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Apple Music Launching Spatial Audio With Dolby Atmos and Lossless Audio in June at No Extra Cost
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Want to know what I bought and was able to purchase a better version at a lower cost later on? iTunes songs and albums. When they upgraded from 128kbps to 256kbps. So there's precedence within the very ecosystem we're discussing.
And maybe I am jumping the gun with my complaints, but isn't complaining a part of the consumer experience?
Um, what? You must not know many people then.
I was a teen in the late 80s. Most of what I listen to didn't exist in the 80s, or even 90s. I listen to new music all the time. The most recent album added to my library is Sufjan Stevens' Convocations, released a few weeks ago.
Audiophile question...will non-Apple branded headphones like Sony's WH series with LDAC be able to stream lossless audio or would they need to specifically support Apples ALAC codec?
It can be part of it but I wouldn’t say it’s necessary at all. Every vehicle I’ve purchased has upgrades that didn’t exist in my previous vehicle, and I didn’t think complaining about that was part of the consumer experience. This is no different.
Lossless wasn’t (and still isn’t) an option when you originally made your purchases, so how can complaining about it now be part of the experience?
I really have no doubt Apple will eventually let everyone upgrade their purchases.
Or we live in vastly different parts of the world with different life experiences and different friends. I mean, why would I possibly want to listen to new music when I already have enough variety and know how long each song last so I can plan my coding sessions or reading? Why would I pay £9.99 a month for an experience that may not have all my music and may even try to play me new music?
I’m more on the side that it died because in order to enjoy playback fully, you needed high dollar equipment. AirPods aren’t cheap, BUT they are far more affordable AND can be used in places other than a well designed listening room. I can imagine that if, as an artist, you knew that only .01% of your audience was going to be able to enjoy your meticulously mastered surround mix, you’d be less inclined to create (or pay someone to create) that surround mix.
With millions of their fans having access to suitable playback hardware on day one, more may be inclined to push into those Spatial Audio areas, and that’s even BEFORE considering what new artists will be able to accomplish.
Some of my taste isn’t mainstream and I have no issues finding stuff I like on Apple Music.
You're welcome to keep your music-world as tiny and closed-off as you like, but you seem to be under the impression that everyone is like that too. It's not true. Are there others like you? Of course. But there are also plenty of others like me, who, when seeing a list of artists that someone recommends, gets intrigued and checks out new things. Not everything will click, but some will. And I already know you've got a pat answer along the lines of "I already know what I like" but you don't. You know what you previously liked. You have no idea what you like now. I'm kind of sad for you for all the incredible music you passed up so you could keep listening to the same stuff you listened to in high school.
Do you also only watch movies from when you were a teen, or read books published when you were a teen? If not, why would you limit your music interests to such a narrow time in your life - and, IMO, your teens are easily the worst time for music. Kids most often make choices based on popularity or rebeliousness, not quality.
To play the devil's advocate: if you can't determine this by listening (i.e. you don't hear a difference), why does it matter?
Atmos is not binaural. It is a true discrete multi-channel format. What happens when you listen to Apple's "spatial audio" with Airpods (which is already possible with iTunes movies) is that your phone converts the Atmos into a binaural stereo signal using an HRTF. It's essentially a computational version of the old dummy head stereo recordings. This stereo signal can be transmitted to the earphones as usual.
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Movies and books have value, they provide inherently new and unique experiences. I also started listening to music when I was 16 as it was suggested to me by a professor when I was in my first year of university to reduce my concentration instead of being too focused on one task.
No, but different artists will continue to produce new interpretations of classical works, and it can be enjoyable to compare those. In that sense the case for Apple Music is stronger for classical music than for other genres (ignoring the fact that Siri is not very good at identifying works).
Of course, there's always Radio 3 and now and then I'm tempted to cancel the subscription and rely on my library and the radio, but in the end I like the variety that Apple Music offers: not essential, of course, but not expensive enough for it to seem like an unnecessary luxury.
Unlike Setapp, for example — I pay the same amount as for Apple Music and basically only use a couple of the programs.
HRTF....I remember Mark Cerny from Sony's Playstation talking about it during the reveal of the technical specifications of the PS 5, last year!!
Since they added Tool to streaming, which isn’t remotely an underground or unknown band there’s been about 5-10 albums that I would like to listen to that aren’t available.
I’m not saying that people don’t run into these issues, but it really has to be quite a few steps below “not so mainstream” to not be available on streaming, either albums released a long time ago that never really had any success at all and local groups.
I’m basing most of my experience listening to “not so common” early 2000s heavy metal and rap, but it’s hard to believe that someone couldn’t find what they were looking for entirely on any streaming platform.
Unless that person listens to only the same songs and not interested in discovering new(to them) music, which seems to be the case for a few people on here, which is just fine.
Not on an iPhone. If Apple music is on a Sony Android phone (don't use LDAC on a Samsung phone), then it will probably play it at high resolution using LDAC.
For the LOVE of music!
From the press release:
will have to catch up on this thread as to which 3rd party speakers support Dolby Atmos (looking at your Sonos), Spatial Audio and the highest 24-bit 192Khz range (if I've got that right).
Kinda glad I kept my HomePod.
I’m very impressed bu your trolling skills. If you actually had such an anemic relationship to music, the quality of your files wouldn’t matter anyway, and it would be pointless for Apple to offer you an upgrade.
I believe the amount of people that cares too little about music to want a streaming service, yet cares enough to pay a premium for better quality, is wuite small…
Every music enthusiast I know (and that is quite a few) has both at least one streaming service, AND at least one path to play back physical media. That includes me - I currently pay for two streaming services (because they have different libraries), and I have a collection of CD’s that either are not available at all to stream, or are only available in remastered versions that sounds worse.
So, while I actually agree with the argument that purchases should also be upgraded (and I think it will happen, it just has not been announced yet), I don’t buy your back story.
Not compatible only in terms of Dolby Atmos using the built-in speakers.
Still seems very odd to me, that this is supported on any stereo-speaker iPhone (7 and up, that is) but not on the first two gens of iPad Pro with their 4-way stereo speaker array. Wonder what the reason is, since also the 3rd gen Air supports it.
However to reiterate, neither does this limitation apply to Dolby Atmos using supported headphones, nor to Lossless in general. For that iOS 14.6 is the only requirement.
1: LDAC is not actually lossless.
2: As I understand it, whatever your playback chain supports will be open. Meaning, your device will receive a lossless file. This will then be transmitted by whatever chain you have. Whether that is lossless, depends on the playback chain.
Side note: a rarely discussed fact is that just because you have a full digital signal path without compression, doesn’t mean it’s lossless! If you have sample rate conversion, even ex. 24/96 to 24/96, the signal is in fact not lossless anymore. Only if the signal path is capable of bit-perfect transmission up to the DAC, will you be able to claim “lossless”. This rules out some quite expensive wireless speakers outthere, that does sample rate conversion (but not compression) as part of the wireless transmission.
You consider it odd that I wouldn't want the best versions of songs and compositions I have listened to and enjoyed for two decades? How one earth do you come to the conclusion that having a library so large you could never possibly listen to it all is better than having music that you care about in the highest quality?
You make a good point. But my point was more about having the technical details and knowledge to make the current judgement on whether to enable Apple Lossless on my iPhone and iPad at all.
If the transmission is bit-perfect as is that would make enabling Apple Lossless pointless and just wasting bandwidth with no gain. Unless Apple makes updates to their Bluetooth stack allowing for utilising higher than 256 kbps AAC for Bluetooth.
If it's not happening bit-perfect as is then enabling Apple Lossless provides the benefit of ensuring that the source is lossless making the lossy transmission less likely to degrade quality. Would I ever notice? Hard to say. But as I will have access to Apple Lossless for free I would love to gain the knowledge in order for me to better decide whether I see any point in enabling it or not.
I wasn't clear on the details on Dolby Atmos. Thanks for providing the information! When looking up the information it seems to be a 3D multi-channel format capable of providing up to 128 channels. So it's pretty much surround on steroids providing a ton of additional channels and adding the capability of providing height channels.
So Apple is basically receiving Dolby Atmos masters and using their proprietary Spatial Audio tech which is Apple's implementation of HRTF in order to emulate. So there is really no telling how good the source material is. Some might supply Apple with masters consisting of a few channels, others might go all crazy and provide Apple with masters containing the full 128 channels and Apple will have to do their best in terms of emulating this using their Spatial Audio.
Just checked my library: 2.549 total songs with 36 songs disabled (which equal to 3 movie soundtrack albums).
I don‘t know why this is being discussed here anyways, everyone has their own taste and some of it might even be obscure enough to not have anything going for them on Apple Music. If someone is into buying music then so be it, doesn‘t really affect you now does it.