It was my understanding, though, that Apple Music’s support for Spatial Audio is a vendor specific thing limited to Apple audio products. If you’re listening on non-Apple devices (such as a 3.5mm headphone jack), I don’t think Apple Music is delivering the Spatial Audio version (mixed down to stereo in any way). It definitely doesn’t support the 3D sound stage aspects of Spatial Audio without head tracking or the HomePod line’s speaker arrays.
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Apple Music to Incentivize Artists to Make Songs Available in Spatial Audio
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It was my understanding, though, that Apple Music’s support for Spatial Audio is a vendor specific thing limited to Apple audio products. If you’re listening on non-Apple devices (such as a 3.5mm headphone jack), I don’t think Apple Music is delivering the Spatial Audio version (mixed down to stereo in any way). It definitely doesn’t support the 3D sound stage aspects of Spatial Audio without head tracking or the HomePod line’s speaker arrays.
Then simply disable it if you think it's "very forced". Spatial Audio sounds great when done right and unfortunately money moves labels. This is probably not the first time labels have been incentivized to adopt new technologies.
Maintaining a personal music library is going to be impossible for most. The majority of methods to obtain music are illegal or questionable assuming you are storing this on your own. Even if you don't want Spatial Audio, most would at least want or appreciate or be neutral to quality upgrades. Finding lossless or higher quality versions for a personal library would make maintaining even more difficult.
Like I needed yet another reason to never consider Apple Music for my streaming needs, not even for free.
Spatial audio is fine, maybe even great, for movie/show audio. I have absolutely no interest in Apple mangling music purely so it can sell more AirPods (I quite like my AirPod Pros, but spatial audio is permanently turned off).
(YMMV, my opinion is my own, enjoy music the way you want to listen to it, I'll do likewise, everyone wins, etc.)
Spatial audio is fine, maybe even great, for movie/show audio. I have absolutely no interest in Apple mangling music purely so it can sell more AirPods (I quite like my AirPod Pros, but spatial audio is permanently turned off).
(YMMV, my opinion is my own, enjoy music the way you want to listen to it, I'll do likewise, everyone wins, etc.)
I'm with you totally. I've had maybe 5 free trials of AM in total and it just never has stuck or been of interest, even for free. It just doesn't seem as well designed as others.
(admittedly, I don't actually actively subscribe to any of them .. short of YT music which comes with my YT Premium)
I’ve tried it many times on my AirPods but I don’t like it. I can’t get used to it. I’m missing low end, vocals are lost somewhere in space, high tones come in way too loud, volume levels are uneven. I feel like I must be doing something wrong.
Pure gimmickry.
Stereo is still the king and this kind of stuff only appeals to "artists" that already use production trickery to peddle their mediocrity.
Stereo is still the king and this kind of stuff only appeals to "artists" that already use production trickery to peddle their mediocrity.
Like others, I've found the Spatial Audio mixes of many songs poorly done. I experimented for a while with Dolby Atmos disabled as well as enabled with and without head tracking while listening with my AirPods Pro 2. There are some tracks -- mostly newer songs that were mastered after the introduction of Dolby Atmos on Apple Music -- that do benefit from the Spatial Audio mix, but I'd argue that about 70-80% sound worse. Particularly songs that were re-mixed with Spatial Audio long after their original recording.
Head tracking is a cool "trick," but I found it distracting in many circumstances, especially while outside walking or running. It also doesn't seem to track the phone when my head is still but the phone (source) is moving within the environment, which ruins the effect for me.
I just wish that you could select whether to play the Spatial Audio version or traditional lossless audio version on a per-track basis. Having to choose to turn it completely on or off is frustrating, as I'd like to be able to select which songs to have played with Spatial Audio.
Head tracking is a cool "trick," but I found it distracting in many circumstances, especially while outside walking or running. It also doesn't seem to track the phone when my head is still but the phone (source) is moving within the environment, which ruins the effect for me.
I just wish that you could select whether to play the Spatial Audio version or traditional lossless audio version on a per-track basis. Having to choose to turn it completely on or off is frustrating, as I'd like to be able to select which songs to have played with Spatial Audio.
They’ve already been incentivizing Spatial Audio, for a long while at this point, by disproportionately promoting recordings with spatial mixes versus ones “only” mixed in stereo. The end result of this is that many of the Atmos mixes being submitted are done quick dirty and cheap, solely to tick off a checkbox... In many cases being mixed very poorly as an afterthought by incredibly unqualified individuals, or even only being derived from the already approved stereo mixes - much like the common “electronically rechanneled” or “duophonic” fake stereo from back in the 1960’s. History is a circle!
You're not wrong, Apple Music is, IMO, a mess of major-label over-promotion and personality-driven nonsense. It's like the worst of FM radio business practices from the 1980s in streaming form. I've been a Spotify subscriber for over a decade, and also have YT-Music with Premium. I've also trialed Tidal; Tidal is interesting, but doesn't really offer anything Spotify doesn't do better (other than its high-res audio, which is nice, but also one of those things that I think people over-emphasize the importance of. Like, every time someone on here wants to know how to play lossless audio on the tinny little speakers of a HomePod Mini, I'm like 🤣 ).
YT-Music is hard to get my head around. The mingling of YT and traditional music tracks opens up some interesting opportunities for discovery, but it's hard to manage and the algorithms that drive it all feel unpolished. Every time I think "I should invest more time in making this work," I realize Spotify already nails it for me so why bother.
I agree - I would not personally pay for it standalone and if it would reduce my YT Premium fee to exclude it, I would
I love Spatial Audio. There have been maybe one or two songs I've listened to where it wasn't good (mixing issue) but across the board for the type of music I listen to -- almost everything but with a heavier dose of classical, folk, and alternative, it's amazing when the music is mixed correctly. Even if not, it's rarely worse than the non-Spatial Audio version (IMO).
Some people focus a lot on lossless but that really makes no difference to probably 99.9999999999% of people but Spatial Audio is something that really makes a difference. This is clear in this thread with people saying they do or do not like it. I don't understand how people don't like it because my subjective experience is overwhelmingly positive. I know other people have other preferences, I just don't have those so I literally don't know what it's like to not like Spatial Audio. I'm not saying I am right or someone else is right -- experiencing audio is subjective -- but I really like Spatial Audio. It's a major reason I use Apple Music and not some other service.
Some examples of songs that sound amazing with Spatial Audio -- A Day in the Life by The Beatles ("Remix" version for Spatial Audio/Dolby Atmos). I've been listening to the Beatles for most of my life -- LPs, CDs, etc. -- and love the remixed (Atmos) versions of their songs the most. They are much more immersive, just like you're standing by John, Paul, George, or Ringo; the mixes are generally focused on the vocalist but you can usually place each musician in the sound space.
There's also a lovely album with pianist Radu Lupu playing Grieg and Schumann (1973 recording). The mixes make it sound like you are standing right by the piano in front of the orchestra. It's a completely sublime experience that isn't quite there with other recordings.
A lot of orchestral classical music is much better in Spatial Audio -- being able to hear the violins coming from the left, the double basses from the right, the percussion at the back, and more is like being the conductor. This makes the music immersive and powerful.
Muse's albums also sound great in Spatial Audio.
Some people focus a lot on lossless but that really makes no difference to probably 99.9999999999% of people but Spatial Audio is something that really makes a difference. This is clear in this thread with people saying they do or do not like it. I don't understand how people don't like it because my subjective experience is overwhelmingly positive. I know other people have other preferences, I just don't have those so I literally don't know what it's like to not like Spatial Audio. I'm not saying I am right or someone else is right -- experiencing audio is subjective -- but I really like Spatial Audio. It's a major reason I use Apple Music and not some other service.
Some examples of songs that sound amazing with Spatial Audio -- A Day in the Life by The Beatles ("Remix" version for Spatial Audio/Dolby Atmos). I've been listening to the Beatles for most of my life -- LPs, CDs, etc. -- and love the remixed (Atmos) versions of their songs the most. They are much more immersive, just like you're standing by John, Paul, George, or Ringo; the mixes are generally focused on the vocalist but you can usually place each musician in the sound space.
There's also a lovely album with pianist Radu Lupu playing Grieg and Schumann (1973 recording). The mixes make it sound like you are standing right by the piano in front of the orchestra. It's a completely sublime experience that isn't quite there with other recordings.
A lot of orchestral classical music is much better in Spatial Audio -- being able to hear the violins coming from the left, the double basses from the right, the percussion at the back, and more is like being the conductor. This makes the music immersive and powerful.
Muse's albums also sound great in Spatial Audio.
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I think the reason Apple Music works for me is that I don’t really use it for discovery. I have my existing iTunes library and often search for specific content in Apple Music, but I never bother with Beats1 or user generated playlists and only occasionally with Apple Music’s autogenerated playlists. I’m also somewhat older these days and more set in my ways when it comes to music (and granted, I was already pretty set in my ways around the time I hit 20!).
Interesting!!
I saw that show in Vegas a few years back and it was amazing. I didn't even know it was available to buy.
Which is great and I'm glad it works for you. I'm also a fossil (52 this year) but am still a voracious consumer of new music, both streamed and live. After amassing a collection of thousands of CDs, I just gave up on owning music. I found it too limiting (and expensive!
) I love exploring new genres, producers, composers, musicians, bands, anything. Particularly since I listen to a lot of electronica, which is very driven by the release > remix cycle and may never see a physical release.Apple's recommendation engines are amateur, and their "human curated" playlists are pure payola, so there's no point for someone like me to consider them. But that doesn't mean it can't be a great service for others with a different baseline or approach to music.
I tried listening to music in Spatial Audio, but it isn’t anything specials. I don’t hear the sound coming from all around, it’s just that the vocals are less “crammed” and clearer.
I wasn't really a fan of Spatial Audio until I heard the latest Chase and Status album through my TV setup which was incredible. Hopefully we'll see more people fully embrace it.
One thing I don't like about it, is that songs I know very well lose some of their "energy" and "punch"
Unless it's new music made specifically with an SA output in mind, it just feels like a violation of all the mixing work and creative ideology that went into the specific output that was released.
Music gets mixed very diligently usually (especially in the past) -- just flipping the card table over on all that work ... no thanks.
As someone who previously collected DVD Audio discs and Blu-Ray Audio Discs and went through a complicated process to rip them so i could play them on my stereo I greatly appreciate that this is a thing now… that being said i stilll feel like its a very niche experience. Cars are where i listen to 90% of my music and they don’t have Spatial Audio capabilities and neither do the homepod minis all over my house…. So i really only hear it when im sitting right in front of my tv with the home theater atmos setup…and then i wind up wishing there was a visual component or would rather just the music videos on YouTube be in atmos. SO few people consume music in such a dedicated way that this is useful… and the pretend Spatial Audio Offered by headphones is just silly.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
To clarify, the show is not but the music soundtrack is available.
It does not support head tracking correct, but you can go into the Apple Music settings and set spatial audio to “always” in which case it will force any pair of headphones or speakers to play the Dolby Atmos mix of a song if available.
By default though, it’s only set to “automatic” where it will only play the file when a supported audio product is connected.
This hasn’t been true since at least 2003 when Apple entered the music industry, and would become its biggest player for the next decade.
Not to mention, when Apple Music was first introduced in 2015, and Apple was handing out all types of exclusive distribution deals with record labels and artists.
Apple is a part of the music industry, just as much as they are a part of the television industry.