[HN Gopher] Spatial Audio
___________________________________________________________________
Spatial Audio
Author : obiefernandez
Score : 70 points
Date : 2021-06-15 22:14 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lefsetz.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lefsetz.com)
| thebiss wrote:
| For a more balanced perspective, read the Verge's review. [1] My
| experience so far matches theirs: the impact varies by
| album/track, and in some cases, the lossless version remains
| better.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/9/22525028/apple-music-spati...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It isn't really that central to TFA's main points, but I find it
| very disappointing that the audio tech world seems to be settling
| for Dolby Atmos. Once again the choice is made to use licensable
| technology in preference over non-licensable, libre technology
| (Ambisonics). Both have their pros and cons, but only one of them
| is associated with a licensed-based revenue stream.
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| Yes - it does seems a shame and potentially a loss to
| developers/the open source community? Surely an open standard
| like Ambisonics would have had more of a chance of being widely
| adopted/supported and therefore perhaps longer-lived anyhow
| (was just thinking about MIDI)... I guess that's not the end
| goal for Apple?
| basisword wrote:
| This sounds like the kind of thing someone would write when the
| world switched from mono to stereo. Quite a few parts of it are
| completely wrong too not to mention insulting ("... more music is
| being made by individuals in bedrooms, home studios, on a budget.
| They have neither the equipment nor the skill to mix in Dolby
| Atmos").
|
| Apple has done quite a poor job showcasing it so far. Some of the
| tracks they've put in their playlists sound like crap. On the
| otherhand some of them sound fantastic. Jazz in Atmos is
| wonderful. It's also important to note that 'head tracking' comes
| with iOS 15 and in my experience improves spatial further.
|
| A lot of music made for stereo won't remix well. If you listen to
| most of the rock tracks they don't sound good because they don't
| have a lot going on. 3 or 4 instruments + 2 or 3 vocals tracks
| aren't going to take advantage of spatial. Listening to some
| modern pop with lots of synths and layers upon layers of backing
| vocals, the experience is much better.
|
| Atmos/spatial is a new tool like any other. People will write and
| record songs that work for it and take advantage of it. They'll
| use it creatively. That's what will be interesting. Most remixed
| songs from the 60's aren't the least bit interesting but the
| possibilities for the future are.
|
| I could be wrong and it could end up largely ignored, time will
| tell. But there is the opportunity for a lot of creativity
| regardless of what cranky old music critics think.
| lux wrote:
| Totally agree but wanted to add a point I found interesting
| doing some spatial audio work which is synths tend to
| spatialize poorly compared to more organic instruments. You can
| dirty them up with additional effects like distortion or an
| exciter, but I think it's something to do with the evenness of
| the waveforms compared to the real world variance of a string
| or vocal cord vibrating.
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| I totally agree - there are real possibilities to do
| interesting new creative work afforded by this, particularly if
| the barriers to entry are kept low/non-proprietary/open-to-all
| (...as another poster noted, it would have perhaps been nice if
| an open standard had been used instead...). I would only add
| that I think there are even more interesting possibilities for
| using the same technological capabilities with AR. That was the
| focus of the iPhone app. I wrote, which was more along the
| lines of Microsoft Soundscape: https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/research/product/soundscape/ (but to be fair, before
| Microsoft Soundscape was available :)
| smoldesu wrote:
| Why would I want this in any situation except VR, where
| directional audio is actually paramount to my enjoyment of the
| medium?
| aaomidi wrote:
| Because it adds another dimension to the sound you're
| experiencing and gives you a whole new appreciation for the
| medium.
|
| This combined with binaural audio should be the future of audio
| storytelling.
|
| Give this a try with any normal headphone:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA
| smoldesu wrote:
| The barber shop is not spatial audio. It's a static stereo
| mix, and a terrible example of how the medium actually
| functions. I know what good spatial audio sounds like, too:
| I've used 6DOF with headphones and fancy Atmos filters, and
| it works great in VR. Everywhere else though, it's just
| distracting.
|
| We have lost the stems to probably 95% of all music ever
| made. If all of our old music sounds bad in spatial audio,
| how will it ever hope to become the new standard?
| aaomidi wrote:
| It literally has invoked a wow from everyone I've shared it
| with in real life.
|
| I'm glad you've had a much better experience, but lol this
| doesn't mean this is bad.
|
| The pretentiousness in your comment is outstanding.
| defaultname wrote:
| smoldesu is pathologically anti-Apple, so the fact that
| this thread related to Apple instantly guaranteed their
| pissing and moaning, dismissive response. Don't take it
| as a sincere argument.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| There are many composers out there who work in the
| electroacoustic and computer music spaces, whose pieces are
| primarily scored for ambisonic playback systems.
|
| Hearing these works for oneself in a proper listening
| environment, such as Virginia Tech's The Cube [0], can be a
| life-changing experience. It certainly was for me.
|
| [0] https://icat.vt.edu/studios/the-cube.html
| defaultname wrote:
| Related question, but does spatial audio actually send Atmos
| separate audio streams with positioning data to the client? How
| does this impact data sizes?
|
| I have listened to some of the SA samples and they sound good,
| but I still don't _get_ the technology. If it 's sending separate
| streams and spatially mixing them at the client, it's still
| ending up with two channels of audio, so why would it differ from
| normal stereo audio which can be mixed in such a way? And if it
| doesn't, then it's just a production process?
|
| Indeed, it reminds me a bit of Q-Sound of the Madonna Immaculate
| Collection. Still the most impressive stereo headphone experience
| I've enjoyed.
|
| Dolby Atmos makes loads of sense for oddball speaker arrangements
| -- you tell it that you have three speakers layered above, five
| spread out across the back, etc, and it can process to that
| arrangement optimally (versus say 5.1 that was geared for a very
| specific arrangement). I don't understand how it is relevant for
| headphones, which is specifically what it is targeting in this
| case.
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| This article does an okay job of explaining the idea:
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/18/apples-spatial-au...
| Apparently the sound source positions will be calculated
| relative to the position of the iphone/ipad/mac... ..Yes, I'm
| guessing it will potentially greatly increase the size of audio
| data downloaded/streamed to the listener, as the spec. for
| Atmos can have up to 128 different tracks + metadata:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Atmos
| londons_explore wrote:
| > Yes, I'm guessing it will potentially greatly increase the
| size of audio data downloaded/streamed to the listener,
|
| Most music only has say 10 instruments, so it's only a 5x
| worst case blowup.
|
| And many of those instruments will be silent a lot of the
| time... And even when not silent, there will be a lot of easy
| to compress repetition. It's simply a matter of having good
| enough compression algorithms.
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| Indeed - depends on the material/scope/playback quality of
| the track/characteristics of the compression method I
| guess... On the other hand, if you were to record/encode
| each member of a symphony orchestra separately and place
| them in a soundfield playing back with lossless quality?
| ...but then you could mix them in sections, or even by
| rougher positional areas and have far fewer individual
| tracks... If it's just one man and his knee/spoon
| accompaniment then... This article is informative:
| https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/30/apple-spatial-audio-indie-
| art... ...also: https://professional.dolby.com/create-in-
| dolby-atmos-music/ from:
| https://professional.dolby.com/music/support-faq/ "The
| Renderer can operate at 48 or 96 kHz. Master files can be
| created at these rates and stored for archive purposes, and
| are then sample-rate converted to 48 kHz for encoding
| purposes. Keep in mind that when working at 48 kHz, the
| Renderer supports 128 input channels (ten bed only and 118
| object/bed), whereas at 96 kHz, 64 input channels are
| available (ten bed only and 54 object/bed). ...If you work
| with audio in an 88.2, 176.4, or 192 kHz session, you need
| to create a 48 or 96 kHz version of the session for use
| with the Renderer. ...For music use cases, we recommend
| setting trim controls to zero so that your mix is preserved
| when played back as a 5.1 or 7.1 re-render. Additionally,
| to hear how encoding your Dolby Atmos mix will sound, set
| the spatial coding emulation element count to 16...
| ...Objects can be mono or stereo. The sonic content of the
| source material and creative considerations about how that
| content will be reproduced in a 3D soundfield will
| influence the number of objects used in any given mix."
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| Spatial audio per se is not a scam, but its effective simulation
| is actually potentially rather complicated and I too worry about
| its successful implementation by Apple... Funnily enough, I had
| plans for a system to implement spatial audio using
| smartphones/headphones originally back in 2006 and more recently
| wrote an app for iOS trying to implement it (...prototype/demo.
| that I made worked pretty well - used what I learnt working on
| games/interactive audio design...) I had toyed with starting a
| business myself over the years but life got in the way sort of...
| Before all this was announced I even (naively) wrote to Apple
| sort of roundabout-ly trying for a job in order to improve their
| spatial audio offering, believe it or not, but only got a polite
| sort of: 'don't call us we'll call you' kind of reply, which was
| understandable... (...don't be thinking differently! :) Some
| students I taught/supervised/wrote a brief for a project of's up
| at the university here subsequently started a company making a 3D
| binaural audio plugin thing - the business was bought by
| Facebook, whete they were afterwards employed implementing
| spatial audio into some of their offerings also... Anyhow, don't
| want to bore anyone, but happy to answer any questions about it
| (do actually know what I'm talking about more or less in this
| area, as opposed to most stuff I read on HN.! :) P.S. Jens
| Blauert wrote (what used to be, at least) the standard reference
| on this: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/spatial-hearing-revised-
| editi...
| tinus_hn wrote:
| As far as I remember it's a patent minefield
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| If you can remember any further info. about this I'd be very
| interested.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| No details, I could look but I presume I wouldn't be better
| than yourself
| phiresky wrote:
| From what I understand, to really get spatial audio from stereo
| headphones, you need to use a HRTF (head-related transfer
| function) specific to the person.
|
| There's an open dataset of 50 different HRTFs [1] and a long
| video to compare them [2]. For me personally, only 2 of those
| 50 samples actually vaguely sound like audio is ever coming
| from _in front_ of me. Left, right, and behind mostly works,
| but for most samples when it should be coming from in front of
| me it either comes from behind me or from above me.
|
| So it shouldn't be really possible to get good spatial audio
| without 3d-scanning a persons head or at least making them go
| through a calibration step where they rate "where is the sound
| coming from?" . And it definitely shouldn't be possible to get
| any good results by pre-mixing the audio down to stereo before
| a user-specific transform is applied.
|
| [1]: http://recherche.ircam.fr/equipes/salles/listen/index.html
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCXQp7swp5k
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| You're absolutely right that the most effective simulation
| would use a custom HRTF for each person, as the shape of the
| head, shoulders, pinnae of the ear etc etc. all play some
| part... There are some headphones that attempt to go some way
| towards this by taking pictures of/otherwise 'scanning' the
| users ear (eg. https://electronics.sony.com/360-reality-audio
| https://mysofa.audio/ ...paper on the subject:
| https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=19855
| ...interestingly, for Apple's future plans perhaps, ear canal
| used for biometric validation:
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3351239 ) The strongest 'cue'
| is probably the 'interaural time delay', which is easy enough
| to fake, but as you say, without fixed sources (imagine the
| calibration/setup of a VR headset) and subsequently taking
| into account that people actually turn/tilt their heads to
| better appreciate the direction a sound is coming from, as
| apparently Apple does relative to the device the tracks are
| playing from:
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/18/apples-spatial-
| au... (in order to take best advantage of what you
| experienced where we can better locate left/right than
| forward/back...), the efficacy is reduced. Generally we are
| also much better at localizing sounds in the lateral plane
| than the vertical one (...evolutionarily perhaps this was
| more important in order to avoid being eaten by sabre-toothed
| tigers or something? :) There are other cues deriving from
| 'head-shadow' (somewhat like an eq.), reflection from
| shoulders and even reflections from the acoustic environment
| and so on that are subtler/more complicated... Traditionally
| dummy heads with anatomically 'average' characteristics and
| binaural microphones in the 'ears' have been used to make
| binaural recordings, but if you were to venture out with
| binaural microphones in your ears and then later play back
| the recordings the effect can be startlingly effective... [as
| an aside, when I posted the above comment in this thread a
| couple of days ago when it was first on HN, the title of the
| post was 'Spatial Audio is a Scam' :) ]
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| This page is really helpful:
| https://professional.dolby.com/music/support-faq/
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _Generally we are also much better at localizing sounds
| in the lateral plane than the vertical one_
|
| Our ears are separated laterally but not vertically.
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| So they are. We're better able to localise sounds in the
| horizontal plane if you prefer, though because of the
| shape of our ears/pinnae and so on, we can also detect to
| some extent whether they are above or below/in front of
| or behind our heads (perhaps there is more accurate
| terminology for it:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_plane )
| m3kw9 wrote:
| From what Apple say about spatial audio, you cannot just run it
| thru a converter. You need the tracks in their individual
| original recording before the mixing to be able to do it
| properly. So I'm not sure how a handful of chop shops are doing
| all that.
| smoldesu wrote:
| You don't "need" anything to make a track with spatial audio,
| it's just a format that you can package your sound in. You
| could feasibly turn a 48khz lossy MP3 into a spatial audio
| track, but it would probably sound pretty bad. Likewise, the
| actual stem-separation process that you're describing is
| similarly dubious: spatial audio can still sound pretty
| terrible, particularly in cases where it's an afterthought
| (see: all media).
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| Yeah you'd need the multitrack original recordings to do a good
| job I'd say. There are tricks with eg. phase
| cancellation/spectral filtering and so on I suppose you could
| use to try and hack something together, but the results would
| vary greatly depending on the original material/skill of the
| engineer... A lot of multi-track recordings, especially older
| ones, have a lot of bleed between tracks which might complicate
| matters...
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| Repost https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27486010
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Man. I normally don't get into fisking articles, but, yikes.
|
| > There are over a hundred reference points in Dolby Atmos. As in
| this is far beyond conventional 5.1. Think of a movie theatre,
| where the sound moves around, now you get the idea.
|
| Okay, this is right. Sort of. Atmos has "audio objects" which are
| assigned positional metadata in three-dimensional space; at
| playback, the Atmos "renderer" (Dolby's terminology) knows how
| many speakers it has and where they are, and sends the sound for
| each object to a mix of speakers that get the sound as close to
| the position it's supposed to be in as possible.
|
| > Let's say you have the equipment and ability to make an Atmos
| mix. My understanding is right now, you send the end product to
| Dolby and they use their special sauce to create the final
| product.
|
| This understanding is wrong. I mean, I guess you can send this
| out for "special saucing," but recording engineers can use Dolby
| Atmos tools right in their digital audio workstation program of
| choice. Instead of panning tracks just from left to right, you're
| "panning" them in 3-D space.
|
| > Furthermore, they have special sauce to turn the same Atmosfied
| music into two track stereo.
|
| Again, sort of, but not really? The Atmos renderer basically
| synthesizes binaural audio for two channels ("binaural render
| mode"), so it's "special sauce" in that it's Dolby-designed
| algorithms that are doing that. But it's taking what the
| recording engineers laid down to do it, and they can even add
| metadata to the audio objects that help the Atmos renderer
| convert it binaural.
|
| > It even bugs me that they're using remixed tracks from "Abbey
| Road" to Atmosfy, now you're multiple steps from the original.
|
| Correct, but let's get some perspective Lefsetz is leaving out.
| This is the 2019 _Abbey Road_ remix by Giles Martin, which was
| mixed _in Atmos_ in 2019 by Martin, who also did mixes for _Sgt.
| Pepper 's Lonely Hearts Club Band_ and _The White Album._
|
| And this is what Lefsetz's complaint about Atmos elides. When he
| writes,
|
| > They have neither the equipment nor the skill to mix in Dolby
| Atmos. As for just sending the file to Dolby to be
| processed...that's like finishing a painting and having an
| amateur come in and completely change it, make it 3-D.
|
| There's a distinct element of "this new thing can be used badly
| so nobody should use it." There will _absolutely_ be bad Atmos
| remixes done by people who had nothing to do the original mixing
| and engineering, but that 's not _all_ the mixes -- and if Atmos
| music really take off, the mixes will be done by the _same_
| engineers and producers working on the stereo mixes. This is
| already happening, and it 's been happening for a few years now.
| And when an old album is remixed in surround, it can actually
| sound pretty good. _Abbey Road_ is an example. So is REM 's
| _Automatic for the People._ The old SACD surround release of Roxy
| ' Music's _Avalon_ was astounding and I hope it gets revived in
| Atmos.
|
| > Now the truth is this is a headphone genre.
|
| One, it's not a genre any more than "stereo" and "mono" are
| genres, and two, it not only isn't just for headphones, it's
| arguably a little _worse_ on headphones, despite all of Apple 's
| marketing messsaging to the contrary. The more speakers you throw
| at Atmos the better; a lot of us, including myself, hear binaural
| stereo mixes as different but not necessarily improved, and --
| one thing Lefsetz is correct on -- sometimes worse.
|
| > Which at the moment doesn't support Bluetooth
|
| As other people have pointed out, this is flat out incorrect.
|
| > Oh, there could be two takes, like with mono and stereo in the
| sixties, but that's far too confusing, we need one standard, the
| marketplace needs one standard.
|
| I'm sorry, but that's just "old man yells at cloud" territory.
| It's not two "takes," it's two _mixes,_ and that may be pedantic
| of me but it 's also pretty important. There's no indication at
| this point that anyone is rushing to make Atmos-only mixes of
| anything any more than they're rushing to release digital music
| in only MQA format. (If you just said "what's MQA": exactly.)
| Even on Apple Music itself, if you want the stereo version of a
| recording, there's a secret trick. It's called "go to settings
| and turn off Atmos".
| sidechaining wrote:
| Slightly related. But I've had single-sided deafness all my life
| (which means all I've experienced is mono audio) and now with
| this shift from stereo to spatial. I was wondering if some kind
| HN users could fill me in on what I'm missing out. (By listening
| to stereo tracks in mono and observing how it sounds or anything
| that could give me a picture of that-- is it crowded? Distorted?
| Etc). The only pertinent study I could find on this is
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28534734/
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| There's been some wonderful recordings that were designed
| solely/primarily for mono playback (early Motown/rock n
| roll/blues for example) that IMHO actually kind of benefit
| somehow from lack of stereo separation. If mixed well, the
| instruments can blend really well and work as one unit and
| there's kind of an energy and punch to the speaker/s working as
| one... Early stereo records often had rather drastic left/right
| panning (eg. some Beatles stuff) or had to hedge their bets in
| case they were played back through eg. mono radios/badly set-up
| stereos and so on... Something similar is still the case when
| engineers think about what their track might sound like coming
| through a crappy mono phone speaker with no bass at
| 128kbps/what have you... The advice I've always heard is that
| you should make sure that your mix would 'fold down', so to
| speak, to mono anyhow... So you should never rely on the
| listener being in the sweet spot (if you think about eg. a club
| where an audience member could be stood directly in front of
| one speaker, but barely hear another, or some listeners weird
| home setups with one speaker balanced on a bookcase and the
| other on a table or something). In most environments you get
| complicated reflections and build ups/absorptions of various
| frequencies due to the acoustics anyhow... Although with
| single-sided deafness you won't get the effect of
| directionality from the delay between the sound hitting one ear
| before the other, I imagine you would still experience the
| attenuation of certain frequencies as the sound moves around
| your head, the height dependent effects and so on ...I suppose
| it's not a million miles away from if you were to close one eye
| - monoscopic as opposed to stereoscopic? Bass frequencies are
| mostly experienced more or less monophonically, so you're not
| missing out there... I wonder if reverb effects/using impulse
| responses of different environments and volume adjustments
| might also help give some of the impression?
| zamalek wrote:
| What the other comments said, but keep in mind that it's not
| very precise in normal circumstances: you have an extremely
| rough estimate of direction (along all axis) and distance.
|
| You can increase the accuracy if you are afforded the
| opportunity to concentrate on the sound.
| krapht wrote:
| I assume you have two eyes, right? What happens when you close
| one eye and only have monocular vision?
|
| Not much, but it's a lot harder to judge distances correctly.
| You still can, if you use outside knowledge and perspective,
| but it's less accurate.
|
| Same for stereo hearing. With two ears it's easier to locate
| where a sound is coming from. With one ear you can tell if
| something at constant volume is moving away or moving towards
| you based on loudness. With two ears you can tell if something
| at constant volume is stationary or circling around you.
|
| Unfortunately I don't think there are words to describe it. You
| "just know", because it's an unconscious brain thing.
|
| You could sort of simulate it by rotating your head 180 degrees
| and noticing how the sound changes. People with two working
| ears can do this without moving their head.
|
| The effect for music is mostly: it's easier to separate
| instruments even if they are the same volume, if they are in
| different spatial locations so the brain can filter against it.
| Stuff can sound less "cluttered, muddy", but it doesn't help as
| much as you think in recordings because you as a listener can't
| move the microphone. I think it would be a bigger deal in small
| live shows, or music performed in virtual reality where a 3D
| engine can calculate the audio delay appropriately for each
| ear, and that difference is relevant because you the listener
| are close to the musician and possibly moving relative to them.
| SirCypher wrote:
| For a similar spatial audio experience I use foobar2000 and this
| plugin:
| https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_dsp_dolbyhp It is
| quite old, but still works perfectly fine with the newest foobar
| versions.
|
| Download foobar2000. Go to Preferences -> Components ->
| "Install..." and install the Dolby Plugin.
|
| Then get your "dolbyhph.dll". Unfortunately you need to find it
| on the internet, as it is technically copyrighted and
| distribution of that file is probably not allowed. SHA1 for
| dolbyhph.dll v1.20.0.276 is
| 819FC1EE87B15996B89328061693F4D37FD7DB39
|
| Then go to Preferences -> Playback -> DSP Manager. Add "Convert
| stereo to 4 channels" (sounds better and a little closer to the
| original imo) and "Dolby Headphone" to your active DSPs. Click on
| the 3 dots next to "Dolby Headphone" to open its configuration.
| Select your "dolbyhph.dll", Room model "DH2", lower amplification
| to ~70% (avoids clipping), no dynamic compression.
|
| Apply, and then listen to any stereo song you want. Enjoy! Also
| try to experiment the DSPs (only Dolby, 4channels+Dolby,
| Upmix5.1+Dolby, ...) - they change live while you play a song.
| hairofadog wrote:
| I'll say up front that I'm a non-audiophile, and so I'm offering
| my opinion from that point of view.
|
| I find the Spatial Audio / Dolby Atmos thing weird for a number
| of reasons.
|
| First, the dual branding seems clunky. _" First I listened to
| music in mono. Then I listened to music in stereo. Then I
| listened to music in ____"_ I'd be willing to bet that even
| amongst people who care a lot about this stuff you'd have a hard
| time getting consensus about how to fill in the blank.
|
| Second, the fact that there's a brand name attached to it at all
| feels wrong. One of the great things about music is its
| accessibility to artists as a medium: lots of great music will
| come from young folk in their bedrooms with cheap recording rigs.
| Will they pay a license fee to Dolby? There are many examples of
| great art that's wrapped up in proprietary technology (video
| games, for example) but music feels so basic to the human
| experience that (a) I don't want a brand name attached to it, and
| (b) it'll never become standard because people are always going
| to make recorded music without engaging Dolby. An historic
| example that comes to mind is _Technicolor_ , which feels like
| something from the olden days. Groundbreaking in its time but no
| longer culturally relevant.
|
| Third, it does indeed seem weird that this technology would be
| implemented by a middleman. Sometimes I'll fall in love with a
| song that has a lot of nuance (like a Bjork song, for example),
| and I'll tell someone about it, and they'll pull it up on their
| phone and hold the phone next to their ear, and I'll say, "well,
| you have to listen to it in headphones." Now I'll say, "well, you
| have to listen to it in headphones. Actually, this specific make
| and model of headphones. And also through an Apple Music
| subscription." (I realize I'm being hyperbolic here, but I think
| there's a valid point to be made about shared experience where
| music is concerned.)
|
| And while I'm a fierce advocate of the idea that it's okay for
| people bring their own interpretation and meaning to art - I
| don't believe the artist should or can have total control over
| how the art is consumed - the mass remixing of all this music
| feels more akin to the remixing of the original Star Wars movies
| than it does to the restoration of a painting.
|
| Finally, I just don't think very many people will care. I would
| be willing to bet that a minority of people could pick out a
| Dolby Atmos song from the original, and of those that could, it
| seems unclear they would prefer the Atmos version. There are a
| hundred things I would have chosen to improve about my Apple
| Music listening experience before sound quality: making the
| navigation of the music app make any sense whatsoever, and having
| the AI generated "stations" not be terrible, are two examples.
| And I know, I know, it's different groups of people working on
| different things and it's not like they can reassign a sound
| engineer to rewrite the UX of the music app, but it feels like if
| there was a water leak above my desk in the office and the office
| manager's solution was to buy me a nicer chair.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Doesn't basically every Hollywood movie since DVD pay a
| licensing fee to Dolby (or DTS) for 5.1 or Atmos (or DTS:X)
| support? Theaters too even?
|
| And wasn't Dolby B NR insanely widespread on pre-recorded
| cassettes? Like so common that most albums on cassette from the
| 80s have the Dolby logo on them?
|
| I don't think its that weird. It's clearly been done in the
| past. Apple's limitations on what devices works sucks and it'd
| be nice if we could buy these tracks DRM free to play on an
| Atmos speaker setup but they aren't the only ones to have this.
| Tidal has Spatial Audio, Amazon does too. Each does it a little
| differently as to what is supported annoyingly but hopefully as
| time goes on those limitations will go away.
| huslage wrote:
| Apple doesn't have any limitations to devices. It works fine
| in normal headphones as well as AirPods.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| I listened to the tracks. I like the spatial versions better.
| What are you going to do?
| allears wrote:
| Lots of people like gimmicky things better, just like lots of
| people like to turn up the bass and treble all the way. But
| lots of us (and I'm a musician and audio engineer) appreciate
| high quality balanced distortion free audio, and want to hear
| the music the way the original artist intended. Just because
| you can make sounds bounce around in space doesn't make the
| music better, especially if the original recording wasn't
| conceived that way in the first place. I would always prefer
| listening to the original intent of the artist.
| ntSean wrote:
| Speaking as a musician, I agree that there is a level of
| respect required for the original mix. Though, in the case of
| Spacial Audio, this isn't a matter of "gimmicky" sound, this
| is headphones reproducing the effect that loudspeakers
| already have. This isn't new and has been in audio
| engineering circles for a long while
| (https://goodhertz.co/canopener-studio/) but Apple has added
| 6dof head tracking which makes the effect truly awe-
| inspiring.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I was with you until you said that "Apple has added 6dof
| head tracking which makes the effect truly awe-inspiring",
| and I laughed so hard I spit out my coffee.
|
| Thank you so much.
| ntSean wrote:
| I just noticed that the author wasn't using the AirPods Pro
| / Max which Spacial Audio was designed in tandem with. No
| wonder they didn't find it impressive and are calling it a
| scam.
|
| TBH, I'm sad I wasted my time reading such an uninformed
| opinion piece.
| r618 wrote:
| you're conflating unrelated things
|
| 6dof has nothing to do with SpaTial audio and no AirPods
| Pro/Max weren't designed 'in tandem with' it
|
| you'll get Apple's positional audio (6dof) only with
| supported hardware - which includes AirPods Pro/Max,
| iPads and AppleTV - and is designed for positional
| listening relative to source/device, which has nothing to
| do w/ Atmos mixed Apple Music spatial tracks discussed
| here
|
| (and it actually might be 3dof only, not sure since i've
| never listened to it)
| drcongo wrote:
| I think you're missing one of the main points, which is
| someone using other headphones is still getting the atmos
| version, but in normal stereo - and when that happens,
| large parts of the balance of the mix are lost as he
| explains in the section on What's Going On. So it's not
| the original track as the artist, mix engineer and
| masterer intended you to hear.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| I don't think that's true? There's nothing special about
| Apple's implementation of Dolby Atmos over headphones
| besides the head tracking bit (and that's not needed for
| music) that need their headphones. If you set Dolby Atmos
| to "Always On" in the settings it will give you the Atmos
| headphones mix regardless of what headphones being used.
| Airpods and Beats are still just stereo headphones.
|
| Atmos works pretty well over normal stereo headphones and
| I've used it for years on PC while watching supported
| Blu-rays.
|
| I'm kinda peeved at Apple's lazy implementation because
| it's only supported on Apple devices and not devices that
| support Atmos and work with Apple music like a PC or
| Samsung Android phone.
| t_von_doom wrote:
| I initially thought the same on another article, however
| it turns our spatial audio in the apple music sense, is
| not exclusive to the pros/max - despite sharing the same
| name as the head tracking-esque feature in those
| headphones.
|
| Quite disappointed as it is quite obviously confusing
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _I would always prefer listening to the original intent of
| the artist._
|
| I always prefer listening to the thing that sounds better to
| me. I don't care about what the artist wants.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Chances are the artist has no idea what kind of speakers
| you are using anyway
| tpush wrote:
| You're downvoted, but enjoyment of music is obviously
| subjective. There is no "wrong" way to listen to music (or
| anything really).
| quenix wrote:
| Exactly. This thread is mindboggling.
|
| Taste in music is purely subjective. If users enjoy
| listening to Spatial Audio, who are you to criticize it
| as a scam?
| falcolas wrote:
| Because everyone using Apple music is forced to listen to
| it. Whether they like the remixes or not.
| yoav wrote:
| There's actually a setting to choose
| falcolas wrote:
| You can choose to enable spatial listening (as opposed to
| the stereo downmix), but you can't choose to use the
| original recording.
| quenix wrote:
| That just isn't true.
|
| Settings > Music > Dolby Atmos > Off.
| matwood wrote:
| > and want to hear the music the way the original artist
| intended
|
| Curious how _you_ know what the artist intended. Did they
| intend for the track to sound like you 're at a stadium show
| or sitting in a small music studio with headphones on?
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| There is a notion of 'reference' in audio and visual
| information. You can get reference speakers, headphones,
| and monitors - their role is to reproduce the information
| without 'color'. They present 'faithfully'. This is what is
| often meant by 'listen as X intended,' although to be
| honest the interest of many audiophiles is to set up a
| listening environment that does impart some color while
| remaining faithful to the artistic choices in the mix of
| the original music. And mixing _is_ an art.
|
| The article suggests, and I agree, that by making what are
| in effect unauthorized remixes of these works, Apple are
| interfering with what the artist intended.
|
| Eddie Cue, Apple SVP of Services (in charge of Apple Music)
| is quoted in the Verge article [1] on this as saying, "This
| requires somebody who's a sound engineer, and the artist to
| sit back and listen, and really make the right calls and
| what the right things to do are. It's a process that takes
| time, but it's worth it." Of course you note he says this
| requires the artist, not present in Marvin Gaye's case and
| likely most others, and time, which it is implied is not
| being given to this process in the article above.
|
| The visual analogy in the article is apt - imagine Apple
| were revisiting their movie library - including old
| classics like The Maltese Falcon - and applying a process
| that makes them viewable in simulated 3D -- but that, even
| further -- if that person tries to view it with equipment
| that doesn't support the head-turning 3D effect - they see
| it in an _altered_ version of 2D from the original. And
| this now becomes canon for a certain group of people - this
| version that is a byproduct of an effort to reverse the
| effect of a series of creative decisions made to make a
| derivative work of the original, done without, in this
| analogy, the input of the director or cinematographer.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/9/22525028/apple-music-
| spati...
| donbrae wrote:
| I imagine the artist approved a (stereo) mix they heard on
| decent studio monitors and maybe stereo headphones too. I'm
| not sure how they'd feel about someone else then creating
| an atmos/spacial audio version without their involvement.
| Mixing is integral to the artistic part of making recorded
| music.
|
| I'd be interested to know whether the tracks appearing on
| Apple Music are being created from the original
| tracks/stems (i.e. properly remixed), or whether an
| algorithm is being applied to the same stereo mixdown that
| would have created a standard (stereo) master.
| astrange wrote:
| They are remixed by the original engineers (or at least,
| an engineer.) Some of them are mixed better than others.
| onethought wrote:
| Or what happens with derived works? When you listen to a
| Coldplay song... do you follow their intent or Kraftwerk's
| intent? Oh no!
|
| Or music that was composed before modern audio equipment -
| "If Bach had known about spatial audio! I _know_ he would
| have loved it " :D
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| Stockhausen would have been like: 'Yo dawg...' :)
| onethought wrote:
| Do you end up in a divide by zero situation when the artist
| intended you to turn the bass and treble all the way up? :)
| kall wrote:
| I think I remember some tracks where the artist is
| explicitly instructing me to turn up the bass (and make the
| speakers pop).
| joeel84 wrote:
| What speakers did you listen back on? I don't know anybody with
| a setup to play these back and I know some crazy audiophiles.
| danappelxx wrote:
| From footnote 8 on https://www.apple.com/apple-music/
|
| > Works with AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, BeatsX, Beats
| Solo3 Wireless, Beats Studio3, Powerbeats3 Wireless, Beats
| Flex, Powerbeats Pro, and Beats Solo Pro.
|
| Am I missing something?
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Am I missing something?
|
| Yes, that's just for the automatic switch to Dolby Atmos.
| You can set "Dolby Atmos: Always" in Settings - Music.
|
| > When you listen with compatible Apple or Beats
| headphones,8 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.
| scoot wrote:
| So, works with any headphones, as long as they have an
| apple brand sticker attached?
|
| There's nothing technologically special about most of
| these.
| danappelxx wrote:
| I'm assuming they also have some special
| hardware/firmware for the head tracking feature
| scoot wrote:
| Lol, no.
| danappelxx wrote:
| I mean, most headphones don't have accel/gyro - makes
| sense for Apple to use proprietary protocols for this,
| no? Also, see HN guidelines for comments.
| matwood wrote:
| I have listened to a lot of the spatial audio songs from AM on
| my AirPod Pros. It's a mixed bag. Some I think are really good,
| some not so much. But, the good/great ones are enough to make
| me excited about the potential. I feel like the bad ones might
| be from people still figuring out how to best master them.
| bristleworm wrote:
| According to Apple, wireless headphones like the AirPods do
| support spacial audio. No idea where the author got the
| information they wouldn't.
|
| Apart from that, I get how an audio engineer would think that
| way, but for me, and I suppose most music listeners, what's
| important is that the sound is great. And personally I really
| like spacial audio.
| balls187 wrote:
| > No idea where the author got the information they wouldn't.
|
| Being misinformed.
|
| Apple Lossless HD Audio, which was recently announced, is not
| currently supported by wireless (read: bluetooth) headphones.
| tonetheman wrote:
| Just because of the sheer number of tracks there are in the world
| it is clear the quality here will vary wildly.
|
| I really want to hear jazz like this. Specifically
| trios/quartets. Even if it is not the original and I can hear
| each musician separately I think it would be worth it.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| They have Jazz with spatial. Apple Music on android doesn't
| have spatial audio support annoyingly but Tidal does if your
| phone supports Dolby Atmos so I've been checking out a trial of
| that instead.
| basisword wrote:
| Highly recommend listening to Jazz in spatial. There's such
| nice separation between the instruments. With the head tracking
| in iOS 15 you can isolate stuff a little too by turning your
| ear towards certain sounds (a little gimmicky I'll admit but
| but it does let you experience parts of the track you may have
| missed before).
| gmueckl wrote:
| I don't know how the downmix for headphones is created in this
| case, but if it spatializes the individual objects correctly,
| this removes the in-head-localization artifact that unprocessed
| stereo on headphones suffers from naturally, especially for
| sounds with a center pan. We have just trained ourselves to
| accept that headphones make sounds appear inside our heads. And I
| am pretty certain that the author is mistaking the acceptance of
| this artifact for a "prominent presence" of the vocals in the
| demo tracks.
|
| Listening to a track that was intended for a stereo loudspeaker
| pair on headphones always creates a degraded experience if there
| is no further processing of the audio signal. Judging spatial
| audio without consideration of these differences leads to weird
| (wrong?) conclusions.
|
| And why does it matter how expensive a certain pair of headphones
| is? If I want to know the price tag I can look it up!
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| ...yes, related to 'crosstalk':
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosstalk
| jensgk wrote:
| You probably mean crossfeed:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfeed
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| yes, thanks for the correction! :)
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