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Lots of people like gimmicky things better, just like lots of people like to turn up the bass and treble all the way. But lots of us (and I'm a musician and aud
by allears 5y ago
Lots of people like gimmicky things better, just like lots of people like to turn up the bass and treble all the way. But lots of us (and I'm a musician and audio engineer) appreciate high quality balanced distortion free audio, and want to hear the music the way the original artist intended. Just because you can make sounds bounce around in space doesn't make the music better, especially if the original recording wasn't conceived that way in the first place. I would always prefer listening to the original intent of the artist.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago> I would always prefer listening to the original intent of the artist. I always prefer listening to the thing that sounds better to me. I don't care about what the artist wants.
- tpush 5y agoYou’re downvoted, but enjoyment of music is obviously subjective. There is no “wrong” way to listen to music (or anything really).
- quenix 5y agoExactly. This thread is mindboggling. Taste in music is purely subjective. If users enjoy listening to Spatial Audio, who are you to criticize it as a scam?
- tinus_hn 5y agoChances are the artist has no idea what kind of speakers you are using anyway
- ntSean 5y agoSpeaking as a musician, I agree that there is a level of respect required for the original mix. Though, in the case of Spacial Audio, this isn't a matter of "gimmicky" sound, this is headphones reproducing the effect that loudspeakers already have. This isn't new and has been in audio engineering circles for a long while (https://goodhertz.co/canopener-studio/ https://goodhertz.co/canopener-studio/) but Apple has added 6dof head tracking which makes the effect truly awe-inspiring.
- ntSean 5y agoI just noticed that the author wasn't using the AirPods Pro / Max which Spacial Audio was designed in tandem with. No wonder they didn't find it impressive and are calling it a scam. TBH, I'm sad I wasted my time reading such an uninformed opinion piece.
- r618 5y agoyou're conflating unrelated things 6dof has nothing to do with SpaTial audio and no AirPods Pro/Max weren't designed 'in tandem with' it you'll get Apple's positional audio (6dof) only with supported hardware - which includes AirPods Pro/Max, iPads and AppleTV - and is designed for positional listening relative to source/device, which has nothing to do w/ Atmos mixed Apple Music spatial tracks discussed here (and it actually might be 3dof only, not sure since i've never listened to it)
- drcongo 5y agoI think you're missing one of the main points, which is someone using other headphones is still getting the atmos version, but in normal stereo - and when that happens, large parts of the balance of the mix are lost as he explains in the section on What's Going On. So it's not the original track as the artist, mix engineer and masterer intended you to hear.
- salamandersauce 5y agoI don't think that's true? There's nothing special about Apple's implementation of Dolby Atmos over headphones besides the head tracking bit (and that's not needed for music) that need their headphones. If you set Dolby Atmos to "Always On" in the settings it will give you the Atmos headphones mix regardless of what headphones being used. Airpods and Beats are still just stereo headphones. Atmos works pretty well over normal stereo headphones and I've used it for years on PC while watching supported Blu-rays. I'm kinda peeved at Apple's lazy implementation because it's only supported on Apple devices and not devices that support Atmos and work with Apple music like a PC or Samsung Android phone.
- matwood 5y ago> and want to hear the music the way the original artist intended Curious how you know what the artist intended. Did they intend for the track to sound like you're at a stadium show or sitting in a small music studio with headphones on?
- onethought 5y agoOr what happens with derived works? When you listen to a Coldplay song... do you follow their intent or Kraftwerk's intent? Oh no! Or music that was composed before modern audio equipment - "If Bach had known about spatial audio! I know he would have loved it" :D
- Cybotron5000 5y agoStockhausen would have been like: ‘Yo dawg…’ :)
- donbrae 5y agoI imagine the artist approved a (stereo) mix they heard on decent studio monitors and maybe stereo headphones too. I’m not sure how they’d feel about someone else then creating an atmos/spacial audio version without their involvement. Mixing is integral to the artistic part of making recorded music. I’d be interested to know whether the tracks appearing on Apple Music are being created from the original tracks/stems (i.e. properly remixed), or whether an algorithm is being applied to the same stereo mixdown that would have created a standard (stereo) master.
- astrange 5y agoThey are remixed by the original engineers (or at least, an engineer.) Some of them are mixed better than others.
- doctorhandshake 5y agoThere is a notion of ‘reference’ in audio and visual information. You can get reference speakers, headphones, and monitors - their role is to reproduce the information without ‘color’. They present ‘faithfully’. This is what is often meant by ‘listen as X intended,’ although to be honest the interest of many audiophiles is to set up a listening environment that does impart some color while remaining faithful to the artistic choices in the mix of the original music. And mixing _is_ an art. The article suggests, and I agree, that by making what are in effect unauthorized remixes of these works, Apple are interfering with what the artist intended. Eddie Cue, Apple SVP of Services (in charge of Apple Music) is quoted in the Verge article [1] on this as saying, “This requires somebody who’s a sound engineer, and the artist to sit back and listen, and really make the right calls and what the right things to do are. It’s a process that takes time, but it’s worth it.” Of course you note he says this requires the artist, not present in Marvin Gaye’s case and likely most others, and time, which it is implied is not being given to this process in the article above. The visual analogy in the article is apt - imagine Apple were revisiting their movie library - including old classics like The Maltese Falcon - and applying a process that makes them viewable in simulated 3D — but that, even further — if that person tries to view it with equipment that doesn’t support the head-turning 3D effect - they see it in an _altered_ version of 2D from the original. And this now becomes canon for a certain group of people - this version that is a byproduct of an effort to reverse the effect of a series of creative decisions made to make a derivative work of the original, done without, in this analogy, the input of the director or cinematographer. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/9/22525028/apple-music-spatial-audio-dolby-atmos-hands-on https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/9/22525028/apple-music-spati...
- onethought 5y agoDo you end up in a divide by zero situation when the artist intended you to turn the bass and treble all the way up? :)
- kall 5y agoI think I remember some tracks where the artist is explicitly instructing me to turn up the bass (and make the speakers pop).