That's a great point. I don't usually go that far no. I think just having any artsy fartsy 3D audio FX is immediately detrimental to the original "vision" of what they wanted things to sound like. Type of headphones and speakers not so much because a big part of their job is actually to make it sound good on as many different types of speakers and applications as possible. If your headphones are good and have a fairly flat frequency response then it'll do a good job
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Netflix Says It's Not Testing Spatial Audio Support for AirPods
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
In other words: Netflix is too cheap to pay for the extra bandwith a higher quality audio format would require.
That cost is also passed onto the user if you have bandwidth restrictions. If you play higher quality audio formats, you're consuming more data.
I would bet good money that AirPods Max with spatial audio comes closer to what's intended than the pair of old Beats that I used to have.
Personally I thought I would prefer to NOT use spatial audio, as I thought that it would be a very weird and artificial experience; but when I accidentally experienced it the first time with my APPs it was like they just weren't there. Great sound, better than regular stereo; it just made the sound come alive.
Yeah, I think people focus too much on the gimmicky part about turning your head and it keeps the device sounding stationary, but I've found that spatial audio sounds so much better because it's immersive. I've been watching The Mandelorian on my iPad with my APPs because it sounds so great. Maybe if I had 7+ speaker atmos setup in my house my opinion would be different, but I don't
Oh definitely, they’re not even in the same category. The AirPods are always being compared to great headphonesI would bet good money that AirPods Max with spatial audio comes closer to what's intended than the pair of old Beats that I used to have.
Personally I thought I would prefer to NOT use spatial audio, as I thought that it would be a very weird and artificial experience; but when I accidentally experienced it the first time with my APPs it was like they just weren't there. Great sound, better than regular stereo; it just made the sound come alive.
What I think is part of why people just dimiss it is that they don't get that the Apple hardware is fast enough to deal with even minor movements, so your brain is constantly getting a coherent soundstage with sound coming from several directions.Yeah, I think people focus too much on the gimmicky part about turning your head and it keeps the device sounding stationary, but I've found that spatial audio sounds so much better because it's immersive. I've been watching The Mandelorian on my iPad with my APPs because it sounds so great. Maybe if I had 7+ speaker atmos setup in my house my opinion would be different, but I don't
But remember, a great implementation of a great feature should not require providing a technical background to the customer. If you abstract that all away and measure only what the perceived quality is, it just doesn't mean much to lots of people out there, and means much to lots of other people out there. Depends what you're looking for
I have to disagree, partly due to the fact that almost all of the other major players in streaming support it. Clearly either the barrier to entry is low (likely), or they see it as an easy value add to have adopted it so quickly. And yet here stands Netflix, alone and obstinate.
I agree with the principle, but the problem here is armchair critics who have never even actually used the feature. Those that have used the feature tend to be impressed/pleased and see value with or without a technical basis.
Oddly enough, every stream inside an .mp4 container with AC3 or E-AC3 will automatically use Spatial Audio. It even works inside the Photos app. So either Netflix uses some odd container formats or doesn't support AC3 or E-AC3 on mobile devices. There isn't even additional coding required to implement the feature.
Apple has explained it, and I would say that their description is quite good:
Some people are complaining just because they haven't experienced it; and Apple can't really add "No, really, we mean it, we got it working well enough; you'll like it, we promise, just try it".
Tend to but you can’t expect everyone to love it. I don’t hate it or anything, I just don’t see it as a big deal
Some apps use their own players instead of the standard way of playing videos on an iDevice; and then they don't automatically get that spatial audio that the phone supports.
"Spatial audio" is not a standard, it's a way of consuming existing 5.1 and 7.1 surround soundtracks. You know, standards.
Atmos is a standard for true Spacial Audio, it’s drastically better than regular surround sound.
That's not what we are talking about. And also one of the standards I implied in the latter.
If you’d have listened to spatial audio with Apple’s APPs or APMs you’d realize that Apple has a way to create Dolby Atmos sound in a pair of inexpensive headphones. That’s amazing and worthy of praise.
Believe me, I work in features and have been to a lot of sound mixes, hearing directly from the sound mixers reference monitors and rooms, Spatial audio is pretty good and gets you much closer to the intended signature than wearing a pair of headphones. The stereo mix of those films are NOT intended to be listened on headphones, since your sound stage is basically destroyed and you have a narrow "center" channel that mixes voice with music/ambience. Spatial audio is much better, even tho I think it's calibration system is faulty (that's why it needs two gyroscopes), the real caveat is that the virtualization (emulation) room is kinda big with a lot of reverb slap, so sometimes the center channel *voice* becomes muddy and reverberant. In a silent scene the effect is more like a side-effect.
But in the whole, it's pretty impressive and good enough immersive experience to be way closer to the original 5.1 mix on a reference dub mixing theater. All films are mixed for real in 5.1 then a pass is done to bring it to stereo.
Exactly. They seem to have a proprietery audio format, that doesn’t allow the native decoders to do their thing. They want to force tablets and phones into a lower quality audio format, and now it bit them in the butt.
Actually in principle I’m of a similar mindset as you. I’m an old school stereo speaker guy, who turns off all processing when he can.
There has been lots of attempts at virtual surround sound. Spatial audio is the best implementation yet. I have this simulated surround sound via headphones type feature on my Asus Strix sound card, and I don’t like it. Apple did really well with it though. Its not perfect, but it’s better than stereo for movies. I’d never use it for music (and it doesn’t work for it anyways). You need a 5.1, 7.1, or atmos track for it to do its computations.
Basically, my point is, watching movies with surround sound tracks via a stereo headphone is not the original intent of the AV team either. It is no more of an adulteration of the vision of the director than stereo headphones.
Still, I can see people not liking it, and prefer stereo in the end. Choices are good.