Posted on 07/21/2021 12:40:29 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Apple Music boss Eddy Cue says most people can’t tell the difference between compressed and lossless audio but he believes that spatial audio is ‘a game-changer’.
In a recent interview with Billboard, Cue, who is Apple’s Senior VP of Internet Software and Services, admitted that: “If you take a 100 people and you take a stereo song in lossless and you take a song that’s been in Apple Music that’s compressed, I don’t know if it’s 99 or 98 can’t tell the difference. For the difference of lossless, our ears aren’t that good”.
He went on to say that to say that only audiophiles with “incredible ears” can really tell the difference, but that this requires “very, very high-quality stereo equipment”.
Apple Music recently launched spatial audio with Dolby Atmos, while also bringing lossless audio to its entire catalogue at no extra cost for subscribers.
Several of the big streaming platforms, including TIDAL, charge a higher fee for lossless content.
While Apple Music now offers lossless audio across it entire catalogue, lossless listening is not supported by any of the brand’s HomePod speakers, or its headphones, not even the top-of-the range AirPods Max cans. A future software update is expected to bring lossless support for the HomePod speakers.
Spatial audio is much better supported by Apple’s hardware – both on the AirPods Pro and Max – and it’s this immersive format that Cue believes is the future.
Speaking with Audio Media International, Mirek Stiles, Head of Audio Products at Abbey Road Studios agrees that spatial audio is a truly game-changing development, saying: “Stereo is a marvellous format, but spatial audio takes sound to new dimensions of enjoyment, and now that it’s actually convenient for the consumer to experience this expansion of the sound stage, things are going to get very interesting. This is the most significant development in sound since stereo was introduced to the general public in 1958 and it will affect all aspects of our daily digital life.”
how many people know there is a banjo playing on the eagles hit " take it easy"?
The older you get... The less you hear.
https://www.thebestsocial.media/wp-content/uploads/tiktok/6936618436198010117.mp4
Don’t care. Don’t even play music on the phone.
the difference is huge
Obviously picachudad only listens to talk radio..
What?
You’re right. Listening through a decent stereo is a far richer experience than listening over a cheap unit or a phone or earbuds. And listening in an acoustically treated room on a decent system takes it to another level. I love listening to music in my recording studio as does my wife. It sounds big, clear and immersive and is a far more engaging experience than listening through computer speakers or a small system. Man, for a grand you can buy a killer setup, even some great vintage gear. I love those big, powerful integrated amps from the 70s and 80s. They sound great and they look cool.
Smells like the Quadraphonic craze in the late 60s early 70s. Suspect it will not last as long given the rapidity of tech change today.
How many people actually use the 7.2 Dolby vs 5.1 vs plain stereo to watch movies? How many new movies are even watchable for that matter. (Can’t wait for LeBrons Commie Jam on Blueray... you?)
For music... why? So you can sit between the drums and the vocalist? That isn’t a sound stage. I could see some electronic music and rap using this, but most music... nope.
More Apple, crApple.
As for lossless, I can hear it but under lab conditions with a gold plated amp and money is no object speakers. On equipment under 10K+ in a non optimized room I can not. I guess if you have more money than brains spending more for the lossless to play in your car during your commute is a great deal.
Find somebody young to listen to it... They will hear it... You can’t.
I heard that banjo in there.
You would like my garage Yammie CR2020 with stacked Polk 7Bs with the good peerless tweets. You wouldn’t like my garage acoustics. Heh...
You would like my garage Yammie CR2020 with stacked Polk 7Bs with the good peerless tweets. You wouldn’t like my garage acoustics. Heh...
I still have iPods.
:)
How many know there’s a hurdy gurdy in Apocalypse Orchestra’s The Garden Of Earthly Delights?
/wait..what?
Analog music sounds much better than digital because there is no information loss. Because digital music is sent by pulse the digital music information will have gaps in it. It will sound dry. Like a copy. Albums can be played at up to
120 Db. CDs, thumb drives, Streamed ,ect. can only get up to 100 Db. It’s not your imagination. LPs sound better.
It’s very hard to play them in your car, though.
I have several pieces of audio equipment with tubes, and I firmly believe that a tube renaissance is upon us. There’s so much more warmth and depth to audio when using old school methods. That said, I never considered myself someone with exceptional ears, but I can absolutely tell a difference with lossless audio.
I remember in the 90s when MP3s started popping up around the Internet, I thought it was so cool that we could compress audio to the point it was retrievable over dialup. CDA files as found on CDs back then were very large compared to the ~1 MB per minute of early MP3 audio. With FLAC, the sizes are much larger, but the highs are not clipped, and the lower parts of the spectrum are less muddy.
I use a Schiit USB DAC and tube amplifier on my computer with Beyerdynamic semi-open back studio monitors, FWIW. USB isn’t pristine, but it’s got enough bandwidth to support the audio spectrum.
Oh, man - I love vinyl. Besides, my ears are analog....
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