is suggesting new releases by just matching the artist's name
| to your history. Not rarely I get some new releases from a
| completely different artist just because they have the same
| name
| notyourwork wrote:
| > and it has the biggest catalog.
|
| That's not entirely accurate. Amazon Music (unlimited) and
| Spotify catalogs are approximately same.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| The "approximately" does a lot of work. I haven't tried
| Amazon music, but with Tidal and other platforms, there are
| substantial gaps.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| ALAC and FLAC are technically very similar formats [1]. Both
| are bit-perfect. Compare with MQA which is utter garbage and
| has absolutely zero to do with losless. MQA is actually,
| objectively worse than 16 bit audio CDs. An abject failure
| backed by an aggressively anti-science company backed up by a
| bunch of lawyers.
|
| [1] Both encode a PCM stream using linear prediction while
| storing the difference between the predictor's output and the
| actual samples. This allows recreating the samples with zero
| error when decompressing. It's functionally equivalent to
| .wav.gz.
| vr46 wrote:
| Very interesting and completely new to me, I had no idea
| Tidal wasn't the equivalent of lossless.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Yeah, I've heard similar about MQA.
|
| To be honest though, what's the science behind any of these
| formats in terms of listening experience? Clearly there are
| differences in the data and how much of the original
| content is represented. But have there been any studies on
| whether people can actually tell any difference?
|
| I've come across some quizzes online, etc., and those
| mostly suggest I can sometimes tell, but even when I can,
| it's not obvious and it doesn't really impact my
| experience. Would be curious whether anyone has studied
| this more fully.
| [deleted]
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| Just to add to this comment, the video breakdowns I've
| watched on MQA are interesting listens even as someone who
| doesn't use Tidal.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRjsu9-Vznc -- Critque of
| MQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwZ5hDzQ5Jg -- in
| defense of MQA
|
| At the end of the day, people should listen to what they
| think sounds good (is this an opinion?). If a placebo makes
| someone enjoy something more, is it really a placebo? If
| someone can't tell the difference between low quality
| recordings and high quality recordings, why should they go
| through the trouble of sourcing the high quality stuff.
|
| It's so easy to lose track of the subjective nature of
| audio in all of the objective details.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| That's not really the point here - if someone says "I
| like how this sounds with (MQA artifacts | tube
| distortions | +20 dB bass)", that's perfectly fine and
| not something many if any people would argue with.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| That's fine, but it's not fine to claim MQA is lossless
| or represents the original lossless file.
| marrone12 wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Qobuz. It has human curated playlists and
| features, which is really nice. It's also truly lossless
| unlike MQA.
|
| I'll agree with you that 90% of the time, I can't tell the
| difference. But for my most loved albums, I still prefer
| listening to lossless on my hifi system.
| vr46 wrote:
| I run Spotify Connect through a Naim Uniti, but I don't have
| Tidal support yet. I did test through headphones - Grado -
| and tried to correct for volume level, but my conclusion was
| just that they sound slightly different, but not objectively
| better/worse. I am pleased to hear that others seem to feel
| the same, as it makes it easier to ignore the competing
| streaming race and get back to the music...
| throw_this_one wrote:
| Dude their adding/removing songs from the Liked Songs list is
| ridic haha. They had the heart button right next to where you
| scroll. It's been idiotic for years. How can a company like
| that have such an obvious flaw in the UI?
| tristanc wrote:
| Over and over again I've been impressed with Tidal's song
| radio functionality. Unless you're trying it out with very
| obscure songs that might only have a few listens total on the
| platform, Tidal's radio always recommends tracks that are
| specific to that track's subgenre/region. Meanwhile Spotify
| always seems to recommend songs that are only mildly related
| and that I've already listened to.
|
| Other than playlists, it feels more difficult to discover new
| music on Spotify than on Tidal.
| pnt12 wrote:
| To me that's a great feature from Spotify, as I like
| exploring lota a lot of different genres and sounds. But I
| can see that is a personal taste and others would prefer a
| different experince.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| @Spotify. Why is there no 2FA yet? Why can't I customize my
| homepage? Why can't I have unlimited artists on my recent
| searches?
| ivraatiems wrote:
| They're busy redesigning the UI so desktop is more like
| mobile, but only in ways that make it slightly worse.
| smoldesu wrote:
| >I have audiophile equipment - $900 MSRP Hifiman headphones,
| discrete DAC and amp - and I tried Tidal to see if I could
| hear a difference. 99% of the time, I can't... and Tidal's
| MQA format is questionable anyway. (Not sure about Apple's
| "ALAC" either.)
|
| Comparing Spotify on high settings to the WAVs I have stored
| on my computer, the difference is hardly noticeable. I'm
| convinced that Spotify's sound depends more on the systems
| audio pipeline.
| treesknees wrote:
| I'm sure other music services like Spotify will match Apple
| Music's lossless quality in order to keep competing for the
| audiophile market.
|
| Personally, lossless quality just sounds like a great way to
| blow through my data caps even faster. I'm sure some will love
| it, I question whether it's worth the extra bandwidth.
| willejs wrote:
| Spotify have it in the works, for release later this year.
| https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-02-22/five-things-to-
| know-...
| hulitu wrote:
| " Spotify HiFi will deliver music in CD-quality, lossless
| audio format to your device and Spotify Connect-enabled
| speakers".
|
| So they will stream some DRM-ed wav files ?
| input_sh wrote:
| > Premium subscribers in select markets will be able to
| upgrade their sound quality to Spotify HiFi
|
| This sounds like it'll be an additional cost (like it is
| with Tidal), as opposed to Apple Music. Also I really can't
| think of a reason why it'd be region-locked.
|
| But anyways, been hoping for this for years and will
| definitely switch if I'm not geo-locked out of it. I've
| experimented a lot with FLAC and 320 kbps and I can clearly
| notice the difference in my mid 20s with a couple of
| hundred euros worth of audio setup.
| arihant wrote:
| One reason it may be region locked for Spotify is that
| they offer services at throwaway price in certain regions
| and those regions probably won't subscribe to a much more
| expensive variant at enough volume to warrant delivery
| capacity. They offer Spotify premium for under $2 in
| Russia and India, for example. Apple offers at similar
| price point, but they are able to sell expensive phones
| and earphones that Spotify does not.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Amazon Music has had lossless for awhile.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=14070322011
| nvrspyx wrote:
| I'm sure there'll be an option to stream at a different
| quality and an option to download the lossless versions,
| which you could do over wifi.
|
| For both Spotify and Apple Music, I stream at "normal"
| quality, but download at "high" quality. I'm sure those
| options will extend to lossless.
| sbr464 wrote:
| I've recently been testing the master quality on Tidal, and was
| excited initially to see the Tidal Atmos offerings, but sadly
| Atmos isn't available on the desktop app. I haven't decided yet
| if I can hear the difference between Spotify/Tidal masters
| using a pair of Genelec Monitors.
| xd1936 wrote:
| Can't wait to listen to 192kHz/24-bit on my AAC Bluetooth AirPods
| StartupTree wrote:
| Bluetooth technology doesn't have the bandwidth capacity to
| stream lossless audio, sorry. You will be listening to a
| compressed stream. The only way to listen lossless is wired.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Can't wait to listen to 192kHz/24-bit on my macOS desktop with
| my preexisting 192kHz/24-bit audio pathway!
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| This is what I'm excited about, too.
|
| I work as a developer during the day, but have my home
| recording setup in the same room, and listen to Apple Music
| (or other services) all day through that.
|
| I don't think we're in the majority, though.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| I'm grateful they threw us a bone. Hope it's out soon.
| throwaway222145 wrote:
| Pretty much. Even more so that the iPhone doesn't come with
| wired earbuds anymore. What's the point of lossless streaming
| here?
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's explicitly for non-Apple hardware, mainly.
|
| They make that pretty clear. It's for audiophiles with the
| appropriate DAC and super high quality listening equipment,
| whether speakers or wired headphones.
| post_break wrote:
| Yeah what's the point. No APT-X means this is like watching a
| bluray through RCA cables. Even the Airpods Max might not even
| be able to drive it through the 3.5mm to lightning adapter.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| AptX Adaptive (2018+) is the only one that supports 96/24 at
| best, so well-shielded RCA cables from a wired DAC would
| probably degrade the signal less than the downmix for AptX
| Adaptive would, assuming your devices even support AptX
| Adaptive.
| yRbfmm1rVg8K5TR wrote:
| You may have missed this footnote at the bottom:
|
| > Due to the large file sizes and bandwidth needed for Lossless
| and Hi-Res Lossless Audio, subscribers will need to opt in to
| the experience. Hi-Res Lossless also requires external
| equipment, such as a USB digital-to-analog converter (DAC).
| intrasight wrote:
| I saw that too, but they didn't really give any context. Is
| Apple saying that the iPhone DAC is insufficient? Or Macs? Or
| something else?
| ErneX wrote:
| They are saying exactly that, the DACs they ship are not
| ideal for hires audio.
| [deleted]
| josteink wrote:
| > By default, Apple Music will automatically play Dolby Atmos
| tracks on all AirPods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip,
| as well as the built-in speakers in the latest versions of
| iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
|
| Apple TV seems oddly missing in that list.
|
| Edit: If anything is to be expected to be connected to a surround
| Atmos setup, it would be a TV-room audio-setup.
|
| Edit 2: Confirmed supported.
| criddell wrote:
| It's interesting to me that they announce a high-end audio
| feature a month after they discontinue their high-end speakers.
| I realize the big HomePod wasn't selling well, but it seems
| like they should have a decent Apple speaker.
| mikestew wrote:
| The fine print seems to have a slightly different story by my
| reading:
|
| "How can I listen to Dolby Atmos music?
|
| All Apple Music subscribers using the latest version of Apple
| Music on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV can listen to
| thousands of Dolby Atmos music tracks _using any headphones_
| (emphasis mine). When you listen with compatible Apple or Beats
| headphones, Dolby Atmos music plays back automatically when
| available for a song. For other headphones, go to Settings >
| Music > Audio and set Dolby Atmos to Always On. You can also
| hear Dolby Atmos music using the built-in speakers on a
| compatible iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, or HomePod, or by
| connecting your Apple TV 4K to a compatible TV or audiovisual
| receiver."
| josteink wrote:
| > or by connecting your Apple TV 4K to a compatible TV or
| audiovisual receiver
|
| Great. That's all I needed to hear.
|
| I wonder why they made so basic information so hard to
| obtain.
|
| I even searched the page simply for "TV" looking for that and
| couldn't find it.
| schmorptron wrote:
| Oh. So no word on the Android app yet?
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Because they can't guarantee the Apple TV is hooked up to Atmos
| capable speakers. With the headphones and built-in speakers
| they know they can fake Atmos. Not so on a random TV.
| josteink wrote:
| > Because they can't guarantee the Apple TV is hooked up to
| Atmos capable speakers.
|
| Nonsense. Apple TV supports Dolby Atmos and can detect a
| compatible receiver/speaker when connected.
|
| iTunes on Apple TV offers hundreds of movies with Atmos-audio
| after all.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Yes! But they can't say it will play Atmos BY DEFAULT when
| they can't guarantee the speakers/receiver support Atmos.
| On their headphones speakers they can.
| a4isms wrote:
| Perhaps Apple TV doesn't have an H1 or W1 chip?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| Apple TV doesn't have speakers. The device sending audio
| digitally to another device (an actual TV or sound bar in
| this case) wouldn't need one, the device driving the speakers
| would need one.
| josteink wrote:
| Apple TV supports Dolby Atmos for movies and anything else
| when connected to a capable output.
|
| Why shouldn't it work for music too?
| dancemethis wrote:
| How about announcing the personal user data Apple hoardes?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| This had been rumored for about a month, but that it was a FREE
| upgrade was completely unexpected. We thought this would be a
| higher tier.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Yeah, this was a hard kick to Spotify's gut.
| capableweb wrote:
| Was it though? Don't think a lot of people go to Spotify for
| the quality but rather a lot of their other features,
| widespread support and discovery. Will take Apple a long time
| to catch up on that. The people caring about quality already
| have a ton of options outside of Spotify.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Spotify was launching a lossless music tier at what was
| thought to be around $20/mo.
| pdpi wrote:
| I've given Apple Music a try a few times. Every time, I've
| dropped it and gone back to Spotify -- not because of the
| audio quality or network effects or anything, but just
| because the Apple Music UX is so freaking terrible. I don't
| doubt that this will sound amazing, but that will still not
| overcome the UI issues.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I don't think it would affect spotify much.
|
| If anything it probably would totally kill Tidal.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Spotify was launching a lossless music tier at what was
| thought to be around $20/mo.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Ah, didn't know that. That explains it.
| capableweb wrote:
| Not sure who "we" are but many in the community do expect Apple
| to run all of their services as loss-leaders as currently they
| have a very small market share compared to Spotify et al, so
| not surprising to everyone at least that this was free.
| mistersys wrote:
| It's weird, the only reason I can't use Apple Music is because it
| doesn't sync between devices. Apple being the company it is, it's
| just crazy to me that I can't pickup listening where I left off
| on my phone once I open my laptop.
|
| _Aside: Also there 's a ton of bugs, very poor job on the QA
| side of Apple Music_
|
| Spotify has designed this feature amazingly. Sometimes, I wonder
| why companies don't steal good ideas from each other more often,
| it seems like Apple has just refused to implement this terrific
| user experience.
| [deleted]
| duhi88 wrote:
| I never remember where the "recently listened to" section is.
| Seems like an easy thing to get right.
|
| Still, I prefer Apple Music's album-focused library to
| Spotify's playlist-focused approach.
| acolumb wrote:
| This is because Apple has barely updated the iTunes/Music App
| codebase and featureset since iCloud came out in 2011.
| lxgr wrote:
| Interesting, I wonder if we'll also see some lossless/"high
| definition" streaming client from Apple?
|
| As far as I know, none of Apple's first-party headphones support
| more than 256 kbit/s AAC.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Sounds like the old Carver "holographic" sound.
|
| Maybe a bit like this (campy, I know):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgeFdOayeaw
| cies wrote:
| 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, as the inaudible loss of quality with minimally lossy
| audio (e.g. mp3 320kbps) is audible when the sound is sped up or
| slowed down.
|
| But, and this the article does not mention, is not what Apple
| Music wants you to do. The formats will be proprietary with DRM.
|
| I prefer FLAC/OggVorbis/etc when it comes to music. But then I
| like to be able to mix/remix.
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| I have plastic shiny disks that are DRM free. They're actually
| pretty great, lossless, and no monthly fees.
|
| They are called _Compact Discs_ and you can get them pretty
| cheap these days!
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Who still has a CD player? Most people don't want to carry
| around an extra, enormous, mechanical, device.
| crazypython wrote:
| Where can I buy CDs of popular music?
| dagmx wrote:
| CDs of popular music are actually the easiest to find.
| (Target, Walmart or any big local equivalent will have the
| top charting artists stocked as CDs)
|
| It's the more esoteric artists that have become
| increasingly difficult to get CDs for. Streaming is really
| a boon for anything outside the mainstream.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| The last time I bought a cd-looking disc, the "CD"
| "CompactDisc" logo/words/terms were nowhere on it, inside
| or out.
|
| I seem to recall that meant they weren't actually CDs,
| they just happened to look exactly like them, and usually
| function in a CD player. Computers often had trouble with
| them.
|
| I don't know if this is true, or just bs, but there you
| go.
| antiterra wrote:
| The logo you want is the CD Digital Audio logo which
| requires adherence to the red book standard. Music discs
| with Sony root kit DRM did not have this logo.
| clydethefrog wrote:
| Can I listen to this tracks on the go without carrying them
| with them and a special device to play them?
| dahfizz wrote:
| Once upon a time, iTunes would automatically rip a CD for
| you. It would even name the tracks, artist, and get the
| album art for you and integrate it all into your regular
| itunes library. I don't know if they still do (or if apple
| even makes cd drives anymore).
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| You can totally still do that with an external CD reader.
|
| Source: I totally still do that with my CD collection.
| aask_ wrote:
| Well, there is that. But there's also the music produced by
| independent artists who release on YT. So much music isn't
| ever mastered to or printed on the cheap plastic magic
| mirrors.
| fullstop wrote:
| I can't carry a few thousand of those with me at all times,
| though.
|
| I hear what you're saying, but the convenience of a vast and
| portable library is compelling.
| te_chris wrote:
| Why not both? Spotify is cheap. I spend a fair amount on
| vinyl and CD/SACD (SACD/CD for classical and the occasional
| jazz record, vinyl for everything else) and still keep a
| sub for spotify for work listening and being able to just
| check something out - although I guess YouTube can do that
| for free in most cases, and with electronic music, often
| the only streamable recording of a lot of records.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Except for convenience, since they're DRM free I don't
| believe there is any, even legal, reason not to rip it to
| an SD-card.
| fullstop wrote:
| More and more phones are removing uSD card support. It's
| a losing battle.
|
| I don't want the plastic, the physical storage
| requirements, etc, of a CD. With digital I don't "own"
| the music, sure, but I've definitely lost more music in
| my life from scratched discs, people not returning CDs
| than I ever will through Spotify.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| I've "lost" some of my favorite movies and music by then
| not being available on any streaming service.
|
| I guess there are many reasons for this, but mainly I
| guess they are simply victims of copyright.
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| I use a disk drive to sync the discs to my music library
| and bring them with me :)
|
| I can format it to MP3, or ALAC, of FLAC, or whatever I
| like, and I can play them on devices that are made today,
| or 40 years ago.
|
| But secretly I just use Spotify for it's discover features,
| and then buy CDs of the albums I like.
| fullstop wrote:
| Then you have to have a place to keep thousands of CDs.
| Personally, I find that my time is worth $10/month to not
| do that.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Until your streaming service gets sold, goes out of
| business, "pivots," decides you or your worldviews aren't
| trendy, thinks you're a hacker, screws up your billing,
| drops support for your device, or any of the hundreds of
| other reasons the music suddenly stops.
| fullstop wrote:
| 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.
| matwood wrote:
| If we're in a situation where streaming music goes away,
| then we're also likely in a situation where having CDs
| doesn't matter.
|
| Also, all the people holding onto their 8-tracks are
| definitely thinking they showed all of us. /s
| lozf wrote:
| Spotify may not, but parts of their available catalogue
| do disappear, depending on licensing deals.
| fullstop wrote:
| 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.
| lozf wrote:
| And unlike streaming services or paid "digital downloads",
| there's no chance of an "inaudible watermark" that turns out
| to be audible in some cases! Thanks, Universal Music Group.
| marcodiego wrote:
| I think the biggest difficulty right now is that streaming is
| probably more lucrative for distributors, so there's very
| little incentives for artists to continue releasing albums.
| Buying compact discs is something that will likely get
| increasingly harder to do.
| davidwparker wrote:
| Anecdotally, I haven't bought a single CD since the Sony
| rootkit fiasco. I had bought one, got rootkit'd at the time,
| and vowed not to buy another. I don't regret not buying any
| more.
| bjornlouser wrote:
| News to me, thanks
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_root
| k...
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Modern software makes that rootkit seem almost pedestrian
| by comparison.
|
| Also, I believe you had to install junk software from the
| CD to a Windows or Mac Computer, before those OSs were
| hardened somewhat. Avoiding all things Sony seems a better
| strategy than otherwise benign CDs.
| objclxt wrote:
| > They're actually pretty great, lossless
|
| CDs aren't lossless unless the material was recorded at or
| below 16 bit/44.1kHz.
|
| You can argue whether the difference is _perceptible_ - some
| blind studies suggest not - but this fact is what led to a
| variety of semi-obscure audiophile disc formats that offered
| higher sampling rates
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD).
| numpad0 wrote:
| OT but since there are tons of professionals and
| audiophiles here - do anyone notice what can only be called
| CD artifact? There seems to be something "wrong" with CD
| that no other formats has, digital or analog.
| astrange wrote:
| Bits are bits. Maybe your CD player is scratched.
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| Ok, when people talk about _lossless_ streaming, they
| usually want their stream to match CD quality.
|
| Also, I'm aware SACDs exists. I actually have an amp that
| can decode DSD encoded audio but I failed to hear a
| difference.
| dsr_ wrote:
| That's not a definition of lossless that anyone else uses.
|
| The definition of lossless is that either no compression
| algorithm was used or the compression algorithm is capable
| of precisely recreating the original bits in as bits out.
| If you feed a lossless mechanism an 8 bit 3.5KHz mono
| bitstream, it must reproduce the same 8 bit 3.5Khz mono
| bitstream at the other end. Quality out equals quality in.
|
| In your definition, no sound is ever lossless because no
| microphones can ever capture the complete audio experience
| available from a live performance - if you move your head a
| quarter of a wavelength, the sound will change.
|
| That's why we don't use that definition.
| nitrogen wrote:
| If the original has a SNR less than 96dB (120dB effectively
| with shaped dithering), and no frequencies above 20kHz,
| then CD is lossless.
| lucideer wrote:
| TL;DR of a lot of the relevant sibling replies here: DR is a
| lot better on some (not all) masters of lossless releases.
|
| I tbh think "sound(s) bigger and stronger" is actually a pretty
| decent layman's phrase for "has a higher dynamic range".
| BatteryMountain wrote:
| I'm not an audiophile but I can hear the difference. For me,
| compressed audio sounds like this:
|
| low frequencies: dull, humming noise
|
| mid range: sounds like the sound is coming from a sock
|
| higher frequencies: too squeaky is the best way I can describe
| it.
|
| I have permanent tinnitus though. The better/higher the sound
| quality, the less noticeable it is. And of coarse listening to
| a real instrument a few meters away (that doesn't go through a
| mic & amplifier) is an absolute treat.
| viro wrote:
| > with DRM
|
| Umm did I miss something? ...This for a music streaming
| service.
| vultour wrote:
| Yes, his argument is that it's pointless for a streaming
| service
| layer8 wrote:
| > 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.
| lozf wrote:
| There's plenty of double blind ABX test results at
| https://hydrogenaud.io that contradict this, and with some
| material at even higher bitrates. Mostly it's experienced
| listeners making useful contributions to codec developers.
| yehaaa wrote:
| The format is ALAC, it's not proprietary but an open spec.
| Secondly Apple has been using AAC since forever which is a
| successor to mp3 and an MPEG standard.
| moogly wrote:
| > 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.
| yehaaa wrote:
| To increase interoperability with existing libraries for
| example. The user group that has some kind of Apple device,
| and thus potentialy ALAC encoded audio is quite large.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| 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.
| moogly wrote:
| Now imagine storing it in FLAC and playing them
| everywhere, without having to transcode at all.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| That's someone else's windmill to tilt, sorry.
| [deleted]
| yingbo wrote:
| As mentioned above, ALAC is an open source format, which
| has all benefits as other open source format e.g. FLAC.
| Forbo wrote:
| > all benefits as other open source format e.g. FLAC.
|
| Except adoption. FLAC is much more widely supported, so
| why opt for ALAC?
| jolux wrote:
| Because iTunes doesn't support FLAC.
| tshaddox wrote:
| That seems to imply that there should only ever be one
| format for any particular application.
| yingbo wrote:
| ALAC is open source and you can feel free to contribute
| to it or "adopt"/use it.Apple has been using ALAC for a
| long time on difference devices and platform. Moreover,
| according to Wikipedia, "compared to some other formats,
| it is not as difficult to decode, making it practical for
| a limited-power device, such as older iOS devices".
| "Adoption" is not a reason, from my point of view, ask a
| company/app abandon an open sourced format to use another
| one.
| eikenberry wrote:
| 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.
| whyoh wrote:
| >ALAC is an open source format, which has all benefits as
| other open source format e.g. FLAC.
|
| Technically, it's still not as good. For instance, FLAC
| includes a checksum of the audio data, whereas ALAC
| doesn't. FLAC also compresses a bit better (=smaller file
| sizes) and decodes a bit faster (=lower CPU/battery
| usage).
| lozf wrote:
| Apple created ALAC as a closed source project after FLAC
| had already been released as Open Source. They
| subsequently changed ALACs license to Open Source --
| presumably to take advantage of further development from
| the community.
| lxgr wrote:
| Surely it's ALAC + FairPlay DRM though, right? Making the
| actual lossless codec used a moot point.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Personal experience: most people can not differentiate anything
| above 128kbps mp3. Some can, but don't care. A lot of people
| listen to music in noisy environments with lower quality blue-
| tooth devices that decrease audio quality even more and make it
| way harder to differentiate from anything better than 128kbps
| mp3. Most current music is heavily dynamic compressed leaving
| very little space to differentiate better codecs. And the new
| generation of listeners is getting so used to compression
| artifacts that a cleaner sound may feel strange and unfamiliar.
| kevindong wrote:
| If I really strain myself, I can tell the difference between
| 128 and 320. But I never put that much effort into
| listening/appreciating music.
| robbyt wrote:
| Who are these people who can't hear the difference? And what
| sort of listen setup have you used to test this? Even my
| parents can hear the difference!
| em500 wrote:
| The German c't magazin did an extensive test back in 2000
| using pricey audiophille equipment (Sennheiser Orpheus, B&W
| Nautilus 803). 256k MP3 was statistically tied with the
| Compact Disc source.
|
| Translated article:
| https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=27324.0
| marcodiego wrote:
| For a quick result: http://systmuwi.de/Pdf/Technical%20Repo
| rts/TechnicalReport_M... page 16.
|
| And about people getting used to compression artifacts: htt
| ps://web.archive.org/web/20090315092806/radar.oreilly.com..
| . and https://gizmodo.com/ipods-and-young-people-have-
| utterly-dest...
| swiley wrote:
| IME: you get quantitation error with very quiet sounds (or dark
| things in video) which gets amplified by the lossy encodings.
| It's not normally apparent but there are cases where it is.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I buy FLAC so that I can easily convert my music to other
| formats without making 2nd generation lossy copies. Being able
| to convert my entire library to AAC, pre-apply my ReplayGain
| data, and shove it on to my iPhone is real handy.
|
| This just seems like a waste of bandwidth for streaming though.
| varispeed wrote:
| People don't know what to listen for. The compression artefacts
| may seem like artistic choice to people rather than a loss of
| quality. Once you know what to listen for, you can almost
| always tell the difference, even on lower quality listening
| devices.
| antiterra wrote:
| This is true, most of 320kbps is indistinguishable, but high
| hats are often subject to artifacts, including pre-noise that
| occurs before the sound is supposed to begin. To some it
| might sound intentional, like a very subtle reverse high hat
| or other room effect.
| varispeed wrote:
| This and also transients - they sound in a specific way
| through the way the compression works. Once you hear it, it
| is difficult to stop paying attention to it.
| antiterra wrote:
| Right, high hats are a source of transients which get
| smeared because there's a minimum block size in mp3 that
| is somehow too big to encode it temporally.
| tombert wrote:
| I have a pretty fancy stereo system that I bought when I really
| didn't have enough money to afford such things, and I do like
| it, but I feel like any quality difference that I hear when I'm
| playing lossless audio is largely psychosomatic. An mp3 or AAC
| with a high bit rate sounds pretty damn good, so it's fine for
| nearly anything.
|
| All that being said, I still use FLAC for nearly everything for
| two reasons: 1) Since it's lossless, it makes a good "transit
| medium"; I can have some assurances that it's not going to
| degrade in quality with subsequent renders if I import the
| audio into a video editor and export it to 24 Bit FLAC.
|
| 2) Hard drive space is pretty cheap nowadays. I have a home
| streaming server that I set up to stream to my stereo (doesn't
| do any additional compression from the input source), and even
| if it is psychosomatic, I do _like_ knowing that I have the
| highest quality possible. I 'll admit it's silly, but the music
| sounds better _psychologically_ because I know it 's lossless,
| even if I realistically cannot tell a difference in a blind
| test.
| andykellr wrote:
| I agree with you. And besides, even if the difference is
| psychosomatic, do we need to split hairs between our brain
| saying it's better because of internal bias or external
| stimulus?
| meristohm wrote:
| Just my two kilobits: I also prefer FLAC and Ogg and Opus, and
| after some testing I settled on 24kbps mono Opus for audiobooks
| and 96kbps stereo Opus for anything more than spoken. I was
| limited by storage on my old Android device, and my earbuds
| were whatever. I now have better headphones (~$60?) and
| speakers (~$130?) and am sometimes transported back to my teens
| and the wonder of listening to music in all its breadth and
| depth.
| hparadiz wrote:
| Yup. It's pointless to offer this in a locked down form.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| This is Apple and its loyal follower base (their customer base
| is different) we are talking about. The followers who would
| have gone week in the knees right after those words.
|
| That Scoopertino post never fails to amuse me.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-what-if-apple-m...
| Grollicus wrote:
| I've got two recordings of Machine Head's Through The Ashes Of
| Empires, one 320kbps mp3 and one flac, which is the one I
| usually listen to.
|
| So some day I'm listening to that album as I'm wont to do and I
| notice there's some cracks missing. After questioning my sanity
| a bit it turns out the mp3 ones somehow managed to sneak into
| my playlist.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The liberal use of adjectives when discussion audio quality is
| what sets my BS alarm off.
|
| Bigger. Stronger. Warmer. Not that these cannot meaningfully
| describe audio. But it tells me they cannot quantify the
| difference.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| I think _experiencing_ audio is mostly subjective anyway, and
| that these discussions are all equally worthless because of
| it.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Right, I don't want those sorts of modifications to my audio.
| Clearer, more accurate, would be my preference. Which I'll
| modify at my end as I choose.
| moolcool wrote:
| Do you think the record labels would be fine with Apple
| streaming their IP in a lossless and DRM-free format? It's
| self-evident that DRM-free is objectively more versatile, but
| it's also self-evident that it can't not have DRM for business
| reasons.
| Gaelan wrote:
| > But, and this the article does not mention, is not what Apple
| Music wants you to do. The formats will be proprietary with
| DRM.
|
| For what it's worth, music actually purchased on iTunes (not an
| Apple Music subscription) has been DRM-free for years. If this
| means iTunes-purchased songs are lossless now, that might be
| useful.
| thetinguy wrote:
| Apple Music files have DRM but iTunes purchases do not.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Converting files to Ogg Vorbis a long time ago was something I
| regret.
|
| There is nothing special about the compression/quality as
| compared to a quality MP3 encoder or Apple's AAC encoder (maybe
| the only quality AAC encoder) but you are guaranteed to have to
| re-encode if you want to play on your sports watch, in your
| car, play on your smart speakers, etc.)
| StavrosK wrote:
| > There is nothing special about the compression/quality as
| compared to a quality MP3 encoder
|
| Really? From tests I did way back in the day, the quality was
| comparable at around half the size. It's a shame Vorbis
| support isn't widespread though, given that it's royalty-
| free. Let's hope Opus has a better fate.
| skrause wrote:
| MP3 is also royalty-free now and MP3 encoders are much
| better than they were 20 years ago.
| 45ure wrote:
| >It's a shame Vorbis support isn't widespread though, given
| that it's royalty-free.
|
| Spotify currently uses Ogg Vorbis on desktop and mobile,
| and AAC for the web player.
| CannisterFlux wrote:
| Even on bog-standard Android, Ogg files tend not to be as
| well supported by random music programs compared to MP3. I
| re-ripped a few CDs in MP3 that I'd also foolishly done to
| ogg just have them play gapless in VLC I think it was (might
| have been some other app, I forget now), otherwise there was
| an annoying pause between tracks that had seemless blending
| between them. And another app I use to slow down or pitch
| shift tracks to play along to or transcribe didn't work with
| anything but MP3 for a long time, though that at least got an
| update.
| Loughla wrote:
| >otherwise there was an annoying pause between tracks that
| had seemless blending between them.
|
| Oh christ, this is my least favorite thing about newer
| audio formats. Some of the old albums were meant to be
| heard in one stretch; there are no gaps between tracks,
| because you're hearing a story. Then comes mp3 and digital
| audio, with a second pause between them. It just kills me.
|
| I get accused of being a hipster by my family. I just want
| to hear the story!
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Dull tools and people who don't care.
|
| "Good enough" can be the enemy of "correct".
| lloeki wrote:
| I stopped having this issue for well over a decade.
| Especially on some albums I enjoy there are tracks which
| are logically separate (on CD as well as files) yet
| "play" into one another continuously, so I'd have noticed
| this as it would produce a weird silence in an otherwise
| seamless musical transition.
|
| It's entirely a player thing to start decoding the next
| track slightly before the current track ends and
| continuously feed the audio buffer with no gap. This has
| nothing to do with mp3 and digital audio, but everything
| with players that don't conceptually split between
| reading a file and pushing audio to the output but are
| just glorified shell for loops over mpg321.
| reaperducer wrote:
| In my collection, this is most evident with Home by the
| Sea/Second Home by the Sea from Genesis.
| vile_wretch wrote:
| I remember when "gapless playback" was a big deal when it
| was eventually added to iPods.
| friedegg wrote:
| I ripped all of my CDs to FLAC, then I was able to convert
| those to Ogg Vorbis at the time for my portable player. Later
| I converted the FLACs to mp3s, and used Apple's iTunes Match,
| so I have access to them on various devices for $25/year.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > There have been tests showing we cannot hear the difference
| between minimally lossy audio (e.g. mp3 320kbps) and lossless.
|
| Two things... CD quality (16 bit / 44.1 kHz stereo) was "big"
| in the eighties but it now makes for really tiny files. 1 TB
| harddisk and much more are common for consumers. Why are we
| still even arguing about 320 kbps mp3 when we can have provably
| bitperfect rips of our CDs, which can serve both as archive and
| for listening?
|
| The second thing: from the other side of a big room I cannot
| tell the difference between a 100 dpi color printing of a
| painting and a 1200 dpi color printing of that same painting.
| Well... Even if I cannot tell the difference I do prefer to
| know I have the 1200 dpi print and not the 100 dpi one.
|
| Why would I even take the risk, even I cannot consciously tell
| the difference, to have something of lesser quality?
|
| mp3 was lots of fun in the Napster days when we were running
| 28.8 k baud modems and had 3.2 GB HDD. But nowadays I've got 1
| TB HDDs... To me the mp3 ship has sailed and won't be missed.
| It's FLAC and only FLAC. CD quality everywhere. I don't own
| SACD (maybe I should) but got a lot of CDs. And FLACs are my CD
| in digital version. mp3s simply aren't.
|
| And that's in 2021. I cannot imagine, say, in 2026. This "mp3
| vs flac" argument is never ever going to go back in favor of
| mp3: as time passes the room it takes to store your music
| collection as FLAC keeps getting proportionally tinier and
| tinier.
| twoodfin wrote:
| _I prefer FLAC /OggVorbis/etc when it comes to music. But then
| I like to be able to mix/remix._
|
| Who's to say that Apple now or in the future might not want to
| do what amounts to dynamic "re-mixing" on-device? Presumably
| whatever adaptive tricks they might like to pull to make your
| music sound better or sync up to AR scenes or ... would benefit
| from the uncompressed source.
| taylodl wrote:
| Metallica's _Death Magnetic_ is going to sound like shit
| whether you play it with lossless or lossy audio. You can 't
| fix a bad mix. The other extreme are things I would _love_ to
| hear in lossless audio and Dolby Atmos but it would have to be
| re-mastered and there 's limits for what was captured on the
| original audio tape. Pink Floy'd _Dark Side of the Moon_ is one
| example.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > There have been tests showing we cannot hear the difference
| between minimally lossy audio (e.g. mp3 320kbps) and lossless.
|
| It's been said many times, but with good equipment and
| familiarity with the instruments of the genre can (and will)
| change the outcome of these tests.
|
| 320CBR MP3 will sound extremely good, but with a good system
| and some relaxed listening in a silent environment will
| highlight the differences for who knows what to listen for.
|
| By a "good system" I don't mean $10K+ systems on isolated
| rooms. A good vintage amplifier with a relatively modern CD
| player with good quality (Burr Brown / Wolfson) DAC and high
| quality speakers is enough.
| [deleted]
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I'm not an audiophile, but a couple days ago my wife had the
| radio in the car on and I thought something was wrong with the
| stereo, the middle range of the music were missing. It was all
| snare and a muted bass. I tried adjusting the EQ, but it had no
| real effect. I was a little worried about my own hearing at
| this point, but I saw that the station was broadcasting in
| "HD." I looked this up and HD apparently means that they
| broadcast in pretty low bitrates. I agree that there must be a
| point where the difference is negligible but people have taken
| the argument that you won't hear the difference so far that
| they're wiping out the heart of music on radio.
| ddingus wrote:
| I am not sure whether it has been improved, but back when the
| Ibiquity HD was being deployed, the codec actually
| synthesized sound above something like 5 to 8Khz at the
| receiver, all depending on the bitrate choices and band, AM
| having a lower overall available bitrate to work with.
|
| Someone noted a song by the Bangles, which featured a little
| finger cymbal. (Two discs worn on a finger and thumb)
|
| That sound was missing and or rendered poorly. Turns out it
| offers very little sound under 5Khz. The codec parameters
| were increased to address those few cases, but are still
| below 10Khz, I believe.
|
| The other discussion was quality over choice. Fact is a full
| FM bitstream performed great. More than good enough to really
| enjoy in a car. Most people would trade the losses for lack
| of fuzz and noise present on analog RF.
|
| "CD Quality" was, and today is not accurate at all in the
| technical sense, but the overall feel is more like a CD than
| it is analog media, so... that is what they went with.
|
| However, being able to offer several streams meant multiple
| branding, commercial free streams to promote digital radio,
| and, and, and.
|
| Mostly, that discussion resolved to choice being king over
| quality. Improving quality at the expense of choice = wasted
| bits. That is by far the dominant view in broadcast.
|
| A little thought experiment explains why:
|
| Say you have a radio, and you get two stations. One offers
| compelling content, but the quality is low. The other is
| amazing good quality, but is just not compelling.
|
| Which do you listen to?
|
| Given others find the same material compelling that you do,
| which do you believe they will listen to?
|
| And that is why peak quality on broadcast is no longer a
| thing.
|
| Streaming services can offer compelling and quality choices
| to a higher degree than broadcast can, which means generally
| higher quality, even when available bitrates are, or could
| be. comparable. But, if they are ever pinned, they will favor
| choice over quality in a pinch, because compelling content
| wins over quality nearly all the time.
|
| I pretty much gave up on radio around this time too. Being
| able to carry a good music library around meant just using a
| car system as an output device.
|
| For a time, I did enjoy live or daily broadcasts, talk, news,
| sports. But, those carry such a high commercial load, and
| when phones and data plans began to favor streaming, I
| switched completely.
|
| ...all of which is why I am not too current on how HD Radio
| performs today. Next time I rent a car, I will have to scan
| the dial to see what, if anything, has changed.
| tshaddox wrote:
| That's interesting. I haven't paid that much attention, and I
| don't purport to have a great ear for these things, but
| whenever my car FM radio switches over to HD I always
| perceive a quality increase. It could be that there is wild
| variation based on the digital encoder hardware/software
| different radio stations use for their HD streams.
| teolandon wrote:
| What's interesting to me is that they put J Balvin's statement
| about lossless audio in the section about spatial audio.
| k_sze wrote:
| Just a FYI in case you didn't know, but Vorbis is kinda
| superseded by Opus now, which is a newer, royalty-free lossy
| codec that has a few nice qualities, such as, if I understand
| correctly, less decoding latency, higher compression ratio for
| similar perceptual quality. It has been the high quality audio
| codec for sites like Youtube for a while now.
|
| I just wish digital audio players would pick it up.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| > 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 (http
| s://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 compression that's at stake-- it's
| also the mastering quality. So a very well mastered track with
| plenty of dynamic range will still sound noticeably better on
| high performing speakers or headphones than a compressed
| version, even 320kbps MP3. A poorly mastered track will be much
| harder (if not outright impossible) to tell the difference on.
| IceWreck wrote:
| I gave these and I can't distinguish between 320kbps and
| uncompressed.
| lloeki wrote:
| There is also the theoretical case of double lossy encoding,
| e.g with Bluetooth headsets.
|
| Something not perceivable when listening to AAC decoding
| directly punched into a wired headset vs reencoding for BT
| transport which could transform previously unhearable
| compression artifacts into the perceivable range (think
| editing a jpeg and resaving as jpeg often produces artifacts)
|
| I have not seen any tests for that.
|
| (Of course if the device is able to push the AAC stream to
| the headset this does not happen. This kind of thing is quite
| opaque and hard to get info about as to which hardware or
| combination of hardware would support that)
|
| > So a very well mastered track with plenty of dynamic range
| will still sound noticeably better on high performing
| speakers or headphones
|
| I'm quite convinced that a good part of vinyl being reputably
| better comes from that, especially with the virtuous loop of
| audiophiles being the main audience for modern vinyl, which
| calls for good mastering.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Can people who claimed that they can distinguish 320Kbps MP3
| and lossless start posting their ABX log already?
| tarsinge wrote:
| I'm actually quite skeptical random people with high end gear
| can hear the difference between 320kbps and lossless. It has
| more to do with ear training, mp3 compression is not really
| on the same axis than what high end gear give you (basic
| equipment can have a large frequency response).
| kwanbix wrote:
| There are a very small % of people that can. You can check
| HydrogenAudio's double blind test for explanation on how to
| do a proper test.
|
| https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Blind_test
| sporkland wrote:
| I could hear the difference on the first question on my pixel
| 5 phone speakers.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Try a proper ABX audio test like:
| http://abx.digitalfeed.net/
|
| It is a bit lengthy, takes 5-10m, but it is a true blind
| A/B test with enough samples to be significant.
| unfamiliar wrote:
| > I and many others running good high end gear can repeatedly
| score well on these tests.
|
| Every time this comes up someone says this. I've never seen
| anyone actually doing it. e.g. a video of setting up a double
| blind test of this and someone actually passing consistently.
|
| When I've challenged people IRL who claim the same thing the
| response is always "Well, obviously I can't do it with any of
| the audio gear that either of us have access to... but if I
| did have high end gear I could tell for sure!"
| jolux wrote:
| 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 can make compressed
| versions in whatever format he wants without losing
| quality. He rarely actually listens to lossless audio. What
| he recognized was minor clipping on some high-hat hits, and
| after he pointed it out I could notice it too if I really
| tried.
| jorvi wrote:
| Not only that, biology is also against them. Somewhere
| between 25-30 years of age, your hearing already dips
| <17KHz. Where does lossy do the vast amount of its
| information discarding? >17KHz.
| foo_barrio wrote:
| I am almost 40 and can easily hear pure ones over 17khz
| but can't differentiate pure noise with or without
| anything above 13khz.
|
| Right around 18.5khz there's a sharp falloff on pure
| tones no matter how much I pump the volume. I use a
| loudness meter that shows me the freq spectrum to confirm
| that my speakers and headphones are producing a pure
| constant tone.
|
| On the tests at: "https://www.audiocheck.net/blindtests_f
| requency.php?frq=14" I can get 10/10 on the 10khz and
| 11khz test, 9/10 on the 12khz test and then it's just
| guessing at 13khz and higher.
|
| High hats tend to fall around 16khz and I have been able
| to differentiate on audio tests just by listening to high
| hats but that has more to do with how aggressive the
| codec is and not necessarily my hearing capability. I
| enjoy piano music and using the Apple afconvert tool I've
| been able to get piano tracks down to under 100kbps and
| they sound fine to me which is pretty amazing.
|
| I cannot use some of the more popular Berydynamic
| headphones because they sound too trebly and some pop
| songs are physically painful for me to listen to (eg the
| marimbas at the start of Ed Sheeran's Shape of You are
| like ear daggers on the 880 headphone and unlistenable on
| the 990's). I wonder if some of that brand's popularity
| comes from older ladies/gentlement being able to hear
| treble in the music that they otherwise wouldn't hear at
| all.
| astrange wrote:
| Beyerdynamic headphones have a lot of fake detail
| (actually sibilence) that comes from echoes at high
| frequencies as well as their treble tuning. It makes
| songs mastered for radio sound more detailed in the same
| way a sharpness filter would work on images.
| lozf wrote:
| If you're interested, check out the listening tests section
| at https://hydrogenaud.io where experienced testers
| contribute results to devs trying to improve various lossy
| codecs.
|
| It often depends on the source material -- some sounds are
| harder for some algorithms to encode, leading to increased
| bitrate if the codec supports VBR, or perhaps artifacts of
| not, or if there's insufficient bitstream available.
|
| Unsurprisingly the newer codecs usually manage to sound
| better than MP3 at significantly lower bitrates. Remember
| the only point in lossy encoding is to save space /
| bandwidth -- it's literaly why MP3 et al were invented.
| throwaway34241 wrote:
| So many of these posts aren't specifying the exact
| compression format / bitrate they used for the test though.
| It's obviously possible to pass at some level of
| compression, but what I really want to know is if anyone
| can pass a double blind test at a high bitrate on a modern
| codec vs uncompressed.
|
| The codecs obviously represent human-audible information
| much more efficiently than raw PCM samples. I'm not sure
| why the quality couldn't scale up (by increasing the
| bitrate) until it surpasses 100% of human hearing limits
| (since there's a lot of headroom to increase the bitrate
| and still be smaller than uncompressed). Maybe some formats
| have hard-coded frequency cutoffs (that don't change with
| the bitrate) that are too low for 1% of the population, but
| there's enough format choice that it would be surprising if
| they all had that problem.
| picardythird wrote:
| Factors: - Quality of audio equipment - The experience of
| the listener - The nature of the audio
|
| It's quite obvious that the average listener listening to a
| 128kbps podcast stream is not the issue here. Nor is the
| average listener listening to a 320kbps stream of a loud,
| noisy pop/rock album.
|
| But there are certain types of music where it's much more
| apparent. I have a trained ear and so I can't speak for
| everyone. There are certain types of music where I can't
| tell the difference. But some classical piano albums on
| Spotify sound terrible to me. The artifacts of the
| conpression are more obvious on sensitive, detailed music.
|
| All this to say that a random seection of people failing an
| online test to some random audio isn't a comprehensive
| answer to this question.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Audio is a deep rabbit rabbit hole. There is always a next
| level of quality. You can hear the difference, so always a
| reason to spend just a bit more. Then you have a 100k setup
| and someone is wondering why you just book the band directly.
| lukevp wrote:
| You may be confusing data compression with dynamic range
| compression, since you mention dynamic range. Dynamic range
| compression (limiting / brick wall limiting) has nothing to
| do with data compression, which is just referring to the
| removal of unnecessary data that is not noticeable from a
| psychoacoustic perspective (eg humans can't hear above 24khz
| so that data isn't needed, etc.) here is more info on DRC and
| MP3: http://www.tonestack.net/articles/digital-audio-
| compression/...
| robbyking wrote:
| This is really interesting! I did the test you linked, and
| for all but one I picked the _lowest_ bitrate version.
|
| I'm using WH-1000XM3 headphones and am a lifelong musician
| with pretty mild tinnitus.
| bentcorner wrote:
| Similar thing happened to me. What sounded "best" is
| subjective and I really had no idea what to listen for.
|
| Listened using Beyerdynamic Custom Studios with a cheap-ish
| DAC on a windows PC.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I tried it with my decade old entry-level Seinheiser headset
| plugged into my desktop computer.
|
| 4/6 with two errors where I confused 320Kbps and raw wav.
|
| But to be honest, I could hardly distinguish between the
| samples and I mostly guessed.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > 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 hurts
| your argument, since you may just be learning what to expect
| in your environment. The crux of the article/discussion is
| that people cannot _blindly_ pick the highest quality, which
| they cannot (since the different colorings of the music are
| subjective anyway).
| StavrosK wrote:
| Why does any of this matter? The point of a blind ABX test
| (and the whole question) is to see whether you can tell the
| difference between two formats. If you can, you can.
| Personally, I stop being able to tell somewhere around 200
| kbit MP3s (with cheap equipment), anything above that is
| wasted space.
|
| You can run the tests as much as you want, if the
| hypothesis is that "people can't tell the difference
| between lossless and 320 kbit MP3", even one person
| demonstrating that they can, disproves the entire
| hypothesis.
| mimimi31 wrote:
| >anything above that is wasted space
|
| Having lossless copies is still useful for storage and
| later transcoding. Even if you can't hear a difference
| between a 192kbit/s MP3 and a higher bitrate lossless
| file, you might be able to hear one after reencoding the
| MP3 using another lossy format.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Yes, I should have said "for casual listening".
| shawnz wrote:
| Considering the proliferation of music remixing social
| media services (i.e. Tiktok) and the cheap price of
| storage, maybe even casual users can benefit from
| lossless these days.
| cies wrote:
| > I stop being able to tell somewhere around 200 kbit
| MP3s (with cheap equipment)
|
| Yups. Me too. Even with cheap professional equipment I
| cannot hear the difference of lossless vs >= 192kbps MP3.
|
| > anything above that is wasted space.
|
| Unless you want to mix/remix/etc. Changing the pitch
| brings out the artifacts.
| [deleted]
| alternatetwo wrote:
| I did a blind test with a friend once, 192/320/lossless,
| and we both could definitely hear which file was 192 -
| but not which was 320/lossless.
|
| Most of the compression in 320 mp3s is also in areas
| humans can't hear. I once created a 320 mp3 with a 16kHz
| cutoff instead of the 20kHz lame uses by default, and to
| me there was no audible difference - even inverting one
| and listening to the difference didn't produce anything
| audible (to me).
|
| Of course nobody uses mp3 anymore, not even iTunes, they
| encode as 256 aac, which is a far superior codec and near
| lossless. I doubt _anybody_ can hear the difference
| between the lossless file and the iTunes file.
| StavrosK wrote:
| > Unless you want to mix/remix/etc. Changing the pitch
| brings out the artifacts.
|
| Certainly, you probably need lossless if you're going to
| do any sort of editing.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Lossless, and possibly upsampling before editing, but
| high end gear probably does that by default. As for
| bitrate compression, although I have a good musical ear,
| I can't find any appreciable difference from a high
| bitrate (320) mp3 and the corresponding lossless track,
| so no problems using mp3s to listen to music.
|
| I also managed to resample my entire portable playlist
| (yeah, making mp3s out of mp3s, I know in some circles I
| could be killed just for thinking about that:*) to
| overcome that dreadful loudness craze that makes pretty
| much every track produced in the last 20-25 years destroy
| your ears if you happen to listen to it just after
| something 10 years older. Unfortunately all methods to
| level the tracks (mp3gain, replaygain etc.) don't work
| properly because they should analyze all tracks dynamic
| content, not just the average/maximum level, then first
| adjust their dynamics and later normalize their level. In
| other words, level compression should be applied more to
| softer tracks and not the other way around. So I faked a
| solution to the problem by reconverting my playlist after
| applying compression to an extremely low threshold,
| making clear to myself that none of those tracks would
| ever leave my player. Some sound really horrible, but I
| spared my ears.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Not sure you're saving your ears by doing this compared
| to say, turning the volume down.
|
| You can't 'uncompress' an MP3 back to having the dynamic
| range it had before.
| realo wrote:
| Well... maybe some cool AI would help here... We already
| have it for images!
| squarefoot wrote:
| "You can't 'uncompress' an MP3 back to having the dynamic
| range it had before."
|
| True. In fact I would rather compress old music to bring
| it to the same dynamics of the new one, then and only
| then normalize everything. I know it's almost a crime; I
| did it just on my player and would never give these
| tracks to anyone.
| StavrosK wrote:
| As far as I know, mp3 frames have a "volume" field, which
| is what mp3gain changes to losslessly change the volume
| of the entire track. Could you not take advantage of that
| too?
| squarefoot wrote:
| The problem is the huge difference in dynamics between
| "old" and "new" recordings (that is, not just their
| maximum level) which makes really hard if not impossible
| to have more tracks sounding near the same level.
|
| This Wikipedia article about loudness wars explains the
| problem in details.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
| ksec wrote:
| I think the Key point would be, could you hear any
| difference in those test?
|
| If you could, then yes there is a quality differential,
| rather you got it right or wrong may be subject to taste.
| But at least we established there are differences.
|
| But when we say 128Kbps are sort of CD Quality or CD being
| no-difference to 320Kbps mp3, they generally refers to vast
| majority of consumers, not audio experts. I think most
| consumers could tell the difference between 256kbps AAC and
| 128Kbps MP3. But beyond that it sort of goes into consumer
| dont give a damn territory. Although most Pros would want
| the highest quality possible and there are no reason why we
| cant deliver lossless with today's infrastructure.
|
| I am wondering if there is a market for an even cheaper
| Music Streaming Services that target lower quality, 128Kbps
| music.
| hiq wrote:
| > I am wondering if there is a market for an even cheaper
| Music Streaming Services that target lower quality,
| 128Kbps music.
|
| If you control the client and are able to update it, I
| think you're better off switching to opus or similar.
|
| 96kbps opus is actually quite good for music already: htt
| ps://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Opus#Music_encod
| ...
|
| I guess the question then is whether there's a market for
| 48kbps opus music. But that'd be assuming that a big part
| of the costs are bandwidth. I'd bet that's not the case.
|
| Also imagine how little traction you'd get once people
| associate your brand with poor music quality. I don't
| think you can compete by being 2EUR/month cheaper.
| krapht wrote:
| Mobile data is quite expensive in many parts of the
| world. Quality is just one factor.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| 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.
| ksec wrote:
| >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.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| 128k Opus is quite a bit better, if for some reason that
| bit rate is crucial.
| tarsinge wrote:
| 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.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Been out of high end audio for few years, trying this test
| for past 30 minutes, and can't seem to get past 2/6 with
| wireless or wired or dynamic or BA or through proper amps
| or out of a laptop jack. Constantly falling into 320k.
| Maybe source isn't great in the first place, equalizer
| slightly suppressing low-mid and noise at the high is doing
| it.
| pwagland wrote:
| This is crux to the argument. If you know what to listen
| for, you can pick out the "bad bits", since you know that
| is where the issue lies. Once you know how to identify bad
| bits, then you'll be able to "hear" compression artefacts
| because you'll be primed for them.
|
| In A/B tests this is true, I _can_ reliably (not 100%, but
| way better than random) tell you which of A/B is
| compressed, and I can normally do this on somewhat crappy
| headphones, since I _know_ where to listen to pick out the
| compression. And this despite being partly deaf.
|
| However, if I am just listening to music I never notice
| these artefacts, since when listening to music, I'm not
| trying to determine which A/B stream is wrong. Most of the
| time, the music is just playing in the background anyway.
| astrange wrote:
| Being partly deaf might be what lets you hear the
| compression artifacts, because a lot of it relies on
| masking effects.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Problem is, sometimes when you learn how to spot a
| deficiency, you can't unlearn it and stop spotting it.
| It's like with kerning[0] or image compression artifacts.
| Everyone has a different level, and I haven't measured
| mine, but even when casually listening to music -
| including music from bad speakers in a waiting room
| somewhere - I can identify too badly compressed music and
| get immediately annoyed by it.
|
| --
|
| [0] - https://xkcd.com/1015/
| JohnBooty wrote:
| 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 pick out small
| problems with kerning and other typographic issues.
|
| And yet...
|
| I strongly suspect folks would enjoy a book with
| excellent typography more than they would have if it had
| slightly less-good typography, despite not being
| consciously and acutely aware of the differences. I
| believe there may be parallels with lossy vs. lossless
| compression when it comes to music, and with many other
| experiences as well -- you may not be able to tell the
| difference between cookies baked with cheap butter and
| grass-fed butter in an A/B test, but might you enjoy one
| cookie more than the other anyway?
| haecceity wrote:
| 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.
| chefandy wrote:
| 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.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I'd say: before being aware of how typography should
| look, the main difference is that reading a badly-set
| book will feel _tiring_ for some reason that 's hard to
| pin, but it's definitely _not content_. After being made
| aware, it 's just annoying - if you can name the thing
| that's wrong, you recognize it's wrong.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Great question. There's no way to know outside of big
| randomized trials but I'd bet thousands of dollars it's
| the latter. (edit: surely this _has_ been studied,
| right?)
|
| Though, I'm certain it would be less "perceiving
| excellence" like a connoisseur, and more like reaping the
| practical benefits of solid typography.
|
| While there's certainly a lot of showy typography in the
| world, the sort found in the body copy of books is
| generally focused on readability, in other words, letting
| the eye/brain more easily recognize letters and words. Do
| we enjoy a book more when our eyes and brains aren't
| overtaxed? It's hard to imagine otherwise -- who enjoys
| eye strain?
|
| I'm less sure of it but I suspect this is true for lossy
| vs. lossless music as well. For example, one telltale
| sign of badly compressed music is when the percussion
| sounds more like blasts of white noise than the actual
| instruments -- these sharp transients are hard to
| losslessly compress efficiently. (It's somewhat similar
| to how the sharp edges of text and line art are not
| handled well by some lossy image formats like JPEG)
|
| Is a drum that actually sounds _like a drum_ going to be
| more pleasing to the ear than something garbled and
| white-noisy, even if nobody tells you anything? Generally
| yes, I am fairly sure.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Similarly, I doubt most people could pick out small
| problems with kerning and other typographic issues._
|
| The XKCD comic I linked makes an important point though:
| someone else _pointing out_ the issues to you can make
| all the difference. At least with my experience, it
| literally took that comic for my brain to suddenly start
| recognizing kerning as a concept, and subsequently see
| issues with it everywhere.
|
| > _I strongly suspect folks would enjoy a book with
| excellent typography more than they would have if it had
| slightly less-good typography, despite not being
| consciously and acutely aware of the differences._
|
| That I agree with, and I think in those cases, giving
| someone even the most basic framework to understand what
| is "good" and what is "bad" is enough to make them much
| more aware of the issues in the works they're enjoying.
| raggi wrote:
| Test using pixel 4 xl built in speakers at 2/3 volume. You
| don't need high end gear, you can pick artifacts in half the
| test cases almost more easily on low end speakers. A few of
| the tracks only become noticeable once theyre busy.
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/Bx1XZP5DKpMvvmHf8
| Ashanmaril wrote:
| Being able to discern a difference in a side-by-side test
| doesn't really mean much.
|
| You can tell which of 2 similar shades of blue is lighter
| next to each other, but if you were to look at one and then
| another a day apart you probably couldn't say which was
| lighter
| xkjkls wrote:
| It's a good point about optimization of certain things in
| general. Like, yeah, someone might post a study that in an
| anechoic chamber you can tell the difference between
| compressed and uncompressed audio, but how much of a
| difference is that making for people in the real world?
| Often when I listen to music, I'm at the gym, or the
| office, surrounded by all sorts of background noise that is
| going to impact my experience way more than compression.
| svantana wrote:
| When you say "score well" on that test, what does that mean?
| From the marketing around lossless, they make it sound like
| most folks will get 6 out of 6. I've got good monitors and
| good hearing (in the audiology sense), and I can mostly rule
| out the 128kbps, but it's a tossup between 320 and lossless.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| It really depends on the encoder and song; I think the vast
| majority of people would have a very hard time getting
| above-chance on an ABX test vs a properly encoded MP3 at
| 320kbps, but I would not discount specific instances where
| things fall over and it still introduces artifacts that you
| can learn to recognize. Lossy compression is,
| unfortunately, not predictable in this sense, so there are
| always corner cases (or even outright bugs in encoders).
|
| Here's one result which lines up pretty much with what I'd
| expect - if you get lucky with very specific songs/styles,
| you can pick out a 320kbps mp3, just barely, with good
| playback hardware.
|
| https://www.head-fi.org/threads/abx-test-of-320kbps-vs-
| flac-...
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I highly suggest that people check out/try out "ABX
| comparator" plugin for Foobar2000 player. You give it two
| files (say a 128kbps mp3 version and a lossless flac verison)
| and it runs you through a double blind test of the two
| versions, quizzing you along the way. It's not just "listen
| to A" "listen to B", it gives you lots of options to listen
| to them and compare them in different ways, including
| obfuscating what track is A and what track is B.
|
| If you think you can really hear fine differences in audio,
| it can be very eye opening (ear opening?).
| ehsankia wrote:
| +1 I have nothing against NPR but that has like 5 samples
| and absolutely nothing about methodology.
|
| As far as I know, the goto test is:
| http://abx.digitalfeed.net/
|
| They have a few other tests heres:
| http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html
| rokweom wrote:
| There's a great tool for creating online ABX tests:
| https://abxtests.com/
|
| The guy who made it, jaakkopasanen, is also the author of
| other great audio tools - AutoEQ and Impulcifer.
| not_good_coder wrote:
| On NPRs site I can tell which track is the wav file by
| observing the load time of each track.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| 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?
| peeters wrote:
| 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.
| spawnthink wrote:
| Not sure how reflective that test is, since my perception is
| already primed by noticing the loading time per sample
| marcan_42 wrote:
| If they are delivering a compressed file and an
| uncompressed file, that already disqualifies the test. The
| only way to do ABX comparisons is to round-trip one version
| through the encoder _and back to the original format_.
| Anything else introduces uncontrolled dependencies (e.g. on
| a particular device 's decoder implementation) and side
| channels that unblind the experiment (like loading time).
|
| This is a common mistake people make, e.g. comparing 48k vs
| 96k files. What you need to do is take a 96k original,
| downsample it to 48k, _upsample it again to 96k_ (both
| using very high quality algorithms), then compare it to the
| original 96k file again. Otherwise you 're relying on your
| playback software or hardware's resampling algorithm, and I
| guarantee that's a compromise between quality and
| performance, and not valid for a scientific test.
| baldfat wrote:
| I use to be a sound engineer. Those "test" usually with gear
| they owned and you can of course tell the difference with
| gear you are use to. Most gear has anything but clarity. Most
| people will dislike clear sound.
|
| The POINT is blind test 128 MP3 and lossless. Still the vast
| majority of people don't have the equipment to hear any
| difference.
|
| The Second POINT is most people prefer to have boomy colored
| sound and again that ruins the need for lossless. This is why
| people prefer old vinyl records. It compresses the sound and
| makes it sound better in most people's opinion. If people
| would listen to 80s tapes I bet they would love that sound
| also.
|
| The Third POINT music is heard with background noise all the
| time. No way while listening to music people could tell the
| difference and those that can it would require great
| concentration. There is a limited return of investment for
| most people.
|
| Personally I own a DAC and a preamp and have my hundreds of
| dollars headphones and my Genlec speakers that cost thousands
| of dollars. I hear a SLIGHT difference between 320 MP3 and
| FLAC and that is 100% concentration and I can hear a
| difference in only certain types of music. Classical Jazz and
| Classical music. I can't tell with pop and electronic music
| which is what most people listen to.
| INTPenis wrote:
| That test was amazing. You made me really excited and I even
| guessed the first one correctly by seemingly hearing the
| difference. So I spent minutes on each of the other
| questions, listening and listening, but I just couldn't hear
| it and sure enough I guessed wrong on every other question
| after that.
|
| And I have a mid-range mini amp that fits in between my
| books, and two mid-range dali speakers hooked up with a
| regular 3.5mm outlet to my Ryzen MSI PC board, volume up to
| max on the computer but not on the amp.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > Of course, it's not only the compression that's at stake--
| it's also the mastering quality.
|
| HN threads on lossless music so often descend into "well, you
| couldn't hear the difference". But historically a key reason
| for people to prefer e.g. SACD releases of recordings is not
| because one can hear the extra frequencies of this format,
| but because the SACD release - being targeted at people with
| a good stereo and silent listening environment - is mastered
| with more dynamic range. The mainstream release of the same
| music, on the other hand, often features a different
| mastering with levels pushed up, because they assume that
| ordinary people will be listening to music in noisy
| environments, like through earbuds in the metro. This is
| often a problem for re-releases of 1960s recordings of jazz
| where the producer and engineer really exploited dynamic
| range, but that is lost in the most recent of the digital-era
| re-releases.
|
| (Another reason to prefer SACDs and Blu-ray releases of
| recordings is for the possibility of 5.0 surround sound,
| because of course CD and mainstream downloads or streaming
| are limited to mono or stereo only.)
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| Yep. Dynamic compression has ruined all popular music
| mastered (or "remastered") since the late '90s.
|
| It's incredible how many people don't understand that the
| problem isn't data compression, but rather dynamic
| compression. You have guys like Neil Young and Bob Dylan
| railing against how shitty music sounds now, but then
| promoting super-high-bitrate or high-resolution formats.
| NO! That's not the problem.
|
| We need "HDR" music. It's sad that we have to say this in
| an era where everyone has the technical means to hear
| great-sounding music.... and there's none being made.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| What you said is totally true but it's not relevant here.
|
| Apple already have all the lossless files on their server.
| Just that before they converted them to lossy format before
| sending to the user, and now they serve the original.
|
| There is no new master / new re-release involved in all
| these.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Apple already have all the lossless files on their
| server. Just that before they converted them to lossy
| format before sending to the user, and now they serve the
| original._
|
| Do you happen to have a citation for when this changed?
| According to the "Apple Digital Masters" Technology
| Brief[1], the masters delivered to Apple have
| historically been AAC files.
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/itunes/docs/apple-digital-
| masters.pdf
| nucleardog wrote:
| I might be misunderstanding, but I think that PDF is
| about how to master your music such that it will sound
| good after they convert it to AAC. It doesn't actually
| speak to the audio that's sent to them.
|
| Can't source anything except our own deliveries to Apple,
| but we've been delivering PCM since ~2018. Likely
| earlier, that's just when the code got moved into source
| control. That actually predates the copyright on that
| PDF.
|
| In general, of the maybe 150-odd DSPs we deliver to, as
| far as I know all but a handful have us deliver PCM. The
| remainder have us delivering flac.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Can 't source anything except our own deliveries to
| Apple, but we've been delivering PCM since ~2018._
|
| Cool, I take your word for it. Thanks!
|
| The referenced document only talks about AAC masters, and
| the tools at https://www.apple.com/itunes/mastered-for-
| itunes/ only create AAC masters. The simplest explanation
| is that the public materials and tools are just sadly out
| of date.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| I'm pretty sure nucleardog is correct and that Apple
| wants 24/96KHz minimum sent to them; the PDF you linked
| to actually says that under "Best Practices" -- "To take
| best advantage of our latest encoders, use only 24-bit
| sources and send us the highest-resolution master file
| possible, appropriate to the medium and the project."
| Then Apple encodes their AACs using the tools and methods
| described in that document. If I understand it correctly,
| they're basically trying to ensure that the downsampling
| from 24/96 to 16/44 preserves as much information as
| possible. (Does it really make a difference? No idea. But
| it does mean that Apple has a whole lot of music they can
| re-encode at varying quality levels.)
| web007 wrote:
| It's odd because I've read that before and made an
| assumption that it was talking about AAC mastering, but
| it only implies that. There's nothing that comes out and
| says what they want! There are some parts where they
| suggest higher fidelity sources, but mostly it comes down
| to: Apple Digital Masters Droplet
| You can use the Apple Digital Masters Droplet to automate
| the creation of 256 kbps
|
| AAC encodes.
|
| There isn't actually anything about what you're supposed
| to send them, only the recommendation to use their
| tooling which seems geared to produce 256k AAC files.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Ah, that makes sense, thanks!
| kohlerm wrote:
| I agree. For me the limiting factor is not necessarily
| whether it is poodles high quality encoded or lossless. For
| "normal" music the bottleneck is often the recording. With
| good headphones it is easy to differantiate good from not
| so good recordings. I For me a lot of recordings on
| Tidal/qobuz did not sound better than HQ on Spotify
| DenverCode wrote:
| For anyone bored and looking to explore:
| https://dr.loudness-war.info/
| DavidVoid wrote:
| Note that all entries that have the format _Vinyl_ on
| that site can be ignored, as the dynamic range
| calculations don 't work well on audio recorded from
| vinyl records.
| DenverCode wrote:
| Well, I'm glad I've been using it to pick out which
| pressings to target haha.
| StrictDabbler wrote:
| Absolutely agreed. People spend so much time arguing about
| whether we're "past the limits of human perception" on
| sound or video. They want to quote Nyquist and check
| frequencies.
|
| Spend a million dollars on audio equipment. Turn on your
| speakers, play some chamber music in insane multi-channel
| high-res audio, and invite a friend over.
|
| Your friend does not think you hired a string quartet. Your
| friend thinks you have nice speakers.
|
| If your friend is naive and easily fooled, do an A/B test
| by actually hiring a quartet and alternating with the
| speakers.
|
| There are a thousand compromises between the source of
| music and your ear. What is worth paying for is a recording
| where those compromises were made well. The compression
| level is a very small part of the picture.
| taylodl wrote:
| Meanwhile I'm listening the output of an amplifier
| playing a distorted guitar. I might listen to an acoustic
| guitar, and there might be a small horn section. Of
| course there's going to be drums. So it's super-simple to
| tell if it's live or a recording - the volume levels are
| going to be insanely different!
| Retric wrote:
| I have been surprised in both directions where what I
| thought was live music was prerecorded and what I thought
| was prerecorded turned out to be live music. Which
| shouldn't be that surprising, audio equipment has gotten
| really good and audio standards are based around what
| people notice.
| nicoburns wrote:
| The more realistic scenario where it might actually make
| a difference is DJs playing on huge high-end club
| soundsystems where compression artefacts might not only
| effect what you can hear, but the reverberations you can
| physically feel, and where there might be post-processing
| effects applied to the source material that show up the
| compression artifacts.
| karmakaze wrote:
| Yep, it was a sad day when they switched from vinyl 45
| singles to digital.
| com2kid wrote:
| > Your friend does not think you hired a string quartet.
| Your friend thinks you have nice speakers.
|
| When I first got nice high end speakers (TY Craigslist) I
| did this with an acoustic guitar CD.
|
| The amount of detail I could hear, and by detail I mean
| "close my eyes and hear every details of the musican's
| fingers moving across the strings" detail, was
| incredible.
|
| That is also the day that I learned MP3 encoders of the
| time (~8 years ago) still had bad encoding artifacts even
| at 256kbps.
|
| After hearing enough clicks and pops, I ended up having
| to re-rip my CDs as FLAC, or in some cases buy the CDs so
| I could rip them.
|
| Now days encoders are a _LOT_ better. You don 't get
| clicks and hisses except at 128kbps.
|
| Also 90% of my listening is done through a wireless
| headset (...) through spotify (...) so quality has taken
| a serious nose dive anyway.
|
| That said if I want to _listen_ to music as an all
| immersive activity, yeah, lossless through high end
| speakers. But I do that maybe once every other month for
| half an hour.
| numpad0 wrote:
| > A/B test by actually hiring a quartet
|
| That's easy. The one with room echos, washed out highs,
| and missing bass is the live.
| coliveira wrote:
| This may be true about popular music, because this is how
| we came to know this style of music - live performances
| (without proper sound engineering) sound worse. It is
| completely the opposite for classical music. There's
| still no way to replicate the sound quality of being
| close to an orchestra.
| numpad0 wrote:
| First time I had been to an actual classical concert I
| thought the walls need more dampening, mics placement is
| terrible and couple sliders on the right side of
| equalizer could be turned down a bit.
|
| By the time It was over I completely "got" it though. I
| was internally complaining that an actual fishing port at
| 5AM don't look like a Monet copy, not watered down,
| skewed, or idealized.
| simias wrote:
| >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, but
| that's the problem, it's no longer something that can be
| measured and objectivized.
|
| And that's entirely fine, but I think there's a trend
| among some people (and especially the type of people who
| frequent this forum) that deem that if a feeling or
| emotion can't be objectivized then it's effectively
| worthless or irrational or something like that, so you
| see people grasping at straws to justify their emotions
| with a pseudo-scientific explanation. I find that frankly
| sad and quite toxic in a way.
|
| Music is art, the enjoyment we derive from it can't be
| measured in kilobits per second. That doesn't mean that
| we need to make up pseudo-facts about acoustics to
| justify our preferences.
| coliveira wrote:
| 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 from
| different directions. At the end it is probably cheaper
| and easier to pay a ticket to have this live experience.
| simias wrote:
| Of course not, what you need is model the way your ear
| handles sound coming from various locations then model
| this and reproduce it. It's like VR, but for your ears.
| That's how ASMR effectively works. If you want full
| immersion you can add head tracking so that the sound
| "rotates" around you when you move your head. I know that
| Apple offers that with their latest headphones.
|
| Admittedly in order to do this you need to have post-
| processing specific for every person since we don't
| process sound exactly the same depending on our
| physiology. I know that Sony attempted something like
| that with its "3D audio". I think it's a bit of a gimmick
| myself, but it's technically doable.
| Grustaf wrote:
| > Of course not [you just need individual head related
| transfer functions for everyone and a fast DSP]
|
| I agree that it is probably possible in theory, but
| aren't we talking about actual equipment and recordings
| that people can buy?
| sdenton4 wrote:
| You can buy it; the keyword is 'binaural'
| recording/headphones.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording
| ska wrote:
| Except this is a long way yet from what the GP was
| describing, although it is an attempt in that direction.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| 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.
| Grustaf wrote:
| You can get really nice sound that way, but to get the
| full effect you need to take into account the shape of
| the head and ears of the listener. After all, these are
| important factors that help us place sound in space.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-
| related_transfer_function
| gomox wrote:
| Your ears are highly directional devices and an orchestra
| in a concert hall creates a highly complex soundscape
| that is impossible to replicate with 2 channels. Location
| awareness (i.e. 2 mics where your ears are) is just a
| small part of the problem.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| If you've never heard an orchestra in an auditorium with
| proper sound design you're in for a treat. Two or four
| speakers are simply a poor alternative to dozens of live
| performers around you.
| eecc wrote:
| 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, the strings rubbing, the valves
| clicking. I was blown away
| frereubu wrote:
| > 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?
|
| An orchestra is a large number of instruments spread
| across a wide stage. Each of those instruments is its own
| sound source. The audio cortex in the brain is highly
| tuned to understand things like the 3D location of sounds
| from cues generated by factors like the individual shape
| of our ears and how sounds bounce around and down into
| the ear canal.
|
| Now I'm sure you'd agree that sitting in front of two
| speakers X metres apart, or with headphones on, no matter
| how good those speakers / headphones are is a different
| set of sound waves.
|
| Some people are absolutely able to determine the
| difference between those sound sources. They're likely to
| have listened to a _lot_ of music. I think these
| discussions get derailed by the blanket "people can" or
| "people can't" statements rather than thinking about who
| might be able to make those distinctions. It might be
| that the majority of people can't make that distinction.
| But that doesn't mean that _no-one_ can.
| alchemism wrote:
| There is a scientific reason reggae dub shows feature
| massive woofer stacks built out of specific types of
| wood...
| ska wrote:
| > What's so special about the soundwaves going into your
| ears
|
| tongue in cheek answer: nothing. It's your ears that are
| special.
|
| Less tongue in cheek, while we have got pretty good at
| making microphones, they don't behave anything like human
| audio system; this makes it really difficult to reproduce
| what we experience when generated a different way (e.g.
| multichannel playback).
|
| There is nothing "special" about classical music here
| either, it's just got a lot of complexity (from multiple
| instruments, and room dynamics) and dynamic range.
|
| I see your point: if we could a) design microphones that
| capture everything going by them in a neutral way and b)
| design speakers that precisely reproduce everything they
| are sent in a neutral way, and c) set up a room to
| reproduce things in a neutral way for your particular
| position ... then this would work. We can't actually do
| any of those things.
| qart wrote:
| > That's why I always tend to bail out of audiophile
| discussion but I'll bite: why?
|
| Disclaimer: I am definitely not an audiophile.
|
| The low frequencies that we feel with/through our bodies
| feel entirely different at a non-electric live concert as
| compared to what we feel through speakers. No headphones
| can reproduce such effects. For sure, there are speakers
| that can reproduce such sounds faithfully, but how often
| do the audio production guys use such speakers, and how
| often do they try to control for the feeling in their
| bodies? Not often, I imagine.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > but how often do the audio production guys use such
| speakers, and how often do they try to control for the
| feeling in their bodies? Not often, I imagine.
|
| Yes, but we're talking about 5 digit and up audio
| equipment and listening to the top operas of the world,
| which definitely do have guys that know how to record.
| Your 10$ (or 250$) headphones combined with a CD from a
| smaller producer will not get you all the way there, I
| agree, but once you're in the insane high-price
| audiophile world, this becomes possible.
| temac wrote:
| Maybe if you move your head just a little bit with a live
| orchestra, the change is different from what happens with
| a few speakers (and often in a different room)
| cjohansson wrote:
| Good point, my exact experience of live concerts
| VT_Dude wrote:
| Theoretica Applied Physics and BACCH Labs audition this
| exact demo -- A/B test by actually hiring a quartet and
| alternating the musicians playing with the speakers
| silent and the musicians silently air-playing and with
| the speakers playing. With a perfect image you literally
| cannot hear the difference.
|
| https://www.theoretica.us/ https://bacch.com/
| dmix wrote:
| I found a video in one of those links from Princeton.
| It's a narrative of this guy developing 3D sound that
| works in normal 2 channel laptop speakers.
|
| It's quite impressive when they demo it. There is a
| moment around 1:20 that plays flies circling around and
| my cat next to me didnt care about the normal recording
| but he stood up with his ears out when the 3d version
| played.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQmQD27uCt0&t=3s
|
| I know it's probably old hat by now (the video is ~10yrs
| old, yes 2010 was over a decade ago) but it still blows
| my mind.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| This is pretty old hat now. IRCAM was experimenting with
| spatialized sound on a stereo medium already back in the
| 1990s. The software they came up with was used e.g. for
| the Deutsche Grammophon recording of Pierre Boulez's
| piece _Repons_ where sound is moved around the hall.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Unless you have bad hearing everyone would be able to
| hear the difference on speakers and live unless live is
| defined as someone playing far away on a scene or
| something, no matter how expensive equipment you have. It
| is impossible to have it sound like musicians playing in
| the same room. To even come close you would need several
| speakers per instrument playing in multiple directions
| and some playing sounds of the people moving, breathing
| and talking too. Not even a simple snare drum being hit
| at intervals can be reproduced by a normal stereo setup
| to sound as if it were in the same room unless it's at
| distance. Remember, we play music at home so the
| definition should be an orchestra two to three meters
| away, not an orchestra ten to twenty meters away up at a
| scene.
|
| Someone with something to sell is a very unreliable
| source btw.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| This is largely because MP3 is a crappy, old format. Try
| high-bitrate Opus on most samples and you're a lot less
| likely to get above-chance results on an ABX test, pretty
| much ever, at high bitrates.
|
| Ultimately though, lossy compression is always program-
| dependent ("program" here means the song, not the app). The
| encoders use psychoacoustic algorithms, and there is no way
| to prove they will perform well on _all_ samples. So you will
| always be able to find corner cases where an encoder or
| format does worse and results in more audible artifacts; some
| of these might be encoder bugs, some might not. Therefore, it
| is fair to say that you might not want to rely on lossy
| compression for archival. But it is perfectly reasonable to
| use it to put music on devices to actually listen to.
|
| You say good mastering makes it easier to notice encoding
| artifacts, but actually, bad mastering can do that too. Over-
| compressed stuff (in dynamic range) with inter-sample peaks
| above 0dB can clip and distort after getting run through a
| lossy codec.
|
| As for _lossless_ formats, though, anything above 48kHz 16
| bits is complete nonsense for final delivery to consumers.
| All the "high resolution" stuff with higher sample rates and
| bit depths is just marketing bullshit, and this has been
| repeatedly demonstrated in trials (the well-designed ones
| anyway; there are plenty of terrible ones - no, comparing the
| 96kHz download to the 48kHz download of a song is not how you
| test this properly).
|
| Bit depths above 16 _are_ useful during production (because
| quantization noise accumulates and is boosted by things like
| dynamic range compression); in practice you want to record at
| 24 bits for headroom reasons, and process in 32-bit float
| because there 's no reason not to with modern computers (and
| many practical advantages, e.g. ~infinite dynamic range).
| Sample rates above 48kHz are less so; the main reason to use
| them is to avoid aliasing artifacts, but it is usually much
| more effective to do that with well-designed DSP algorithms
| that include internal oversampling, as opposed to just doing
| everything at a higher sample rate. Unless you're doing
| extreme pitch shifting; then higher sample rates may make
| sense.
|
| Videos everyone interested in audio production should watch:
|
| https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jCwIsT0X8M
|
| The little tidbit at the end of the second video about how
| 48kHz is, in some respects, twice as good as 44.1kHz, is
| quite neat and not something I'd realized before.
| bscphil wrote:
| > This is largely because MP3 is a crappy, old format. Try
| high-bitrate Opus on most samples and you're a lot less
| likely to get above-chance results on an ABX test, pretty
| much ever, at high bitrates.
|
| On the whole your comment is great, but I think this point
| might be revealing of either your age or the last time your
| looked at mp3 encoders. LAME has been _great_ for at least
| a decade now. Other than (possibly) extremely rare killer
| samples, you 're unlikely to be able to ABX a LAME encoded
| track at 256 Kbps. I certainly can't, and I have pretty
| decent gear and have been listening to (and working on)
| music for a very long time.
|
| Back in the 90s, all mp3 encoders were shit. Xiph's Monty,
| in the post you link, mentions being able to distinguish
| between them using only their results as a party trick.
| Even in the early 2000s you needed 256-320 Kbps to have a
| shot at transparency. But now, most music is transparent at
| `lame -V2` settings, which gives approximately 192 Kbps
| results. I can still ABX a very small number of songs (last
| I tested), but even these go away by `lame -V0`, which is
| the highest quality VBR mode. HydrogenAudio, a trustworthy
| source as far as "audiophile" claims go, says that anything
| from `-V0 to -V3` should be transparent under most
| conditions. https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php/LAME
|
| AAC and Vorbis are certainly better codecs, achieving
| transparency most of the time at closer to 160 Kbps. Opus
| is even better. I've never been able to ABX a 128 Kbps
| track, and music sounds _great_ even at 96 Kbps (for
| stereo!). There are supposed to be killer samples for all
| four, forcing them to require a higher bitrate to achieve
| transparency, but interest in finding these seems to have
| dropped.
| picardythird wrote:
| You may find this interesting. The author argues against
| 96khz+ sample rates, but pegs the optimal rate to be around
| ~60hkz (which of course doesn't exist in practice).
|
| http://www.lavryengineering.com/pdfs/lavry-white-paper-
| the_o...
| acdha wrote:
| > This is largely because MP3 is a crappy, old format. Try
| high-bitrate Opus on most samples and you're a lot less
| likely to get above-chance results on an ABX test, pretty
| much ever, at high bitrates.
|
| This is such a key point: MP3 has known weaknesses with
| certain common sound profiles (e.g. sharp transitions such
| as a cymbal or snare drum) which aren't really fixable. For
| me the threshold was AAC 256kpbs where I stopped noticing
| artifacting.
| arbaal wrote:
| Yeah, 96kHz/24bit is only really useful for production,
| since it makes it more foolproof and harder to mess up your
| recording.
|
| But storing music over 48kHz and 16bit for comsumption is
| really just waste of storage space and pure snake oil. 16
| bit give a dynamic range of 96dB and I'm not aware of any
| recording outside of experiments that take advantage of it.
| Even the most expensive speaker / headphones will distort
| terribly if you play them on the loudness level where this
| dynamic range would matter...
|
| And most "high quality" recordings with a high frequency
| range (96kHz+) only really add ultrasonic sound and mostly
| noise artefacts that don't correlate to the music recorded
| (and that no speaker / headphones can even reasonably,
| without high distortions, reproduce, if they even pass the
| LPF of the reproduction chain).
|
| So yeah, I also think that 48/16 is all we need for optimal
| consumption. If the format is lossless, it's also nice for
| archival reasons.
| andybak wrote:
| MP3 with a good compressor and reasonable bitrate has
| repeatedly shown to be indistinguishable from uncompressed.
| The reason to avoid mp3 is to be able to squeeze the
| bitrate and save on storage bandwidth - but that has
| mattered less year on year.
|
| I'm personally baffled and irritated by this move from
| Apple. They'll be selling healing crystals next.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| > MP3 with a good compressor and reasonable bitrate has
| repeatedly shown to be indistinguishable from
| uncompressed.
|
| With most samples, yes. The issue, as I said, is that
| psychoacoustic codecs are basically heuristic by
| definition, and so you can pretty much always find
| counterexamples. It's possible to say 320kbps MP3 is
| indistinguishable from uncompressed for most samples; it
| is not possible to say it is indistinguishable for all
| samples, present and future.
|
| It's also the case that lossy encoding is a bad idea if
| you're going to be further processing the audio in any
| way; repeated transcodes definitely start bringing out
| the artifacts more. So lossless music is always something
| worth having as an option.
|
| Now, when you start talking about "high-resolution"
| 96/192k 24b stuff... yeah, that's just as good as healing
| crystals.
| andybak wrote:
| > it is not possible to say it is indistinguishable for
| all samples, present and future.
|
| Are there likely to be real-world cases where this
| happens - and the effect is detrimental enough to
| actually matter to anyone?
|
| Surely we're debating "when is it good enough for anyone
| sane and reasonable?" not "when could a hypothetical
| oracle be fooled 100%"?
| marcan_42 wrote:
| It is useful to make the distinction, because some people
| _do_ want to have the highest available quality (and this
| is not, inherently, a bad thing) - having a hard line
| that separates out the minor, but nonzero effects, from
| the pure snake oil, is useful.
|
| And as I said, really, the main reason to avoid lossy
| compression at this point is due to generational loss and
| post processing. Lossy compression should be considered a
| final processing step - what you do to store music that
| is then going to be delivered directly to a listener,
| unaltered. If you're going to do anything else, you'd do
| much better with a lossless version.
|
| That is not to say, of course, that if all you have is a
| lossy version, it is a major problem :-)
|
| For the record, my lossy format of choice for e.g.
| putting stuff on my phone is 96kbps Opus. Even that much
| is excellent for casual listening. But I much prefer to
| keep lossless FLACs as my primary archival storage - not
| just because that way I can take advantage of better
| compression formats as they come (e.g. how I moved from
| ~130k Vorbis to ~96k Opus), but also because compression
| makes a _massive_ difference with certain kinds of
| processing and editing which I sometimes enjoy doing. All
| the psychoacoustics go out the window if you start doing
| things like subtracting instrumental mixes from full
| mixes to get vocal tracks out.
| nitrogen wrote:
| I've commented in the past about a song that is
| annoyingly altered in 320k MP3: https://hn.algolia.com/?d
| ateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| andybak wrote:
| That's actually quite interesting.
| eh9 wrote:
| While I can understand the frustration, it's worth noting
| that they're not increasing the price of subscription and
| giving people additional options. To me, it's more like
| trying to tell people with 4K screens to watch 8K
| content, but what do I know.
| KozmoNau7 wrote:
| > "This is largely because MP3 is a crappy, old format. Try
| high-bitrate Opus on most samples and you're a lot less
| likely to get above-chance results on an ABX test, pretty
| much ever, at high bitrates."
|
| I'll add to this that "high bitrate" for Opus can
| reasonably be considered as 128kbps or above, generally 160
| or 192kbps are comfortably beyond what is needed to achieve
| audible transparency.
|
| For anyone who's used to MP3 and just doing everything at
| -V0 or 320kbps, it's extremely impressive to hear how good
| Opus is, and how low bit rates you can get away with. Even
| at 24kbps it's serviceable for music, it sounds no worse
| than a slightly worn cassette tape.
|
| It's a _seriously_ impressive codec, both for speech and
| musical content.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| > it's extremely impressive to hear how good Opus is, and
| how low bit rates you can get away with
|
| 24kpbs is perfectly adequate for
| voice/podcasts/audiobooks
| [deleted]
| RIMR wrote:
| I took the test, and it pretty conclusively proved to me that
| I cannot detect the difference.
|
| And even if I could detect the difference, I am not convinced
| that the improvement in bitrate would actually result in any
| increased enjoyment.
| summerlight wrote:
| It's technically possible to distinguish between 320kbps and
| loseless but it's nothing to do with perceived sound quality
| or not but more of whether you're trained to hear high-freq
| sound domain which tends to more suffer from compression.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I've done blind tests and I can tell if I try really hard but
| I wouldn't even say that the mp3 sounds worse, just
| different. I focus on hi hats.
|
| I do collect lossless audio for archival reasons and the
| ability to convert from a non lossy source.
|
| I believe that high bitrate audio is entirely bullshit
| though- as Chris Montgomery has shown:
|
| https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _high bitrate audio_
|
| Based on the opening part of that video, I think you must
| have meant to say high sampling rate.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Yes. Thanks. It's been awhile since I watched.
| 86J8oyZv wrote:
| I just got 5/6 with just my MacBook Pro speakers (but am a
| musician). "Bigger and stronger" is kind of an asinine way to
| describe the difference though. Was "you hear more subtle
| details" too many words?
| alternatetwo wrote:
| And the comparison would be against 256 aac (what iTunes uses
| currently), which is insanely good and much better than 320
| mp3! Nobody can hear that!
| simias wrote:
| It doesn't matter, it's good marketing. It's not rational, but
| it lets Apple posture as being "high end". The utter majority
| of people won't be able to tell the difference but then again
| the utter majority of people won't even try to test it. I know
| that I personally can't even tell the difference between
| Spotify's "mid" and "high" quality settings the vast majority
| of the time even in perfect listening conditions with good
| earphones and focusing hard on the small details.
|
| I've given up on arguing with audiophiles about this. In the
| end if they enjoy their overpriced setups to listen to 196kHz
| 32bits-per-sample uncompressed tracks who am I to tell them
| otherwise? It won't keep me from listening to compressed audio
| on my cheapo USB DAC with my mid-range earphones and enjoying
| it just as much.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| People are downvoting you but you're not wrong. One of the
| biggest factors behind Apple's success is that they've
| positioned themselves as a status symbol. They're the Prada
| of the tech world. I switched from an iPhone to an Android
| recently and found the quality of the device and software to
| be just as good if not better, but an Android doesn't say
| "I'm upper middle class" like an iPhone does.
|
| Me, I see spatial audio and I'm like... Ah, that's annoying,
| because it's yet another proprietary gimmick, and it means
| the format will likely be incompatible with everything else.
| You could see a proliferation of audio files that are only
| usable on Apple devices. Stereo seems... Based in physical
| reality, ubiquitous, and very practical. I hope Google
| doesn't try to copy them just like they did after Apple
| decided to remove the headphone jack, because that wasn't an
| upgrade. Deprecating trusted, reliable technology to try to
| entice buyers is not an upgrade.
| iDisagreedEar wrote:
| I got an IPhone for work and I was extremely excited during
| unpackaging and giving my personal information to Apple.
|
| It took only a few weeks for disappointment over slow
| transitions, buggy apps, and annoying updates.
|
| Today I'm not sure how I could live without a few Android
| exclusive things, Linux, ad block, macros. They might be
| available for IPhone, but it's mind numbingly easy to get
| started.
|
| Final complaint, our grandparents got iPhones because it
| was supposed to be easy. Apple logins and lingo made it
| difficult to use.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I just wish Soundcloud improved their sound quality. Feed of new
| dj mixes from people you follow is so much better (for me) than
| some generic music charts.
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| I sure hope spatial audio won't be the only way music will be
| delivered in the future. It'd be a complete nightmare for people
| like me who has severely impaired hearing on one ear.
| heartbreak wrote:
| There's a toggle to turn it off in the volume control menu.
| boardwaalk wrote:
| I think most (Apple) devices have an accessibility setting that
| let you downmix multichannel audio to mono.
| kjakm wrote:
| Wouldn't that also apply to mono v stereo? I would guess that
| if you had one earphone in, they would fallback to a
| mono/stereo mix. It kinda works like that currently with
| AirPods. If you take out one, instead of only getting one
| channel through the remaining AirPod, you get both channels
| diverted to the one AirPod.
| nileshtrivedi wrote:
| Since most of the music is consumed on headphones, I'm not sure
| if spatial music will appeal to many. What I would really like to
| see in purchased music is individual soundtracks for each
| instrument/vocal (which I can mix as per my taste) and one
| default mix made as per the producer's taste.
|
| This would not only help with music practice, karaoke,
| axxl wrote:
| You can make spatial audio work with headphones, as those
| various fun YouTube demos show. Furthermore Apple's headphones
| have support for it including directional audio support. If you
| haven't tried it it's pretty spectacular, with the only
| downside being the sound so convincingly seems to be coming
| from my iPad I need to verify that I am in fact sending the
| audio to my airpods.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I think we can strongly assume that airpods with spacial audio
| support are coming very soon. It's already a feature on the pro
| and max.
| pdpi wrote:
| > Since most of the music is consumed on headphones, I'm not
| sure if spatial music will appeal to many
|
| The spatial sound implementation on the EarPods pro is amazing.
| When I first tried them with my iPad I had to take them off
| several times to make sure the sound was coming from the
| headphones. I can only assume this will be as good.
| schmorptron wrote:
| Could they use something like HRTF in video games to do spatial
| audio for stereo headphones?
| open-source-ux wrote:
| The BBC has produced a number of 3D recordings ("binaural
| sound") of classical music performances. These recordings are
| designed for headphones. You can try them out here (requires
| sign-in to play):
|
| _BBC Philharmonic binaural recordings_ :
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/experience-classical-bbc-philh...
| capableweb wrote:
| Having stems available would be super cool and open up a whole
| new world of remixing. But Apple would be the last company to
| embrace such a approach.
| SSLy wrote:
| I wonder when they'll start supporting windows' multimedia keys
| mrkwse wrote:
| I think iTunes is effectively legacy at this point in favour of
| the web app (music.apple.com), which works far better (except
| for lack of offline downloads) and supports windows multimedia
| keys.
| FractalHQ wrote:
| Great but Apple can you please fix the awful obliteration of
| audio quality in your audio speed algorithms? Apple podcast app
| on 1.5x speed sounds like a 1950s radio underwater. MacOS and
| iOS. It's so bad and makes the apps unusable for me.
| hu3 wrote:
| This is something that Youtube excels at, I find.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| > By default, Apple Music will automatically play Dolby Atmos
| tracks on all AirPods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip,
| as well as the built-in speakers in the latest versions of
| iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
|
| What does it mean to have spatial audio on a pair of headphones?
| I thought spatial audio meant you needed a 5 speaker setup or
| similar.
| yRbfmm1rVg8K5TR wrote:
| Spacial Audio is the name of an Apple feature avaiable when
| using their headphones with an iPhone/iPad. It using "head
| tracking" so when you move or turn your head it changes the
| sound to make it seem like you are moving around a room with
| surround sound.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Likely they are releasing a set of airpods soon with a kind of
| head-tracked positional audio. The pro and max can already do
| positional audio where the sound seems to be coming from a
| paired iPad no matter how you twist your head.
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| Not necessarily, but for the best effects yes. You can use head
| related transfer functions (HRTFs) to simulate spatial audio
| with just one driver per ear. Granted the effects aren't as
| significant as multi-driver setups, I was able to get a
| convincing spatial audio demo working with in-ear devices for
| an Audio Tech course project back in school.
| djsavvy wrote:
| Is this the end of Tidal, or does it still have some unique value
| propositions as a steaming music service?
| lvl100 wrote:
| Appears Jack Dorsey made another brilliantly timed bet on Tidal.
| jayd16 wrote:
| How does the head tracking work if you're just out and about,
| jogging or what have you? Are you going to be pointed the wrong
| way or does it slowly recenter or something?
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Another vertical integration mounted successfully
| ftio wrote:
| On the business side, it's great to see Apple continue to invest
| in value delivery. For folks who have Apple affinity but who want
| lossless, this should be a no brainer. It's a much simpler (and
| somewhat cheaper) pricing model than streaming services with
| lossless/lossy tiers, which ought to pluck a few tenths of a
| percent of customers away from those competitors as well.
|
| In terms of art, I'm in a kind of wait-and-see mode. Recordings
| have been doing simple panning for a long time. Artists already
| have quite a powerful set of tools for creating a soundstage, but
| I'm curious to see how they take advantage of an even more
| sophisticated medium.
|
| At a meta level, what's interesting about this is that, although
| these standards can be adopted by anyone, Apple is (for now at
| least) basically verticalizing music production. They can pitch
| to artists that X% of Apple Music customers have spatial-audio-
| capable devices, Y% have capable headphones, and they can 'sell'
| the value of the additional Atmos/spatial production work as a
| function of a well-defined TAM rather than in a vacuum.
|
| If the art side is actually good, fans have a reason to stay in
| the Apple ecosystem -- to hear a better, more true-to-intent
| version of the music.
|
| The crux of this is: do these features actually produce
| innovation in music production that artists and fans agree is a
| way of elevating the form? If not, it's a dud; if so, Apple has a
| big head start.
| JadeNB wrote:
| To be clear, despite the headline, the _existence_ of Lossless
| Audio (which I know under the FLAC codec, but Apple uses ALAC--I
| don 't know how they're related) isn't new; it's just that Apple
| is now serving everything in its catalogue encoded that way. The
| actual title is:
|
| > Apple Music announces Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos; will
| bring Lossless Audio to entire catalog
| willejs wrote:
| I guess this is a response to Amazon Music HD, and soon Spotify
| HiFi. I have been waiting for Spotify HiFi since the Feb
| announcement...
| alecmg wrote:
| Any of these use FLAC? Or does everyone invent their own wheel?
| CrankyBear wrote:
| Amazon uses FLAC.
| hulitu wrote:
| Do you have any reference. Last time i cheched Amazon music
| HD was "bitrates up to xxx kbps". Up to for me starts at 0.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| 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 with surround
| channels and then an technology that plays it back through two
| speakers using an IMU so you can turn your head and hear
| different stuff. In reality, it's probably a BS effect...
| somebody, please reply if you actually know. (Not guess, actually
| know. Futile, I know -- I'm going to get lots of guesses as
| replies because that's what always happens on HN.)
| kleinsch wrote:
| Here's how I understand Atmos.
|
| A long time ago, surround was based on how the wires were
| hooked up, so first we had 2 channels, then 2.1, 5.1, etc. So
| your recording might have a left, right, rear channel, but the
| channels had to be globally defined and premixed. Your audio
| file would say "play A out of the speaker, B out the right
| speaker."
|
| Atmos is redoing that for digital, so you can say that a
| channel or sound is positioned at a point in space, and your
| receiver or device figures out which speakers to use to present
| it. Your audio file says "play A 10' left of the listener, play
| B 10' right of the user."
| Juntu wrote:
| *lossless audio mp5<password> iMac apple
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