New Dolby Atmos Streaming Polls

[HomerJAU]

Do we have any QQ member here that’s got skills in computer graphics design?

The new spatial audio streaming polls will need some nice graphics and a logo.

 

[HomerJAU]

Disclosure on costs so far:

2022-10-14: Domain registration and privacy for 2 years cost $53.80 AUD (approx $35 USD / $17.50 per year).

 

[MrSmithers]

Do we have any QQ member here that’s got skills in computer graphics design?

The new spatial audio streaming polls will need some nice graphics and a logo.

You could maybe try @Peacekeepr73 who's a pro designer and did those excellent quad labels?

 

[HomerJAU]

Update:

I’ve found a way to auto scrape Apple Music data to automate extraction of the following data for our streaming polls from the Apple Release ID only:

Artist
Title
Year
Genre
Cover image

This will almost eliminate the manual input required to populate the new poll database. Not only the initial bulk loading of existing releases we’ve been working on, but as new titles are released we’ll only have to enter the new IDs to add new releases to the database!

Thanks to all who contributed to the current release list. You will all be pleased to hear this news I’m sure!

 

[HomerJAU]

Update:

I am now running my final bulk scraping of Apple Music data after fixing some issues in my first scrape I did yesterday. For those interested the first scrape issues were:
Unicode text wasn’t being saved correctly
Some releases were not found on the US website, now scrapes from the country code linked
Songs weren’t finding the Artist name
Songs don’t have genre data (can’t fix that easily, so ‘songs’ won’t have genres. I may fix that later)

So I’ll have all the Apple Atmos releases listed in our QQ ‘Listening Now in Dolby Atmos Streaming’ thread in the initial new poll website with IDs, Artist, Title, Genre, Original Release Date, Cover Image.

Next is correlation of my Tidal release list with the Apple list. So if a release is in both only one Poll thread will exist with both Tidal ID and Apple ID.

The actual voting post will show either the Apple Player (like on QQ) or Tidal Player based on which release ID is available for the release or the user’s preference to see Apple or Tidal player if both IDs are available.

 

[LennonCobain]

Garry, curious about the Apple Music scrape process. Is it the same as the @NewSpatialAudio Twitter feed or a proprietary creation of your own? Also, is the scrape tool only capturing full albums and not “singles”? And how does the scrape tool filter out duplicates (such as individual songs appearing on multiple compilations)?

Thanks for all your work!

 

[paligap]

Count me in for $30.

 

[HomerJAU]

Garry, curious about the Apple Music scrape process. Is it the same as the @NewSpatialAudio Twitter feed or a proprietary creation of your own? Also, is the scrape tool only capturing full albums and not “singles”? And how does the scrape tool filter out duplicates (such as individual songs appearing on multiple compilations)?

Thanks for all your work!

It’s something I wrote. It uses the Apple Music ID then grabs the properties needed for the polls. I could also grab a list of tracks for each album but haven’t done that.

My scrapper works with Albums and Songs but ignores Playlists.

To get the initial list of ID I wrote another scraper to get those from users posts in the QQ thread: ‘Listening Now in Atmos Streaming…’

I will implement the scraper on the new website that will grab the Apple data for any new release added by admins. The bulk scrapper is a ‘once off’ to seed the database. I was surprised by the number of links posted in the QQ thread, over 2000!

I didn’t know about the twitter feed as I don’t use twitter, I’ll take a look later this week. (Today I’m working on my never ending bathroom reno. Floor leveller going done shortly, waterproofing tomorrow)

 

[benfolds5]

It seems that I'm a bit late for the party, but if needed, count me in for 30$

 

[pat bateman]

An idea for the polls - since height channels are obviously what sets Atmos apart from 5.1 / 7.1, in addition to voting for the overall quality of the mix, add a sub-vote for use of height channels? There are plenty of Atmos mixes that are very enjoyable, but light on the height channels.

 

[Albert Dagger]

An idea for the polls - since height channels are obviously what sets Atmos apart from 5.1 / 7.1, in addition to voting for the overall quality of the mix, add a sub-vote for use of height channels? There are plenty of Atmos mixes that are very enjoyable, but light on the height channels.

I don't agree with that. Surround mixes have to be evaluated as a whole product, not for the use of specific channels. It's like voting on quads and 5.1 mixes depending on how much the rear channels are used. Rick Wakeman's Six Wives is a mix that makes heavy use of the rears, but I would deduct points for that because it sounds unbalanced. I understand that some people prefer a discrete approach and not an immersive approach, but we can't really assess a surround mix by looking into the use of individual channels, at least in my view. If a mix is light on the height channels, there must be an artistic reason.

 

[perzon57]

An idea for the polls - since height channels are obviously what sets Atmos apart from 5.1 / 7.1, in addition to voting for the overall quality of the mix, add a sub-vote for use of height channels? There are plenty of Atmos mixes that are very enjoyable, but light on the height channels.

I agree, if there's nothing in the heights it's no Atmos in my book even if my AVC tells me so. That's why I have LED bars to monitor the height channels output.

 

[pat bateman]

I don't agree with that. Surround mixes have to be evaluated as a whole product, not for the use of specific channels. It's like voting on quads and 5.1 mixes depending on how much the rear channels are used.

I see your point, and no disrespect but I don’t think this is an apt comparison. With quad / 5.1, I’m not thinking many people are going to give a positive review of a mix that barely uses the rears since using the rears is the entire point of quad/5.1. The entire point of Atmos is height channels, otherwise it’s just another 5.1 / 7.1 release. That’s not to say like previously mentioned that an Atmos mix can’t still sound amazing with light use of the heights, but I would basically just consider it to be a nice 7.1 release.

Maybe I’m on an island here, but if I’m reading a poll about a specific album, and there is a highly rated sub-poll with people being very happy with the height utilization, I personally would be more excited about listening to it.

 

[humprof]

A compromise would be to write voting guidelines that encourage people to consider usage of height channels in their vote. And I think reviewers will already be instructed to mention their listening method & system details (e.g., 5.1.2 with upfiring speakers, 7.1.4 with overheads, AirPods Pro with head recognition, etc.).

 

[marpow]

An idea for the polls - since height channels are obviously what sets Atmos apart from 5.1 / 7.1, in addition to voting for the overall quality of the mix, add a sub-vote for use of height channels? There are plenty of Atmos mixes that are very enjoyable, but light on the height channels.

I concur. Lets take for example the recently released via Apple the Jean-Michel Jarre OXYMORE, absolutely fantastic 5.1, and come's as a Dolby Atmos signal and there is just nothing to speak of in the heights.
I would like to be able to vote on the height speaker experience.
We all now that if released with a Dolby Atmos signal, we at the very least expect to hear a good to great foundation, but it is the height speakers that bring the wow factor.

 

[HomerJAU]

I will implement the following:

When a user votes on a release I’ll add a ‘comments‘ text box to the Vote form. This will allow users to note something specific about their listening experience. Examples:

Very discrete with active heights. Track 2: ‘The Rain’ is outstanding demo material
Sounds like stereo upmix. Nothing in the height at all.
Sounds like an upmix from the old quad. Nothing in centre.
Lots of movement, especially it the heights.
Blah, blah, etc

When a user adds a ‘comment’ (it won’t be mandatory), the new web site will auto post the comment, to the same release voting thread, as a new post. That post will be from the user who voted and be editable in future by the user, just like a user‘s vote(s)

 

[humprof]

Appreciate both the ingenuity and the openness you're bringing to this project, @HomerJAU.

Re the "scrape": I was imagining that this site would be more of a curated selection of the best (and worst) in streaming-only Atmos, but I can see the argument for turning it into a sort of clearinghouse of all available albums, too. Are you thinking of implementing a tripwire mechanism like there is on QQ, where a poll doesn't become visible until it has x number of votes? If so, then maybe the initial threshold could be lower here: two reviews, or even just one. If a passionate advocate makes a case for a great mix, then I'd be interested in knowing about it. But I'm not sure I want to scroll through thousands of titles that no one feels strongly about one way or another.

 

[HomerJAU]

Thanks Michael.

This is a good time to get the website design finalised. I plan to start the website coding next week.

I was thinking (none of this exists yet, still in design phase) the startup (Home) page for the website would display a ‘nice’ Poll Summary, the default view being a table like structure listing Releases in score order (current highest first).

There will be options to go to the forums from that front page, clicking a Release would take you to that Poll thread, or clicking on a forum name would take users to that sub-forum (like QQ).

Limiting the initial Release List: (@humprof question)
I could limit that Home page view in a number of ways (feedback please):
1. Limit the initial view to 50 highest scoring releases
2. Display all Releases (in a paginated view) - highest scoring first (you can just ignore last pages)

I’m thinking this will be the main view for the website. So this view will enable all Release navigation, reporting etc:
Sort and Filter by Score, No. of Votes, Recently Added, Recently Voted’, Artist, Genre, Service , ‘My Releases’ etc (‘My Releases’ = The Releases current user has voted on)

There will be a nice easy query builder to filter by any data in the Poll database to enable any view imaginable:
Examples:
Jazz or Rock Releases I have not voted on with score > 8 added in the 60 days on Apple Music
Show all releases by users with height speakers only e.g. where users system in (5.1.4, 7.1.4 etc)

Reporting : The main view will support exporting current list (users sorted/filtered data) to pdf or excel.

Historical Data: I could also auto save the voting db poll state each day to allow any user to go back to a date and view data as it was then, or just do the auto save once a week maybe as useful, so users can look at past Poll Summaries for any week. (Feedback). That might produce some interesting historical charts.

BTW: Any thoughts on charts (graphic) that would be useful for actual votes? Releases by vote spread, user systems, etc. (Feedback please)

THX

 

[HomerJAU]

Update: I haven‘t touched this project since 21st Oct. Finishing my bathroom renovation and other commitments. I’m pretty much finished on those, just another 2 or 3 days over next week or so to complete all that.

My plan is to start the new Poll Website coding tomorrow then attempt to get that running for initial beta testing for those who have donated asap, probably a couple of weeks work. I’m hoping to have the website running by 1st December but will post more updates here as I reach my milestones.

Still no graphics for the website, I did get a PM offering to help out but I never got a reply back.

 

[ted_b]

I've committed on this thread, but where do we actually donate? I see you want some asap.
Thx
Ted