bigcountry

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  • Spotify HiFi one-ups Apple Music with lossless audio streams

    bigcountrybigcountry
    I think about this for a living (audio engineer). 

    Music that is properly Mastered for iTunes (which means encoded in 256kbps HE-AAC format from at least a 48 kHz/24-bit master), is, for 99.99% of listeners listening to 99.9% of recorded music - indistinguishable from lossless-compressed audio. 

    There is a lot of music on all streaming services that is encoded from a 16/44.1 uncompressed source (i.e. CD), or in some cases, from a lossy-compressed original. It results in audible artifacts that most people can readily identify, once they know what to listen for, especially in the latter-case. This is why people say that streamed music sounds terrible. Because a lot of it really does sound bad. 

    It's only the most dynamic and delicate acoustic music that benefits in a meaningful way from lossless compression. And even then, only at 24-bit word depth. 16-bit lossless recordings will sound virtually identical to properly encoded compressed recordings except on the most high-end reproduction systems. There's a reason Apple has not gone down that road. If implemented widely, it would add significant overhead to their services infrastructure with next-to-no tangible benefit, at least outside of marketing. Only a small percentage of listeners even care. 

    If a listener wants better sound quality, they should invest in better headphones or speakers. That makes a much more significant difference in the listening experience when compared to splitting hairs over encoding.

    What I would like to see Apple do, if we're going to cater to a minority of listeners, is support multi-channel audio (at least 5.1 surround) for music. There is no good delivery system, at least for the masses, in place right now. 
    d_2DogpersonibillITGUYINSDFileMakerFellerapplecoredPascalxx

  • Apple Car arriving in 2025 at the earliest, says Ming-Chi Kuo

    bigcountrybigcountry
    Apple had their shot to buy Tesla back in 2016, according to Elon Musk. He was offering the company for pennies on the dollar compared to Tesla's current valuation. Apple chose not to, yet have been poaching Tesla people ever since. Apple must have been holding quite a hand for Tim Cook to refuse to even meet with Musk. It seems unlikely to me that Apple would be that far out from introducing SOMETHING that came from Project Titan.
    Scot1elijahgGeorgeBMacwatto_cobra

  • Apple debuts new $5999 Mac Pro with up to 28-core Xeon processors

    bigcountrybigcountry
    The funny part is that in spite of all of the attention lavished on “pro” users, the latest, lowly iMac will still have the highest single-thread performance in the entire Mac line. For pro audio, where modern DAW workflows demand minimal I/O latency and can only do so on a single processor core, single thread performance is the overriding concern, and where very little improvement has occurred over the last ten years. So frustrating.
    fastasleepdysamoria

  • Apple buys streaming analytics firm Asaii to bolster Apple Music recommendations, report s...

    bigcountrybigcountry
    I may be an outlier, but whatever I’m in the mood to listen to has little to do with genre and more to do with objective qualities - like tempo, instrumentation, dynamics, etc. Apple Music, even still, recommends music with genre as the overall guiding criteria. Just because I like to listen to a Gregory Porter ballad doesn’t mean I want to listen Michael Bublé sing “Sway” next.  I think it would be awesome if there was a big project out there to attach metadata to every song in a streaming company’s catalog by its objective criteria. And then I could search for a song that meets a certain set of criteria. Like a song in 3/4 time at less than 70bpm in the key of E with bass, saxophone, drums and guitar.  What? Most people don’t listen to music like that? Dangit...
    baconstangGeorgeBMac

  • The new Mac Pro might get Intel's new 28-core 5 GHz Xeon processor

    bigcountrybigcountry
    All this performance also means it generates a lot of heat, with Intel stating it has a Thermal Design Point (TDP)[...]

    Intel also introduced three processors under the 9th-generation masthead[...] It is unlikely that Apple will be interested in these three processors, due to the trio all having a TDP of 95W, making it too hot for the iMac range[...]

    Per Intel ARK, the i7-7700K in the current iMac has a Thermal Design Power (arguably the more common usage of TDP) of 91W. This is not that far off from the 95W chips. On that basis, I think they actually may be prime candidates for the next generation of iMac. They could easily make up those 4 extra watts with a more thermally efficient GPU. 
    fastasleepthtwatto_cobra