6 ms·

I guess there's no way to own music in these latest formats. Atmos can be shipped on blu-ray discs, and one of the very few examples of this is Mike Oldfield's

I guess there's no way to own music in these latest formats. Atmos can be shipped on blu-ray discs, and one of the very few examples of this is Mike Oldfield's 50th anniversary release of "Tubular Bells". But most other artists/labels don't do this, so you can only ever stream it. Streaming is DRM protected, and usually limited to particular platforms or systems. If you don't want to pay a monthly fee, or if the service just goes away, or they decide to license the rights to someone else for whatever reason, bam, your music is just gone. Maybe I'm old, but I still like to own my music. Even if it's only in a digital format, I'd rather have a copy saved on a disk somewhere that I know I'll be able to keep playing through my retirement.

bleuchase 3y ago
> Maybe I'm old, but I still like to own my music. Maybe. Good idea nonetheless.
buzzy_hacker 3y ago
Even Blu Ray isn’t DRM free unfortunately. Hard to own movies at all.
- usefulcat 3y ago
  True, but it's not like you have to rip it every time you watch or listen to it. And even if you do need to rip it again, it's not like they can go back and re-encrypt the data on a physical disc that you possess.
- LeoPanthera 3y ago
  While true, the DRM has been long broken, so I don't mind buying them because making an unencrypted rip is trivial.
  - compsciphd 3y ago
    actually, strong disagree, bluray drm is just as broken as streaming "widevine" (or other) drm. neither has been cracked, the algorithms are just well understood and in both cases people have figured out how to exfiltrate the keys needed from devices with them. in practice, its a very similar set of technical steps for both. this is distinguished from DVDs where one can brute force it without starting with a key. the only distinguishing thing between bluray and streaming drm is an end user simplicity thing, but thats more of a "product" / end user technical ability distinction than anything else.
  - lloeki 3y ago
    I own blurays that a) can't be played in any of my physical nor software players anymore (players flat out reject it ever since their decryption keys got updated, which I did to play other blurays that needed the update; physically they're fine, everything points to encryption-level errors) and b) can be decrypted but it takes ages and ludicrous amounts of space to rip + reencoding properly is a very manual process (back of the envelope calculation told me ripping my small collection would take several years) It's so outstandingly unpractical that I consider that "unplayable". It certainly is for the layperson. So I've turned to getting these from "that other source" and keeping the blurays as tokens of ownership.
    - compsciphd 3y ago
      theres little reason to transcode a bluray. an 8TB disk can hold 200+ 1:1 bluray images. it costs ~$100ish on the low end for a usb drive (i.e. very minor price relative to cost of buying all the discs originally). therefore its just an issue of time. If one can decrypt 1 a day (say overnight to not waste ones time babysitting it) thats a few hundred a year (not a small collection imo). and if one can do more (say kick off one before going to work, kick off one when come home before eating dinner + the one overnight) one has now passed 1K discs a year (+a few hundred in hard drive storage needs)
      - lloeki 3y ago
        800+ movies at 40GB a pop and we're looking at around 32TB. That is not including shows, which run over multiple discs. Movies can be sourced second hand (or sometimes even new if you wait a bit) for around 5€, for 800 that's 4K total. 8TB is more like 150€ around here, closer to 200 if one goes CMR. Adding a 4 (or 8 to add shows) disk enclosure to that significantly adds to the bill, which tallies around 1k, and double that if you add redundancy for ZFS to repair bitrot which at these scales starts to statistically matter. But even then, 1k is certainly not minor compared to bluray price. $/byte will inevitably come down, but we're still quite a few years away from crossing such a rounding error threshold. Re-encoding cuts that down by a factor of 5 to 10 with minimal impact on quality.
- zirgs 3y ago
  Why would you want to own a movie? I rarely watch movies more than once.
  - haswell 3y ago
    Plenty of people watch movies more than once, and I’d prefer to not pay over and over. I buy movies that I know I’ll watch repeatedly, e.g. LOTR extended editions, Alien anthology, The Matrix, Die Hard is a Christmas movie tradition, etc.
    - TheHumanist 3y ago
      And, some people enjoy collecting movies. Same with music.
masklinn 3y ago
Stop listening to artists who don’t make music available as downloads? Not to mention the resurgence of vinyl (not that I have any interest in that personally).
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago
  Even better, skip streaming services entirely and own your music. This directly puts your money where you want it, as physical media sales increase while streaming revenue decreases.
  - masklinn 3y ago
    Streaming services can be nice to discover new artists, or get reminded of artists who dropped off of your radar.
    - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
      Yep, discovery is really the primary point. It's hard to discover new music now otherwise.
    - capableweb 3y ago
      This is what I do. Use Spotify and YouTube Music (but mostly Spotify) for discovery, keeping up with releases and previewing music, while actual listening happens locally with files purchased from Bandcamp et al. Artists that don't sell their music in this way tends to get a skip.
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        I am friends with a music band and they told me that Bandcamp is scammy and takes insane fees on digital music sold. I was surprised because I like Bandcamp as listener and thought I support musicians directly They insisted that "80% to the artist" is a lie and those special Friday promos are somehow even worse. However they said they get almost all money from physical goods sales on Bandcamp so merch is a good way to support them. Any professional artist (aka music sales is your income) can confirm?
fxtentacle 3y ago
In broadcast applications, you can ship 3D audio as a MPEG 2 Transport Stream. Because Atmos and their competitors are actually petty close to a config XML and some WAV files in the actual data contained. The XML is then transmitted as just another audio channel so actually, anything that can store multichannel audio can also store those 3D formats. It's not a technical thing, but purely a business decision.
- terminalcommand 3y ago
  I discovered SDCD recently. There are many albums mastered in 5.1 channels and they are a joy to listen to.
  - Pet_Ant 3y ago
    I have The Black Album remixed in 5.1 and it felt gimmicky and not really thought out. I know Bjork has some of her work SDCD and I could imagine it being excellent if she had a hand in it.
ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
I have no idea how you're even supposed to legitimately decode Atmos from Apple Music. Does an Apple TV support Apple Music, and if so does it deliver multichannel sound over HDMI? I've sought out some "Atmos" versions of popular music on Apple Music with my Mac, and listened with headphones through a good D/A converter, and the results are bad. Entire parts (background vocals, for example) are sometimes drastically suppressed and transients (like drum hits) are sometimes accompanied by extraneous sound. These artifacts vary widely by recording (although it's possible that they're often present but I only discern them on songs I know well).
- LeoPanthera 3y ago
  > Does an Apple TV support Apple Music, and if so does it deliver multichannel sound over HDMI? Yes, yes. You can also connect a multichannel DAC to any Mac or iOS device.
  - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
    Thanks. I guess it makes sense that you can send it out of a Mac through a USB-C DP-to-HDMI adapter. Oh wait, I have an M1 MBP now with the restored HDMI port...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
_ZeD_ 3y ago
there's still that thing where you talk like a...
Intermernet 3y ago
You can get very cheap digital to digital audio hardware that can convert any multi-channel audio stream (DRM or otherwise) to straight multi-channel PCM. I personally, occasionally, use an RME Babyface Pro (not cheap) for this purpose, but there are many options available. You can even do this purely in software. On Windows or Linux look at Jack. On MacOS I guarantee it's available. As an aside, Atmos is generally lossy. It's actually a terrible format for music distribution. It's only popular due to marketing. Interesting video from Benn Jordan at https://youtu.be/5Dw3aKbw5Wo https://youtu.be/5Dw3aKbw5Wo
- beardedscotsman 3y ago
  Isn’t atmos not specifically multi channel as in traditional 5.1/ 7.1, but Atmos is positional sound that then generates the correct speaker positioning on the amplifier? For instance my home setup has support for 5.2.4 channels, two bass and 4 risen speakers. Additionally you can adapt the positioning of the rear speakers and the amp will adjust the audio to compensate. So you could just export atmos to a 5.1 mix, but that is not a copy of atmos tracks.
  - tomatocracy 3y ago
    Yes - Atmos has many "objects", which are effectively individual audio streams with positioning data (which can move around dynamically). The Atmos decoder then mixes these into channels for the specific speaker configuration dynamically.
PaulHoule 3y ago
I collect surround sound recordings in 5.1 DTS CD format. I have a big Sony CD changer that takes 300 discs and it is hooked up to my home theater with an SPIDF cable. Practically there is a lot of great content out there in 5.1 format, and the speaker setup for this is relatively affordable and practical. Atmos needs an insane number of speakers and the trick where they fake the height channel by bouncing it off the ceiling doesn't work everywhere: my main A/V room has a cathedral ceiling for instance. I'm not sure that the object-based model is really right for music, many of the best surround mixes for music aren't about putting an instrument in a particular place as much as they are about starting with a 2 channel mix and adding ambience. A lot of what is special about sound in space is the way sound reflects off things and and a 5.1 mix can greatly improve and literally "put you in the world's greatest concert halls". Also Atmos is being pushed for substandard environments such as headphones, smart speakers, etc. I just don't believe Atmos rendered on headphones is going sound as good as a 2-channel mix for headphones.
- alenrozac 3y ago
  It doesn't. And to make the matters worse, most of the "Atmos remakes" I listened to are utter trash and disrespect to the original sound designer/team. Some mixes bring out subtle details I haven't heard before, but in most cases even those sound like they're literally due to higher volume/different position.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    I have a Hololens 1 and the other day I made a Microsoft Edge window that was hanging in space over my wood stove (scary!) and logged into my Jellyfin and played some music. The object-based audio on the HL 1 is awesome and unlike any headphone surround system I'd seen, completely convincing. (Usually I'm like "it sounds like I have a head cold, that must mean the sound is above me") I turned my back and moved around the room and always perceived the music as coming from a point where the web browser was hanging. This isn't a great way to listen to music though because even a very modest stereo music system doesn't sound like it comes from a point but creates some feeling that it fills the space. It's great from the viewpoint of hearing an alert sound and knowing which window it came from (given that I can have a few windows open in different places of my house) but doesn't realize the reality that plain old stereo delivers.
WorldMaker 3y ago
Apple sells ALAC files for some of their Atmos encoded music and include the Atmos mix data in the ALAC file (if you can figure out how to buy rather than stream, there are some interesting dark patterns in Apple Music/iTunes Store today promoting streaming over ownership). The majority of ALAC files downloaded from Apple are alleged to be DRM-free, as well. (I have never figured out how to get iTunes Store to correctly tell me if a download will be DRM-free or not. I'd probably love pointers on how to do that, because I would probably buy more music from Apple if I was less afraid of accidental DRM, which has been the case too many times for me.) ALAC is an open-source codec supported by a number of decoders today and isn't necessarily just trapped in Apple's walled garden. (I've heard some reports that ALAC Atmos decoding/playback can even sometimes be better in non-Apple software.)
glouwbug 3y ago
Remember when we had to listen to Neil Young through the Eat Pray Love soundtrack because Neil pulled all his music from Spotify because Joe Rogan said some stuff about covid?

bleuchase 3y ago

> Maybe I'm old, but I still like to own my music. Maybe. Good idea nonetheless.

buzzy_hacker 3y ago

Even Blu Ray isn’t DRM free unfortunately. Hard to own movies at all.

usefulcat 3y ago
True, but it's not like you have to rip it every time you watch or listen to it. And even if you do need to rip it again, it's not like they can go back and re-encrypt the data on a physical disc that you possess.
LeoPanthera 3y ago
While true, the DRM has been long broken, so I don't mind buying them because making an unencrypted rip is trivial.
- compsciphd 3y ago
  actually, strong disagree, bluray drm is just as broken as streaming "widevine" (or other) drm. neither has been cracked, the algorithms are just well understood and in both cases people have figured out how to exfiltrate the keys needed from devices with them. in practice, its a very similar set of technical steps for both. this is distinguished from DVDs where one can brute force it without starting with a key. the only distinguishing thing between bluray and streaming drm is an end user simplicity thing, but thats more of a "product" / end user technical ability distinction than anything else.
- lloeki 3y ago
  I own blurays that a) can't be played in any of my physical nor software players anymore (players flat out reject it ever since their decryption keys got updated, which I did to play other blurays that needed the update; physically they're fine, everything points to encryption-level errors) and b) can be decrypted but it takes ages and ludicrous amounts of space to rip + reencoding properly is a very manual process (back of the envelope calculation told me ripping my small collection would take several years) It's so outstandingly unpractical that I consider that "unplayable". It certainly is for the layperson. So I've turned to getting these from "that other source" and keeping the blurays as tokens of ownership.
  - compsciphd 3y ago
    theres little reason to transcode a bluray. an 8TB disk can hold 200+ 1:1 bluray images. it costs ~$100ish on the low end for a usb drive (i.e. very minor price relative to cost of buying all the discs originally). therefore its just an issue of time. If one can decrypt 1 a day (say overnight to not waste ones time babysitting it) thats a few hundred a year (not a small collection imo). and if one can do more (say kick off one before going to work, kick off one when come home before eating dinner + the one overnight) one has now passed 1K discs a year (+a few hundred in hard drive storage needs)
    - lloeki 3y ago
      800+ movies at 40GB a pop and we're looking at around 32TB. That is not including shows, which run over multiple discs. Movies can be sourced second hand (or sometimes even new if you wait a bit) for around 5€, for 800 that's 4K total. 8TB is more like 150€ around here, closer to 200 if one goes CMR. Adding a 4 (or 8 to add shows) disk enclosure to that significantly adds to the bill, which tallies around 1k, and double that if you add redundancy for ZFS to repair bitrot which at these scales starts to statistically matter. But even then, 1k is certainly not minor compared to bluray price. $/byte will inevitably come down, but we're still quite a few years away from crossing such a rounding error threshold. Re-encoding cuts that down by a factor of 5 to 10 with minimal impact on quality.
zirgs 3y ago
Why would you want to own a movie? I rarely watch movies more than once.
- haswell 3y ago
  Plenty of people watch movies more than once, and I’d prefer to not pay over and over. I buy movies that I know I’ll watch repeatedly, e.g. LOTR extended editions, Alien anthology, The Matrix, Die Hard is a Christmas movie tradition, etc.
  - TheHumanist 3y ago
    And, some people enjoy collecting movies. Same with music.

masklinn 3y ago

Stop listening to artists who don’t make music available as downloads? Not to mention the resurgence of vinyl (not that I have any interest in that personally).

tourmalinetaco 3y ago
Even better, skip streaming services entirely and own your music. This directly puts your money where you want it, as physical media sales increase while streaming revenue decreases.
- masklinn 3y ago
  Streaming services can be nice to discover new artists, or get reminded of artists who dropped off of your radar.
  - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
    Yep, discovery is really the primary point. It's hard to discover new music now otherwise.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    This is what I do. Use Spotify and YouTube Music (but mostly Spotify) for discovery, keeping up with releases and previewing music, while actual listening happens locally with files purchased from Bandcamp et al. Artists that don't sell their music in this way tends to get a skip.
    - throwaway290 3y ago
      I am friends with a music band and they told me that Bandcamp is scammy and takes insane fees on digital music sold. I was surprised because I like Bandcamp as listener and thought I support musicians directly They insisted that "80% to the artist" is a lie and those special Friday promos are somehow even worse. However they said they get almost all money from physical goods sales on Bandcamp so merch is a good way to support them. Any professional artist (aka music sales is your income) can confirm?

fxtentacle 3y ago

In broadcast applications, you can ship 3D audio as a MPEG 2 Transport Stream. Because Atmos and their competitors are actually petty close to a config XML and some WAV files in the actual data contained. The XML is then transmitted as just another audio channel so actually, anything that can store multichannel audio can also store those 3D formats. It's not a technical thing, but purely a business decision.

terminalcommand 3y ago
I discovered SDCD recently. There are many albums mastered in 5.1 channels and they are a joy to listen to.
- Pet_Ant 3y ago
  I have The Black Album remixed in 5.1 and it felt gimmicky and not really thought out. I know Bjork has some of her work SDCD and I could imagine it being excellent if she had a hand in it.

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago

I have no idea how you're even supposed to legitimately decode Atmos from Apple Music. Does an Apple TV support Apple Music, and if so does it deliver multichannel sound over HDMI? I've sought out some "Atmos" versions of popular music on Apple Music with my Mac, and listened with headphones through a good D/A converter, and the results are bad. Entire parts (background vocals, for example) are sometimes drastically suppressed and transients (like drum hits) are sometimes accompanied by extraneous sound. These artifacts vary widely by recording (although it's possible that they're often present but I only discern them on songs I know well).

LeoPanthera 3y ago
> Does an Apple TV support Apple Music, and if so does it deliver multichannel sound over HDMI? Yes, yes. You can also connect a multichannel DAC to any Mac or iOS device.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  Thanks. I guess it makes sense that you can send it out of a Mac through a USB-C DP-to-HDMI adapter. Oh wait, I have an M1 MBP now with the restored HDMI port...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

_ZeD_ 3y ago

there's still that thing where you talk like a...

Intermernet 3y ago

You can get very cheap digital to digital audio hardware that can convert any multi-channel audio stream (DRM or otherwise) to straight multi-channel PCM. I personally, occasionally, use an RME Babyface Pro (not cheap) for this purpose, but there are many options available. You can even do this purely in software. On Windows or Linux look at Jack. On MacOS I guarantee it's available. As an aside, Atmos is generally lossy. It's actually a terrible format for music distribution. It's only popular due to marketing. Interesting video from Benn Jordan at https://youtu.be/5Dw3aKbw5Wo https://youtu.be/5Dw3aKbw5Wo

beardedscotsman 3y ago
Isn’t atmos not specifically multi channel as in traditional 5.1/ 7.1, but Atmos is positional sound that then generates the correct speaker positioning on the amplifier? For instance my home setup has support for 5.2.4 channels, two bass and 4 risen speakers. Additionally you can adapt the positioning of the rear speakers and the amp will adjust the audio to compensate. So you could just export atmos to a 5.1 mix, but that is not a copy of atmos tracks.
- tomatocracy 3y ago
  Yes - Atmos has many "objects", which are effectively individual audio streams with positioning data (which can move around dynamically). The Atmos decoder then mixes these into channels for the specific speaker configuration dynamically.

PaulHoule 3y ago

I collect surround sound recordings in 5.1 DTS CD format. I have a big Sony CD changer that takes 300 discs and it is hooked up to my home theater with an SPIDF cable. Practically there is a lot of great content out there in 5.1 format, and the speaker setup for this is relatively affordable and practical. Atmos needs an insane number of speakers and the trick where they fake the height channel by bouncing it off the ceiling doesn't work everywhere: my main A/V room has a cathedral ceiling for instance. I'm not sure that the object-based model is really right for music, many of the best surround mixes for music aren't about putting an instrument in a particular place as much as they are about starting with a 2 channel mix and adding ambience. A lot of what is special about sound in space is the way sound reflects off things and and a 5.1 mix can greatly improve and literally "put you in the world's greatest concert halls". Also Atmos is being pushed for substandard environments such as headphones, smart speakers, etc. I just don't believe Atmos rendered on headphones is going sound as good as a 2-channel mix for headphones.

alenrozac 3y ago
It doesn't. And to make the matters worse, most of the "Atmos remakes" I listened to are utter trash and disrespect to the original sound designer/team. Some mixes bring out subtle details I haven't heard before, but in most cases even those sound like they're literally due to higher volume/different position.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  I have a Hololens 1 and the other day I made a Microsoft Edge window that was hanging in space over my wood stove (scary!) and logged into my Jellyfin and played some music. The object-based audio on the HL 1 is awesome and unlike any headphone surround system I'd seen, completely convincing. (Usually I'm like "it sounds like I have a head cold, that must mean the sound is above me") I turned my back and moved around the room and always perceived the music as coming from a point where the web browser was hanging. This isn't a great way to listen to music though because even a very modest stereo music system doesn't sound like it comes from a point but creates some feeling that it fills the space. It's great from the viewpoint of hearing an alert sound and knowing which window it came from (given that I can have a few windows open in different places of my house) but doesn't realize the reality that plain old stereo delivers.

WorldMaker 3y ago

Apple sells ALAC files for some of their Atmos encoded music and include the Atmos mix data in the ALAC file (if you can figure out how to buy rather than stream, there are some interesting dark patterns in Apple Music/iTunes Store today promoting streaming over ownership). The majority of ALAC files downloaded from Apple are alleged to be DRM-free, as well. (I have never figured out how to get iTunes Store to correctly tell me if a download will be DRM-free or not. I'd probably love pointers on how to do that, because I would probably buy more music from Apple if I was less afraid of accidental DRM, which has been the case too many times for me.) ALAC is an open-source codec supported by a number of decoders today and isn't necessarily just trapped in Apple's walled garden. (I've heard some reports that ALAC Atmos decoding/playback can even sometimes be better in non-Apple software.)

glouwbug 3y ago

Remember when we had to listen to Neil Young through the Eat Pray Love soundtrack because Neil pulled all his music from Spotify because Joe Rogan said some stuff about covid?