Apple Music - Lossless Atmos Playback?

[marcb]

It has nothing to do with me or my power (huge thanks for more power, lol), but it does have everything to do with everyone wanting higher bitrate/lossless Atmos needing to ask for it.

Simply put, it's a numbers game. The more people ask, the higher the visibility of the request, and the better our chances. If no one asks, then how do they know customers actually want something more?

I'll politely agree to disagree- they will actually do it when enough customers demand it. Meeting needs and delivering features are the basics to growing any business.

So I stand by my original comment- If you want a feature, ask for it. The feedback site or support are great mechanisms. Otherwise it's practically useless to complain here at QQ about not having what you want if you are never willing to ask.

It’s not practically useless to complain here at QQ. It’s completely useless - other than perhaps for cathartic purposes.

You’re not asking for some new little feature or minor bug fix. You’re asking the world's most valuable corporation to change a fundamental component of its whole spatial audio model in which it invested millions of dollars and years in designing.

Yes, it is a numbers game. I’m of the belief, if anything, dozens of QQers (out of 88 million Apple Music subscribers) politely requesting lossless surround is just doing some market research for Apple…but not in the positive way you imagine. Apple will ultimately make a decision to implement lossless surround based on broad market research and technical feasibility, not on some customer service emails.

But it’s a free country...

 

[sjcorne]

It’s not practically useless to complain here at QQ. It’s completely useless - other than perhaps for cathartic purposes.

Be that as it may, complaining about other members’ complaints here on QQ probably isn’t all that productive either

 

[FooBarFoo]

It’s not practically useless to complain here at QQ. It’s completely useless - other than perhaps for cathartic purposes.

You’re not asking for some new little feature or minor bug fix. You’re asking the world's most valuable corporation to change a fundamental component of its whole spatial audio model in which it invested millions of dollars and years in designing.

Yes, it is a numbers game. I’m of the belief, if anything, dozens of QQers (out of 88 million Apple Music subscribers) politely requesting lossless surround is just doing some market research for Apple…but not in the positive way you imagine. Apple will ultimately make a decision to implement lossless surround based on broad market research and technical feasibility, not on some customer service emails.

But it’s a free country...

There are many ways to tackle this.

Moving to another codec would be a seismic shift.100% agreed.

However... If it was still lossy with a significantly higher bitrate, it would take a lot less to implement (other than server storage and bandwidth) and there would likely be a noticeable improvement (less loss).

Sometimes perfection is the enemy of significantly better.

As for feedback, I'm assuming less than .0001% of that 88 million provide anything valuable back to them, or any vendor for that matter. So it's not playing the lottery- it's more like a bingo hall, lol.

A few hundred responses may be enough to get visibility.

Many folks here have asked for fixes and we have received those in updates. Correlation is not causation, unless the mapping of the two is REALLY close. (Which in this case, it seems to be).

I get it- consumer activism isn't for everyone and a good portion of the world lives in a free country- do what you want. My point is what do you lose other than 5 minutes of time?

And I'm curious- what do you believe the negatives are? That they will drop multichannel streaming? Doubtful, with the massive investment and competition supporting it.

How we ask matters. Again, this goes to the polite part- Here is what I sent... I didn't complain about what they offer, but asked for it to have parity with stereo.

"Feature request- lossless or higher bitrate multichannel music

Lossless stereo has been a welcome inclusion to Apple Music. However, one challenge is that comparing lossless recordings to spatial audio recordings clearly shows some of the limits of fidelity in multichannel and Atmos recordings, which are still streamed using a lossy codec at a lower bitrate. Streaming multichannel and Atmos music has been a showcase feature of Apple Music that would greatly benefit from a higher fidelity option, as offered for stereo recordings.

Is there any way to support lossless Atmos or lossy at a higher bitrate?"

That's it.

Blah blah blah- something my parents told me about flies and honey. Anyway, I don't see a negative in many people asking, but if you think this is seriously detrimental, please share why.

 

[cdheer]

I don't think it's harmful whatsoever, but I do think it's important to be realistic with our expectations.

What you're really battling is: will Apple either increase revenue or cut costs by doing so? Well, we know they won't cut costs; you're asking them to, if nothing else, greatly increase their bandwidth costs. Sure, it'd differentiate them from competitors, but enough such that they'd make the money back and then some? I'm not convinced, but I'm guessing only Apple could really say.

 

[FooBarFoo]

I don't think it's harmful whatsoever, but I do think it's important to be realistic with our expectations.

What you're really battling is: will Apple either increase revenue or cut costs by doing so? Well, we know they won't cut costs; you're asking them to, if nothing else, greatly increase their bandwidth costs. Sure, it'd differentiate them from competitors, but enough such that they'd make the money back and then some? I'm not convinced, but I'm guessing only Apple could really say.

Fair, and agreed. Let's set an expectation to level set. The expectation is we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by asking. The bandwidth costs and storage costs are likely a rounding error, so thats on them to decide if its worth it to have the best atmos experience on any platform.

Lets not forget the issues / features we have asked for and submitted


1. Gapless playback fix - fixed, broken, fixed
2. Left channel playback bug- fixed
3. Improved Atmos soundstage- new renderer- fixed (Feature)
4. 10db volume drop-off- fixed

I'm not saying that the odds will always in our favor, but don't forget- this has only been out for less than a year and it's not a bad track record. Not bad at all. As with any product, the key is what features are attractive to consumers. The best atmos experience is a differentiator that any vendor would be proud to market. Simply adding a higher lossy bitrate to the new renderer might be a winning combination.

 

[cdheer]

The bandwidth costs and storage costs are likely a rounding error

Not even remotely. Bandwidth costs real, real money.

 

[FooBarFoo]

Tips and Tricks, huh?

I know, massive derail. Sorry about that.

Here are some tips for my transgression... I think I shared a few before but I found a few more

If you need to reboot your ATV, hold the Back and TV buttons on the Gen2, or Home and TV on Gen1. Works from Harmony, ONLY if you are bluetooth paired

If you missed some dialog in a movie or show- Press the microphone and "What did he just say?" It will rewind about 10 secs and temporarily turn on closed captioning. You can also say "Who stars in this?"or "What should I watch?"

Menu button- double click to start the screensaver, triple click to get accessibility functions

Press the play/Pause button to shift when typing passwords or searches

If you are using a bluetooth keyboard, function keys have uses:

F3 App Switcher
F4 Home
F7 Rewind
F8 Play/Pause (also spacebar)
F9 Fast forward
F11 Volume down
F12 Volume up

Not even remotely. Bandwidth costs real, real money.

You may be right if we are talking about your wallet or mine, but you're not putting it in the proper perspective...

Apple reports first quarter results

The Company posted quarterly revenue of $117.2 billion...

More perspective: We are talking about a few hundred albums at 2-3x the size, in a catalog of 10 million albums.

Any way you cut it, its still a rounding error, any way you parse it....

 

[cdheer]

You may be right if we are talking about your wallet or mine, but you're not putting it in the proper perspective...

Apple reports first quarter results

The Company posted quarterly revenue of $117.2 billion...

More perspective: We are talking about a few hundred albums at 2-3x the size, in a catalog of 10 million albums.

Any way you cut it, its still a rounding error, any way you parse it....

I mean, OK, but that's still a meaningless statement. How much revenue the entire company generates is immaterial. We're talking about a specific product or service, which (as this is how pretty much every corporation is run, with few exceptions) must have its own P/L. So again, unless Apple thinks that by doing so they'll actually increase AM's profit margin, it's unlikely to happen.

Streaming Atmos tends to be, what, 768kbps? TrueHD is 6mbps. So that's not 2x or 3x; that's 8x. And again, I suspect you are wildly underestimating what commercial bandwidth costs.

 

[FooBarFoo]

I mean, OK, but that's still a meaningless statement. How much revenue the entire company generates is immaterial. We're talking about a specific product or service, which (as this is how pretty much every corporation is run, with few exceptions) must have its own P/L. So again, unless Apple thinks that by doing so they'll actually increase AM's profit margin, it's unlikely to happen.

Streaming Atmos tends to be, what, 768kbps? TrueHD is 6mbps. So that's not 2x or 3x; that's 8x. And again, I suspect you are wildly underestimating what commercial bandwidth costs.

Us going back and forth about whether a corporation else sees value in an ask is a waste of time. Also, neither of us know the actual rates they pay for storage or bandwidth, so it's another useless argument. The point I was trying to make is that there is ample cash if they decide to do so.

Ask, and let them decide. Or don't, but then don't complain about what currently exists.

That is my point. We have a good record of getting what we have asked for and nothing to lose by doing so.

Like I stated before, why does it have to be lossless to actually be better? 2x or 3x the existing lossy bitrate should be enough for noticeable fidelity improvements, the same way doubling or tripling the bitrate on an mp3 sounded better.

 

[cdheer]

Us going back and forth about whether a corporation else sees value in an ask is a waste of time.

I dunno about that. Obviously it's all just speculation (as is this entire conversation), but there are certain things that we can reason.

Also, neither of us know the actual rates they pay for storage or bandwidth, so it's another useless argument.

I don't know the actual rates, but at least when it comes to bandwidth (a bigger cost than storage), I have an awfully good idea. It's what I do for a living. Commercial bandwidth with SLAs, etc., is very, very expensive.

The point I was trying to make is that there is ample cash if they decide to do so.

I don't disagree, but as I've argued, I don't think that's the determining factor.

 

[sjcorne]

Owning the REAL DEAL, IMO, is MUCH MORE preferable!

“BD~A” technically isn’t even the real deal, TrueHD encoding reduces the file size around ten times from the ADM master

 

[Owen Smith]

“BD~A” technically isn’t even the real deal, TrueHD encoding reduces the file size around ten times from the ADM master

Dolby TrueHD is a lossless encoding, so by definition nothing has been lost regardless of the file sizes. Audio workstations don't work with lossless compressed files because to constantly decode and re-encode would be too slow. It's got nothing to do with audio quality.

 

[riskylogic]

“BD~A” technically isn’t even the real deal, TrueHD encoding reduces the file size around ten times from the ADM master

Right. I think comparing TrueHD to streaming is analogous to DTS to Dolby Digital. Yes the former sounds much better in both cases, but it's not even CD quality. That said, Atmos is encoding objects rather than channels so if there are fewer objects than channels it comes out a little bit ahead.

 

[Owen Smith]

Right. I think comparing TrueHD to streaming is analogous to DTS to Dolby Digital. Yes the former sounds much better in both cases, but it's not even CD quality. That said, Atmos is encoding objects rather than channels so if there are fewer objects than channels it comes out a little bit ahead.

Dolby TrueHD is lossless, it is exactly the same as DTS HD Master Audio or multi channel LPCM if the same sampling rate and bit depth is used. There may be some issues with TrueHD having meta data that messes about with things like dialogue normalisation, but that doesn't make it lossy.

 

[riskylogic]

Dolby TrueHD is lossless, it is exactly the same as DTS HD Master Audio or multi channel LPCM if the same sampling rate and bit depth is used. There may be some issues with TrueHD having meta data that messes about with things like dialogue normalisation, but that doesn't make it lossy.

"Lossless" is a relative term. I've never seen an LPCM Atmos file. I think the gold standard for Atmos is tarnished relative to what you usually get for stereo or 5.1.

 

[sjcorne]

I've never seen an LPCM Atmos file.

I guess that'd be an ADM master? But they're too large to distribute (average 1-2 GB per song) and only playable through the Dolby Renderer app.

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

I guess that'd be an ADM master? But they're too large to distribute (average 1-2 GB per song) and only playable through the Dolby Renderer app.

Nothing is too large to distribute, it's more about what the consumer can actually play
Although, I think I probably have a much higher tolerance for absurdly large file sizes compared to most normal people.

 

[sjcorne]

Nothing is too large to distribute, it's more about what the consumer can actually play
Although, I think I probably have a much higher tolerance for absurdly large file sizes compared to most normal people.

It's just not realistic to expect users at home to purchase the Dolby Renderer purely for listening purposes (cool as it is to see a visual representation of the objects!). Getting TrueHD files to play back properly is difficult enough for some folks. The difference between an ADM and TrueHD encode of the same material is for the most part negligible, check out the height channel samples in the article below:
https://immersiveaudioalbum.com/open-letter-the-case-for-hi-res-dolby-atmos-digital-downloads/

 

[cdheer]

"Lossless" is a relative term.

I'm sorry; what?

 

[Owen Smith]

"Lossless" is a relative term. I've never seen an LPCM Atmos file. I think the gold standard for Atmos is tarnished relative to what you usually get for stereo or 5.1.

Lossless is not a relative term. At a given sampling frequency and bit depth, any codec is either lossless or it isn't. There is no half way house.