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Apple Music Now Rolling Out Support for Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

dojoman said:
Where do you see Dolby Atmos badge you mean the logos next to album? It looks like there is no head tracking in Spatial Audio for music.
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There is definitely no head tracking for music at this point, it is just a Dolby Atmos mix rendered either to a surround speaker system or headphones via HRTF.

The Dolby Atmos badge appears next to the lossless/apple master logos on albums:

1623165635747.png


... but some albums contain Atmos tracks without the album itself being badged as Atmos - take the 25th anniversary edition of Automatic for the People by R.E.M. - this multi-disc release has an Atmos-encoded first disc but the remainder is regular stereo. Thus, the Atmos logo does not appear against the album:

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Playing tracks from the first disc of the album reveals the Dolby Atmos logo on the track screen itself - have to use an iOS screen grab here because macOS seems totally messed up at present:

IMG_C28F3D8C1355-1.jpeg
 
Just so everyone's aware, it's like on Spotify you have to select in settings in the Music app on Mac, to get the best audio quality.

I compared songs now and I can definitely hear a difference between lossless and not lossless, thank you Apple!
(to me the benefits of lossless beat the benefits of Atmos, but both are amazing!)
 

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I rather wish Apple had separated the Lossless and spatial/Atmos releases because there is so much confusion about the benefits of each, with some people thinking there are 20 million Atmos tracks available and wondering if they need a USB DAC to hear them.

They are completely different technologies doing completely different things - one is about creating three dimensional sound while the other is about maximising the quality of existing stereo recordings.
 
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Kier-XF said:
There is definitely no head tracking for music at this point, it is just a Dolby Atmos mix rendered either to a surround speaker system or headphones via HRTF.

The Dolby Atmos badge appears next to the lossless/apple master logos on albums:

View attachment 1789384

... but some albums contain Atmos tracks without the album itself being badged as Atmos - take the 25th anniversary edition of Automatic for the People by R.E.M. - this multi-disc release has an Atmos-encoded first disc but the remainder is regular stereo. Thus, the Atmos logo does not appear against the album:

View attachment 1789387

Playing tracks from the first disc of the album reveals the Dolby Atmos logo on the track screen itself - have to use an iOS screen grab here because macOS seems totally messed up at present:

View attachment 1789389
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Thanks for clarification. I'll try out R.E.M.
 
I'm so disappointed that Apple Music lossless doesn't work in Itunes on PC. I have a dedicated sound card with a nice builtin DAC. It would be amazing to experience this!
 
Dianneeraser said:
Funny....I thought it was pretty meh. Not sure I'd call it a game changer. It just sounds like the artist remastered their tracks. Preferred the stereo track in both the sample demos Apple provided.
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My post was meant to be totally sarcastic 🤫🤣
 
ewrapple said:
Most of the stuff I have heard sounds worse but Abbey Road sounds amazing.
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It's not gonna sound worse with lossless compared to non-lossless, if you haven't tried that. But the atmos is best for speakers or home cinema probably as it gives more ability to fill a room, on an atmos soundbar it should sound amazing.
 
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I'm not getting the highest Hi-Res via my phone. Just tried Reckless by Madison Beer on the MacBook and getting 24/96 but on the iPhone I get 24/44. Not the end of the world but my external DAC is not working as well on the iPhone as it is on the Mac.
 
sebban said:
It's not gonna sound worse with lossless compared to non-lossless, if you haven't tried that. But the atmos is best for speakers or home cinema probably as it gives more ability to fill a room, on an atmos soundbar it should sound amazing.
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I should have been clear, Dolby on AirPods Max. It could be a volume issue. I wish Dolby wasn’t lower than stereo.
 
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ewrapple said:
I should have been clear, Dolby on AirPods Max. It could be a volume issue. I wish Dolby wasn’t lower than stereo.
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Yes, that's a good point since Atmos means increasing dynamics and space, the front-facing audio may reduce in return for spreading out the audio more, and the overall mid-volume might reduce too, to give better highs and lows(dynamics).

So it's more the experience of being in a roam live hearing the instruments play, but if you don't listen carefully and higher volume might feel a bit damp because it's not as direct.

But that is also amazing in the right circumstances as giving the option to position each individual little sound in a song anywhere in the space around the listener's ear, for example, two voices shouting to each other, one from the back and one from the front, responding in a loop to create a beat.
 
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ck2875 said:
I just tried on the 13.2 Sonos Beta. It doesn't work. I had the Atmos Logo when playing from my phone and AirPods Pro, but as soon as I started Airplay to the Arc, it disappeared.

Edit: I was just able to get it to work on Sonos Arc via Airplay by going to Settings > Music > Dolby Atmos > Always On

View attachment 1789297View attachment 1789299

In a similar vein, I'm hoping Sonos will add Siri voice support that was announced yesterday. That said, getting them to add support for that may be an uphill battle given that they specified in the keynote that third-party devices will have to sends their Siri requests through a HomePod so as not to send your requests through a third-party server. I feel like Sonos isn't going to want people to buy a HomePod instead one of their competing products to add Siri support.
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Is there a way to tell on the sonos all. I heard it would show an atmos indicator on the sonos app if it's receiving an atmos stream
 
Hi . Does spatial audio animation work while play Dolby atoms track ? I don’t see that in my AirPods max . What I am missing ? Please help
 
H-B0mb said:
Is there a way to tell on the sonos all. I heard it would show an atmos indicator on the sonos app if it's receiving an atmos stream
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Not that I can see. On the S2 app, it just shows that it is playing via AirPlay where it would normally show Stereo PCM, Dolby Digital 5.1, or Dolby Atmos. In the Music app, it shows that its playing as Dolby Atmos.

IMG_1139.jpegIMG_1140.jpeg
 
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JCarmona said:
My menu for Music Settings on the iPhone looks different than the one in the main article

Is this normal?

PS: I still don't have access to Dolby Atmos; based in the UK
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I'm in the uk and have been getting it just fine on my iPhone and iPad. My mac intermittently switches between atmos and lossless for no apparent reason. Even when playing the same song.

have you tried deleting all of your downloaded songs?
 
H-B0mb said:
Thanks. Looks like it probably requires an update on the Sonos end then.
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If you Airplay Atmos to Sonos or other Airplay devices it’ll play the regular stereo. To get Atmos on Sonos Arc for example, you need to play from an Apple TV 4K.
 
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I have the Qudelix 5K USB DAC with 24 Bit / 96 kHz.

Is Lossless (up to 24 Bit / 48 kHz) or High Resolution Lossless (up to 24 Bit / 192 kHz) better?

I heard, that macOS is alway upsampling to 192 kHz and this would be "bad".
 
Lossless sounds wonderful and noticeably better when playing through aux on my macbook pro.

The dolby atmos on the other hand.. is a hit or miss. Some songs sound good with it and others seem to completely fall apart. As atmos by default is set to automatic, this is bound to become the new norm for the way people hear these tracks, which is going to be interesting to see as some of the tracks i’ve heard sound much better with atmos (manually) turned off.
 
For folks on HomePod and Mac - how can you tell if it's actually playing in Spatial Audio? It seems hit or miss - there's a whole playlist for Spatial Audio / Atmos yet the songs don't. I've managed to find individual albums/songs that do, and they will tell me on Control Center in iOS if it's in Atmos, but I can't figure out how to tell for HomePod or AM on Mac.
 
Anyone tried this out with a Sonos Arc soundbar? Curious if lossless/atmos would work on it.
 
So far, still no spatial audio settings for my iPhone 12 pro and AirPods Pro. I've toggled all the settings multiple times, restarted my phone multiple times. I see lossless show up in the Music app under details, but still no spatial audio. The interesting thing is that Music has the whole spatial audio section today, but no way for me to actually use it. I guess I'll impatiently wait more for it to roll out to me.
 
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