Apple Improves Audio Messages Quality in iOS 12.2

[greenorblue]

WOW. I have been yelling and emailing Apple about this for ****ing years. Thank god.

 

[konqerror]

Opus eh, does this mean we are going to get OGG/Opus support in iOS now? Listening to audio in wikipedia articles would be so much nicer. They started moving some of them to MP3, but there not all there yet.

Core Audio Format files have nothing to do with Opus. You may have .CAF associated with Opus codec but that won't the reality moving foward. Apple will associate it with ALAC or AAC. It sure won't default to Opus.

Apple put in Opus support in iOS 11/High Sierra, however only as part of WebRTC or CAF files. Players that know how to parse Ogg can hand the compressed data off to Core Audio.

 

[olduser007]

WhatsApp is a problem because it requires me to install it and the other user to use it and its why I avoid it.

It's probably the first app people install on their phones in Europe vs N-America where most people use iMessage. The biggest reason is probably because there are way more devices around with Andriod and iMessage being IOS only.

 

[jwolf6589]

It's probably the first app people install on their phones in Europe vs N-America where most people use iMessage. The biggest reason is probably because there are way more devices around with Andriod and iMessage being IOS only.

iMessage comes with very iPhone. If I want to send voice and do video with an Android user I will use Skype.

 

[JosephAW]

I'm assuming you'll still be able to send an audio message to those stuck on iOS 10 or earlier.

 

[coolfactor]

Core Audio Format files have nothing to do with Opus. You may have .CAF associated with Opus codec but that won't the reality moving foward. Apple will associate it with ALAC or AAC. It sure won't default to Opus.

Yah, you probably have a point that CAF is just a container around whatever codec is used much like QuickTime was a container for video files. I'm surprised that they weren't using AAC all along!?! I suspect they went with an 8kHz configuration to provide consistency across all possible carriers around the world. At least back on pre-3G days, transferring a 4kb file would be a lot better than 22kb, which is 5 times bigger! Yes, on slow networks, every byte matters.
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Messages is so far behind on basic stuff, this is very welcome but please for the love of god also add:

-Individual message replies
-Improve UX to send multiple images inside messages, if you tap on "all photos" you can't even select multiple at once from there.

I think you may be missing something. Selecting multiple images inside Messages definitely works correctly. Tap as many photos as you want and they get added as a batch.

EDIT: You were referring to "All Photos"... yah, I see what you mean, but it doesn't take you out of the photo selection mode entirely. Just requires another tap on "All Photos". That is annoying.

 

[827538]

Nice to see Apple adopting Opus, it’s an awesome codec.

 

[volfreak]

They're probably doing this to force users to buy the larger capacity phones. It's all about selling higher priced iPhones.

/s

 

[iGeek2014]

Great... now my friends can hear my terrible singing even more clearer now!

 

[BeefCake 15]

WOW. I have been yelling and emailing Apple about this for ****ing years. Thank god.

Thank you!

 

[Internet Enzyme]

Over 20 years of experience fiddling around with audio codecs and someone approved a 8000 Hz codec. Now that's a head scratcher.

I thought that was a typo when I saw it. 8000 HZ?! Thats paltry even by the lowest of specifications.

 

[drumcat]

Actually surprised they aren't using .mp4 at 16kb...

 

[ksec]

FINALLY!! With other platforms like Whatsapp and WeChat having offered this for forever and people in most of Asia and Europe using audio messages A LOT, I'm really surprised Apple waited this long to improve the quality. I hope they advertise it, cause it's a big improvement that affects the way we communicate.

I hope they don't, it will be a huge embarrassment.

I am surprised they use Opus and not something like XHE-AAC or EVS in 4G LTE.

 

[Textime]

YES! It was about time. Shame on you Apple

 

[Exhale]

I'm surprised that they weren't using AAC all along!?

Opus is significantly better at speech encoding, especially at the lower rates being used here.

 

[ignatius345]

While better than before, it's still lacks in quality in comparison to Whatsapp and other apps.

Thankfully I don't live in the States where everyone keeps using iMessage over better apps.

1) iMessage is already installed on iPhones so there's no asking people to install yet another random app
2) Messages falls back to SMS so messages with non-iPhone users are kept cleanly in the same app
3) Whatsapp is owned by Facebook, who I don't trust at all, so that's a hard pass right there.