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Apple Reportedly Hires Audio Pioneer Tomlinson Holman
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Unlike most I find the speakers in MBP even in the 13 pretty nice for a laptop, but if they can be improved a bit that will be excelent!
BitPerfect Streaming with Dynamic Bitrate/Frequency changing
I personally hope he improves iTunes Data streaming & MIDI/Audio integration.
I'm running a USB asyncronous DAC with 24bit/192KHz capability but it's a pain in the butt to constantly change the settings in the MIDI to match the audio file properties and then close/reopen iTunes for it to recognize.
iTunes is supposedly bitperfect but it still has a veiled/lifeless delivery which I don't quite understand. Using other player apps like Audirvana, Decibel, Amarra, or Pure Music the sound seems to open up.
Also for some reason Homesharing may not be bitperfect or at least doesn't transmit audio properties to the remote iTunes client and some of my ALAC files only play on the windows version of iTunes but not the MAC version!?!? I don't want to use another player...I Like iTunes, I like the convenience of the remote app and homesharing but I hate the limitations and anomalies that are more easily handled by these other players.
so in other words, i hope he's coming to fix all the low hanging fruit with the Mac audio subsystem...total wishful thinking but hey I'm a dreamer!
I personally hope he improves iTunes Data streaming & MIDI/Audio integration.
I'm running a USB asyncronous DAC with 24bit/192KHz capability but it's a pain in the butt to constantly change the settings in the MIDI to match the audio file properties and then close/reopen iTunes for it to recognize.
iTunes is supposedly bitperfect but it still has a veiled/lifeless delivery which I don't quite understand. Using other player apps like Audirvana, Decibel, Amarra, or Pure Music the sound seems to open up.
Also for some reason Homesharing may not be bitperfect or at least doesn't transmit audio properties to the remote iTunes client and some of my ALAC files only play on the windows version of iTunes but not the MAC version!?!? I don't want to use another player...I Like iTunes, I like the convenience of the remote app and homesharing but I hate the limitations and anomalies that are more easily handled by these other players.
so in other words, i hope he's coming to fix all the low hanging fruit with the Mac audio subsystem...total wishful thinking but hey I'm a dreamer!
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Maybe apple will come out with a 10.2 channel iMac! How funny would that look if all the speakers were built into the monitor at different delays. LMAO
Maybe apple will come out with a 10.2 channel iMac! How funny would that look if all the speakers were built into the monitor at different delays. LMAO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless
Doesn't support more than two channels though.
It'd be great if Apple finally added some kind of proper support into the Mac OS/Quicktime for 5.1 audio over the optical audio port. Perian is a bit of a kludge, half the time I just get static through my Logitech z5500, or the sound channels get all mixed up. They'd need to licence either a Dolby Digital or DTS encoder to send discreet multi-channel audio (such as from games or some movies with an audio track for each channel) over the S/PDIF port. Some Blu-Ray movies include a pre-encoded DTS or Dolby Digital track, which can be sent over S/PDIF as raw digital data. As I said, it often won't work though.
It'd also be pretty cool if Apple did have some sort of quasi-surround sound built into their Macs, as they used to have SRS back in OS 9. Sometimes it can work quite well, especially if the algorithm is fed 6 separate channels. Generally Apple seems to use pretty decent quality speakers, the ones in my 27" Apple display are pretty impressive, as are the ones in my 15" MPB. They're loud, and for built-in speakers, pretty basey. Though they do have a tendency to make things sound like you're listening through a drain pipe.
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Yes, I hear they have hired this world-renowned expert with the prime objective of using his immense skills to get improved quality from the one-dollar built-in speakers in our MacBook Pros.
I hope you're joking, or you only watch movies in your car. Because 5.1 music is few and far between, and 2.0 sounds terrible coming out of 5.1
good news...
I sincerely, sincerely hope he advocates for quality in other areas:
* reasonable quality speakers in iphones, ipads, computers.
* common sense positioning of these speakers
* improved standard quality (not over compression) of itunes sources music files.
I sincerely, sincerely hope he advocates for quality in other areas:
* reasonable quality speakers in iphones, ipads, computers.
* common sense positioning of these speakers
* improved standard quality (not over compression) of itunes sources music files.
Well, DVD Player and other apps work just fine. I probably haven't tried Quicktime, no need to when I have 3 or 4 others that do Dolby or DTS.
Upgrading to HD audio would be nice, though.
SRS is a dog, all of them are. I hope this is not going to turn into just another psuedo-surround coming from Apple.
Except that based on his bio, it sounds like that isn't his area of expertise at all. He's a hardware guy for the most part, and most of what Apple does with audio is software.
the guy knows sound theoretically and practically
i knew tom at usc and spent a lot of time talking about sound for low budget filmmaking, speakers for home use as well as mixing, and saw several ear amazing demos of the 10.2 system in a six person theater when it was still in development. he doesn't like to get stuck at basic levels of thinking and creating so i bet he moves beyond headphones, internal speakers etc. pretty damn fast. smart move by apple in an area not many companies would go the extra mile for.
for the life of me, i can't understand why 4 people rate this negative. i have long thought there are poor souls who haven't much in their lives who just like to negative items on apple sites (and maybe others too). i probably shouldn't knock it as it may be there only human (?) contact.
i knew tom at usc and spent a lot of time talking about sound for low budget filmmaking, speakers for home use as well as mixing, and saw several ear amazing demos of the 10.2 system in a six person theater when it was still in development. he doesn't like to get stuck at basic levels of thinking and creating so i bet he moves beyond headphones, internal speakers etc. pretty damn fast. smart move by apple in an area not many companies would go the extra mile for.
for the life of me, i can't understand why 4 people rate this negative. i have long thought there are poor souls who haven't much in their lives who just like to negative items on apple sites (and maybe others too). i probably shouldn't knock it as it may be there only human (?) contact.
I'm not, many people lack the desire and focus to learn and get the most out of what they have.
I'm surprised how few 'lifelong' Apple people know that.
If they did take time to learn all their Macs can do, they would enjoy the experience immensely.
Funny - I always thought the problem was POWERING the speakers without wires; after all, all the wireless in the world doesn't help if you need to run a power lead to the thing...
Well, it's both.
People think that they just want to hide wires, but that can be done, regardless. The difficult issue is actually getting wires from here to over there, if the room wasn't designed with multiple speakers in mind. AC is generally already designed and in each wall.
Hopefully this means that MacBook Pros will get a better DAC.
I found that even a $30 DAC from Diamond -- bought it on a whim, because it had a mic-in -- is better than what Apple ships. And when compared to my tube amp which has its own DAC, Apple's sounds like muffled vomit.
I found that even a $30 DAC from Diamond -- bought it on a whim, because it had a mic-in -- is better than what Apple ships. And when compared to my tube amp which has its own DAC, Apple's sounds like muffled vomit.
iPC
Oh ya??
Maybe we'll start seeing non-iOS software updates for music quality on Classics, Nanos, and Shuffles?
Oh ya??
Maybe we'll start seeing non-iOS software updates for music quality on Classics, Nanos, and Shuffles?
But how recent is that method of muting the startup sound? Seems fairly recent, being a "lifelong" user isn't going to give you an advantage being aware of something that wasn't added that long ago.
If I was Apple, I would develop an open, Thunderbolt based modular audio system using iOS and ATV as the interface. Imagine being able to configure amps, preamps and tuners as black boxes(people still use those right?) to taste while gaining the benefits of the iOS interface for operation, configuration and audio modeling.
I'd buy that.