Apple Launches DJ Mixes in Spatial Audio on Apple Music

[Unregistered 4U]

I’m pretty sure artists and music producers must be disgusted about spatial audio the way filmmakers hate motion smoothing on TVs.

If I had to guess, I’d say very likely JUST as disgusted as artists and music producers were about stereo.
And the compact disc.
And MP3.

Audio is always going to be one of those things that were “better before” because once a lot of people have gotten to the age where they’ve discovered music and settled on what they like, anything in the future different from that is automatically wrong.

 

[GregoriusM]

Why?
Artists have released music in surround for decades.
This just makes the distribution easier.
Sure, in headphones not everyone gets the appeal, but if you play a Atmos track from the Apple TV to a Atmos compatible setup, it’s true surround

This.

 

[MrBlaz3]

I wish Apple Music was as good and as easy to navigate as YouTube Music is

 

[bmmello]

Ok, so I’m a big of Jeff Mills and was very excited with this. Grabbed my Airpods Max and was surprised to find gaps between the tracks. And this is a DJ continuous mix. What is going on here?

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

If I had to guess, I’d say very likely JUST as disgusted as artists and music producers were about stereo.
And the compact disc.
And MP3.

Audio is always going to be one of those things that were “better before” because once a lot of people have gotten to the age where they’ve discovered music and settled on what they like, anything in the future different from that is automatically wrong.

And much like stereo, producers really have to get the feel of how to create and mix in Dolby Atmos.
A lot of early stereo records don’t sound great.
A lot of it was due to the limited technology of the time, but also a big part of it is that producers didn’t understand how to properly utilize it.
Atmos is going through that phase right now.
There are some tracks that sound absolutely fantastic in Dolby Atmos, really take advantage of the expanded sound to Bring out new elements of the track.
There are other tracks, like someone mentioned earlier, that literally just sound like a stereo version being played in an empty hallway.
The good thing about this is that as more people get their hands on it, and as more people figure out what works and what doesn’t and how it can be utilized, the better it’s going to get.

 

[CPx]

Ok, so I’m a big of Jeff Mills and was very excited with this. Grabbed my Airpods Max and was surprised to find gaps between the tracks. And this is a DJ continuous mix. What is going on here?

Weird, it's gapless for me, on both Mac and iPhone. Try completely quitting the app or rebooting?

 

[bmmello]

Tried on both ipad and iphone 13pro. It is very random, sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. And this mix has lots of short tracks which makes the whole experience unlistenable to me. I did a search and found that this seems to be a common issue with dolby atmos tracks. Which makes this really bizarre as it is something that is meant to promote Atmos and Spatial Audio… gonna try in the mac next.

 

[Danfango]

I will go to my grave thinking that Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos is a gimmick to drive hardware sales and is to be avoided by the sensible.

I’m with you on this one on the music front.

On the film and video side of things it’s different though. It works rather well with head tracking when you’re watching stuff. Gives a little more depth to the sound through perception.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Ok, so I’m a big of Jeff Mills and was very excited with this. Grabbed my Airpods Max and was surprised to find gaps between the tracks. And this is a DJ continuous mix. What is going on here?

It was gapless for me UNTIL I but on my Airpod Max’s without the wired connection. I’ll try it later with wired, but it could be something to do with Bluetooth. OH, also, I’m running the beta’s so could have something to do with it too

 

[iphonehype]

I hope Apple can get big DJ's Black Coffee to upload sets. Now that would be awesome.

 

[CarlJ]

Weird, it's gapless for me, on both Mac and iPhone. Try completely quitting the app or rebooting?

I'm hearing the same gaps (split second dropouts between tracks) on an Apple TV 4K (2nd gen), playing through a home theater system. it certainly seems like an annoying oversight on their part (like why release mixes that are fully intended to play seamless without first updating the Music app to support playing seamless). Taken as a whole, though, the overall sound is pretty cool, spread around the room.

 

[Moyapilot]

Now I generally don't like (and even sometimes detest) what Spacial Audio does to music. Bass is weird, female vocals sound like they are singing out of a tin can. Midrange in general is way to recessed.

But on rare occasion, when everything lines up to its strength, it sounds really really good. Just listening right now to Whiskey Sour by Kane Brown. So spacious and airy, with almost a 3D quality. No bass in this song anyways.

But usually stereo for most songs sounds way better and more cohesive, with much better midrange and bass.

Love it for movies with head tracking though!

 

[CPx]

Ok you guys are right, I'm hearing the gap sometimes, but not others. Yeah Apple should sort it out. Just a wild guess, maybe it has to do with how much the songs are buffered?

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Ok you guys are right, I'm hearing the gap sometimes, but not others. Yeah Apple should sort it out. Just a wild guess, maybe it has to do with how much the songs are buffered?

With Apple’s content delivery network and even slow cellular, they should be downloading while one’s playing… even if it’s just a few seconds. Everything I’ve tried that’s a wired connection plays without issue.

 

[ddtmm]

This is just yet another gimmick luring people with star power. There's noting special about spacial audio over stereo audio.

The whole spacial thing with headphones/earbuds just isn't there yet. A good stereo mix will kill any Atmos algorithm down-mix any day. Don't get me wrong, there are some really interesting binaural mixes out there but anyone that says they can pinpoint the spacial placement of sounds in a binaural environment is wishfully thinking.

If you blindfold someone and play a video scene with effects placed in 3D space, and ask them to point to where the sounds are coming from they will be able to identify left and right without issue but discerning up/down and front/back will be a total guess, and will be wrong half the time. We did that test in our Atmos studios and it was an eye opener. Everyone was sure they knew what was going on until we took the blindfolds off to show them the really story.

The point is, when listening to spacial audio with the video, your brain places the sounds correctly any you're amazed, but without the video it's a total guess. And if you understand how the ear and brain work with audio it's clear we're just not there yet.

Spacial audio needs space, and lots of speakers.

 

[ekwipt]

Not sure how Apple hasn’t got it right when it transitions from track to track, there’s a short pause between each track, it should be obviously be smooth

 

[Unregistered 4U]

If you blindfold someone and play a video scene with effects placed in 3D space, and ask them to point to where the sounds are coming from they will be able to identify left and right without issue but discerning up/down and front/back will be a total guess, and will be wrong half the time. We did that test in our Atmos studios and it was a an eye opener. Everyone was sure they new what was going on until we took the blindfolds off to show them the really story.

That’s no different from reality, though. You can blindfold someone and make a noise in the room and depending on the noise, they won’t be able to accurately indicate where IT came from either. So, it sounds like Atmos is able to recreate that real life effect pretty well.

 

[mecloud]

Atmos reminds me of a similar (much worse) gimmick from around 1990. Anyone else remember “Q Sound”?

 

[mjs916]

I've tried to get into the Spatial Audio fold, but it really just sounds like an EQ thing to me. I don't hear "immersive" sound.

I mostly notice it in the demo and in certain songs. I guess in tv shows as well. Everything else just sounds …different.

 

[SBlue1]

This is to music what 3D is to TV sets.

 

[Boomish69]

I will go to my grave thinking that Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos is a gimmick to drive hardware sales and is to be avoided by the sensible.

It truly is! I have a few professional friends in the music industry and the consensus is , it’s a **** show, labels have kids doing back room Atmos mixes to fill the back catalogue, but the majority sound awful. The technology could be good but the implementation is terrible, Apple in their genius have put in their own Atmos decoder for streaming rather than the official Dolby one like other platforms, this means the mixes sound different, and it seems a lot worse via Apple Music as it’s own decoder throws away some of the positional metadata. Mix engineers are having nightmares trying to get it to sound good on both. Again it seems Apple decisions are led by marketing , just insane.
One friend told me Logic came out to much fanfare being able to create Dolby Atmos mixes but it had zero way of playing the file back, they only time you got to check it was after publishing! People discovered a workaround via an iPhone and AirPods but it was far from ideal. Apparently Logic has been updated now enabling you to monitor the mix but you still can’t playback the Dolby Atmos file.
In it’s defence I have heard some good Atmos mixes but the vast majority are awful.

 

[SoldOnApple]

I will go to my grave thinking that Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos is a gimmick to drive hardware sales and is to be avoided by the sensible.

It's just surround sound music isn't it? There has always been demand for surround sound experience through headphones, Spatial Audio and Atmos with Apple Music is probably more due to that existing demand than Apple or the music industry pushing something new. And besides, directors will start expecting surround sound mixes of music to make their movies and TV shows even more immersive. I feel sure spatial audio mixes of whole albums will soon be the norm. It'll improve music overall too, as sound engineers and musicians will need to put more effort into making a good mix when mastering a song. It's part of why vinyl albums often really do sound better than CDs, just because the limitations of vinyl force sound engineers to pay more attention and put more effort into fine tuning the music.

 

[JWorld127]

I dont understand how people think this is a gimmick. The songs are mastered or remastered using Dolby Atmos software and sometimes in legit Dolby labs. Do a little research on how its done and how the tracks are placed in certain spacial locations to give it the surround sound.

 

[svish]

Interesting addition. Apple Music is seeing some changes!

 

[zapmymac]

I keep trying it and then going back to turn it off. The volume is super low and I find myself needing to turn the volume almost to 90% to get decent sound. Some songs it sounds cool, but just not worth it right now. I’ve tried on AirPods Pro and AirPods Max and neither sounds good to me in atmos.

That the volume is decreased significantly is very odd! This on a atmos AVR and 5.1.2…