This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply. MacStories: Yesterday, not long after Apple’s opening WWDC keynote, the company activated Spatial Audio and lossless playback for Apple Music. The company followed up with a press release in which Zane Lowe, Apple Music’s co-head of Artist Relations and radio host, explains the new feature and how he feels Spatial Audio will affect music. They have also released a playlist showcasing the Spatial Audio feature. Some have been sharing songs they’ve found that really take advantage of the format. more Not all embedded content is displayed here. You can view the original to see embedded videos, tweets, etc.
Wow even on the phone speaker you can really notice the difference. I just listened to sugar by fall out boy and it’s a noticeable improvement, almost sounds like a different master. Definitely hearing things in this song I never have before. Excited for when this rolls out across the catalog.
Posted about this in the Fall Out Boy thread too. Couldn't believe the layers of guitar I was hearing
Yep! Thought the same about From Under The Cork Tree as well. Abbey Road also sounded way different in a good way. So many details shine through.
This is pretty cool. Reminds me of when you listen to a song to the first time stoned and you hear a bunch of things you never noticed Also, In too deep sounds so good
I need to read up more on this. Some songs I listen to say lossless, some say hi res lossless, and some say that plus Dolby atmos when playing but not all of the ones that say lossless say Dolby atmos when i play them. Is it just apple updating stuff or is it something like based on the quality of the original master that lets them do more with this technology?
I've been wondering this too. I believe every song will be lossless soon, because when given to a distribution platform, every song has to be submitted as lossless (WAV, FLAC, etc.). I *think* that Dolby Atmos albums have to be mastered or mixed specifically for it, but I'm not sure. I've noticed a few albums say they've been mastered specifically for Apple as well, but I believe they've been doing that for a while.
there is an entire Spatial Audio section on Apple Music that showcases which albums and songs have dolby atmos the new St. Vincent and Olivia Rodrigo albums sound spectacular with it, as does Chromatica
After browsing around Apple Music for the past few hours, I love the way you can hear the individual layers of instruments so much better than ever before but I think I need some time to come around on the vocals in some songs. I don’t know if it’s that they sound “too good” but at times they seem so different than the way I remember these songs such that it resembles listening to a live performance……which I guess is sort of the idea
I tried this out this morning and was blown away! My SONY WH-1000XM4 headphones have never sounded better with this new Apple Music update.
“Dance Dance” sounds WAY more TTTYG in Atmos and I can’t decide if I love it or not. It’s to the point of being so different sounding, it’s like a new recording or mix entirely. EDIT - perfect example: the end of the bridge past the “crawling into bed with me” line when Pat’s guitar is just whamming the high note, Andy’s drum fill sounds different - he has two more (tats) that mimic the guitar part I always heard. “Rat-a-tat, tat (tat-tat)” Watch the video on YouTube. Those last two drumbeats definitely are NOT there.
They used the master recordings for Sugar and Dance, which are definitely different (Dance more than Sugar).
After listening to the new features for the last day I definitely appreciate the lossless quality songs and I’m not sure how I feel about the Dolby atmos spatial audio songs. Some sound amazing but others just mess with the vocals too much IMO. I guess it might depend on how the vocals were recorded on the master but in some songs they have much too much of an echo type sound. Still really enjoying the new features .
yeah these FUCT singles sound like demos now, despite being some of the most polished pop punk recordings of that era. i can’t see this tech doing much good in retrospective sense, but i’m looking forward to hopefully being proved wrong. will need to do more digging.
Weezer's "Buddy Holly" is one example of where they tinkered with the vocals way too much and it just sounds...odd.
New Gojira is the only one that I actively dislike with Atmos, I think. Definitely sounds a little too trebbly.
I had to disable the Dolby atmos for now. It just ruined too many songs for me. I think going forward it has potential but it doesn’t work for retro fitting many of these songs with it. It’s like when the make a 3D movie, the movies made with 3D in mind will always look better than ones they retro fit. If you have unlimited data however make sure you change your settings for music to lossless because that’s definitely an improvement with no drawbacks.