cgWerks

AppleZulu said:
I would argue two things here. First, for the average consumer, audio quality is orders of magnitude better than in "the good old days." An iPhone and Apple ear buds playing AAC audio is almost infinitely better than mass-produced cassettes and LPs played back on K-mart stereo rack component sets, or cassette Walkmans or even Sony "Discmans" played back through the crappy headphones that most people had. Audio from a HomePod is also much, much better than those K-mart racks or cassette or CD boom boxes, etc. Everybody wants to compare a phone and ear buds to audiophile gear from the 70s or whatever, and that's not the right comparison. The mass-market gear is way better than the previous mass-market gear, and the audiophile stuff is way better than the audiophile stuff, too. The setup in my own den is midrange gear somewhere in between, and the lossless and Atmos music played back from my AppleTV box can sound truly great.

Audio source quality is up, though I started buying CDs in the mid 80s. But, it is true that the source quality, even on the near-perfect transmission methods is better as well.

I’m talking about the listening gear. One could get a pretty good amp at Radio Shack, or even the lower to mid stuff was pretty solid and good audio quality. Speakers varied, but I think much of that still wins out in size/volume characteristics of the speakers that are hard to match with today’s tiny speaker trend. A 3-way speaker with 15” woofer is hard to beat, even if it isn’t top-of-line. Headphones have improved a lot, but I also never tried spending $300+ on earbuds years ago (which maybe didn’t exist?).

I inherited a 17w/channel HK amp from my dad when I moved away from home (I’m not sure what it cost, but I don’t think my dad ever bought anything too expensive… I assume it was a couple hundred dollars, so mid-level at that time). The knobs got crackly, so I eventually gave it up. I should have fixed it, as I’ve owned $500-$1k ‘surround’ amps since by Kenwood, Yamaha, etc. with hundreds of watts per channel, and they were all crap compared to that old HK.

IMO, the masses today tend to listen on really poor quality speakers/headphones, unless they make the jump into more expensive stuff, as few do. My own family members listen on ear-buds that came with their phone, or even iPad/laptop speaker. We don’t even have nice ‘stereo system’ anymore, as everyone wants to listen to their own thing, and I’m the only one that cares about quality.

AppleZulu said:
Second, the 'soundstage' generated from a traditional stereo mix is in truth an even more artificial construct than something like Dolby Atmos. In fact, when stereo was initially being promoted as the new standard, many audiophiles objected to it as a weird-sounding artificial construct. Unless you're listening to acoustically recorded binaural audio through a pair of headphones, stereo does not exist in the natural world. Very few things you hear in the real world emanate from two fixed points 45 degrees to the left and right of dead center in front of you. A sound engineer blending audio between a left and right speaker to make it sound like the singer is in the center is a completely fabricated simulation. The singer was most likely recorded on a single monaural track with a single microphone. Splitting that between two speakers to center it, or a little more in one than the other to "move her around" is completely artificial. Sound engineers have gotten quite good at that, and at finding the compromises in this artificial simulation to make such things sound good even when coming from various speaker setups or in headphones, but it's always a deliberate compromise. Those engineers have to optimize a mix and master of the recording so that a single, finalized source plays back decently from an unlimited number of variables in the listener's setup. 

When setting up an Atmos-capable surround-sound home audio system, you put a microphone in the room and the system measures exactly where the speakers are placed, what the frequency response is for each speaker, and the room's acoustics. Once that's been done, a source mixed for Atmos plays back the audio optimized for your exact setup. That simulated balance between speakers is computed on-the-fly, customized to your exact setup. The same is true for playback through AirPods Pro. Those things measure how they've been placed in your ears, the shape of your ear canals, and the mix you hear is optimized for your exact listening setup and environment. 

You’re correct, it is all artificial at some level, I suppose. Maybe a better term would be simplistic (in a good way). An example, is what surround sound has done to a typical TV audio when watching a movie. You can hardly near dialog anymore, unless you have a specialized system.

The spatial stuff I’ve listened to so far (though I admit hasn’t been much) has sounded too ‘airy’ and lower quality than the typical stereo mix, right in my ears or ‘in front’ of me. Maybe that will get better over time. I suppose they are kind of playing with it right now, maybe creating exaggerated effect?

Same with surround. I’ve been in a few movie theatres where it has been pretty good. But, I’ve never heard a home system I’ve liked, and even many theatres screw it up. Thanks though for the detail, I’ll *try* to keep a more open mind.

anonconformist said:
Other than color accuracy or lack thereof, what are you presuming to judge as to whether someone is in a profession that defines the difference between a Studio Display at 5k resolution being a “need” versus a “want” anyway?

I am not a graphics artist, so perfect color accuracy isn’t vital for my typical use-case. I’ll let you guess what my use-case scenario is, by telling you this much: it can work much better than cheaper, smaller, lower-resolution monitors.

Also, as another clue: depending on what I choose to work on, color accuracy may actually be vitally important.

i just find it pretentious that someone would talk about “need” versus “want” for a solid display that’s not aimed at super high-end use-cases like movie editing with perfect color rendering for motion pictures, in the Apple realm. Apple has never aimed at the bottom of the barrel commodity pricing market in its history, from the Apple ][ onward. It’s easily argued that nobody “needs” Apple hardware, they just “want” it going by what seems to be your reasoning.

I’m not really the target market, so I care more about overall ‘real estate’. I don’t want it to be wildly off in terms of colour, but most displays aren’t any more (I actually worked for a high-end CRT company years ago… we’re not in those days any longer).

My main complaint about the Studio Display, is I guess I was hoping for a better-priced and plain display, more like an 5k iMac sans the iMac part. They also didn’t go a good job with the camera, etc. But, I’m glad it exists for the people that like it and have the budget.

I just want a good panel, and in many ways, absence of poor features are a plus (ie. if the web-cam sucks, I’d rather it not be there). I’m going to mount it on an arm, so the stand is irrelevant (yes, most stands suck). I’d also like it to have multiple inputs, which Apple usually fails at.

AppleZulu said:
… Now, the computational power of your iPhone is able to recreate that effect for any surround-sound source that was mixed for multiple surround speakers in a room. Your iPhone sorts exactly where and when the delays and echoes should be just as they enter your ear canal. As a result, you hear the playback not just as let/right, but as spatial audio, all around you.  …

Great explanation. To me, though, it sounds artificial, not natural. (It’s even a bit sickening.) Maybe that would be different in an actual professional array of speaker, or it will get better as time goes on in headphones. It sounds surreal, not like any real-world experience I’ve had in life, or live music, etc.

AppleZulu said:
… The anecdotal evidence in this comment thread suggests that most people like spatial audio, with the exception of one person who doesn't like the head-tracking feature, which is a simulated effect layered on top of spatial audio, not spatial audio itself.

I think there is more than one of us here, but I get what you’re saying. I think most consumers just tend to accepts stuff as it is, and it is a bit of a fallacy that the consumers are more than loosely controlling the market by their wallets. A lot of trends (surround sound home systems) just get forced, unless the pushback is too great (3D TVs).

robin huber said:

The few times I’ve experienced it I was stunned at how effective it was. Makes other music or audio seem quite flat by comparison. With AirPods Pro 2 in my ears, I thought the music was coming from my big HomePod stereo pair across the room. Was shocked when I pulled them out of my ears and the sound stopped. 

It is absolutely an interesting effect. My question is whether it sounds better, or just wildly different. Having it sound ‘right there’ in your ears, is IMO, better than ‘spatially’ over there across the room somewhere. As has been noted by others, maybe with a proper setup of tens of thousands of dollars, it could be pretty cool, but the average person is just going to have simulated stuff that I think once the ‘wow factor’ wears off, won’t be as good.

scampercom said:

I wouldn’t say I “hate” so-called spatial audio, I’d just say that in most cases it’s inappropriate or irrelevant to the way I listen to music. I listen—on headphones at least—because I want to hear the best mix the artist/producer is capable of, and that includes a _fixed sound field_ that plays as intended no matter what the orientation of my head is. If I want to roll around on the ground or turn around to do something else, I should be able to without the entire mix shifting. So I’d put it this way: add whatever gimmicks you want, but _always_ default them off Off, or allow me to switch them off. Not everyone wants to sit completely still to listen to music with the optimal mix.

Yes, same here. And, this is why the popularity is growing… it’s on by default. Apple has even turned it back on at least once during an update.

We always talk about ‘voting with one’s wallet’ but the industry can also force things like this. I’m not sure everyone was asking for high-quality amps to be reduced to junk, with a bunch of added ‘surround sound’ lights and whistles, but the industry kind of crammed that one as well. When you went to buy a new stereo, at least in a typical consumer electronics store, you had a choice between one piece of crap and another, for the most part.

At least we can still turn it off. For now, anyway. I wonder if it will end up impacting audio engineering such that it impacts the quality of a good stereo-mix traditional sound-stage?

charlesn said:

"Lossless audio has been a hard sell because..."

How about... because neither Apple nor Beats makes headphones or earpods that can playback Apple lossless audio. Even AirPods Max in wired mode can't play lossless. Nor can you tap into lossless audio via the iPhone's Lightning port. Also: the kind of high quality playback systems where you are most likely to hear the differences between lossless and AAC are generally not AirPlay 2 compatible. 

This ^^^
Aside from an audiophiles and a few higher-end consumer products, lossless audio is becoming more and more irrelevant. Almost no one could tell the difference anyway, and hearing capabilities aside, the number of systems anyone could tell the difference on is shrinking.