Re:Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio
by copperx on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @08:31AM
(#27193720)
I hate the idea that everyone is going to be using 10x data needlessly. What's next, uncompressed video?
Re:Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio
by simondotau on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @10:15PM
(#27203789)
I disagree with your flat assertion of 10x.
The vast majority of Apple Music lossless audio will be CD-quality ALAC which has a variable bitrate generally between 2x and 4x that of 256kbps AAC. A small subset of music available to stream will also be "high res" with bitrates in the realm of 5x to 10x.
It also won't be "everyone" using this but rather only a small percentage of people—and within that subset, many will only choose it for a limited subset of music and in a limited subset of listening contexts. It wouldn't surprise me if lossless was chosen by fewer than 1% of consumers.
Therefore in aggregate, the increase is going to be somewhere closer to 1.1x, not 10x.
That's one way to look at it. Personally I'd say that it stops companies like Tidal (et al) from posturing as being "more high end" based on these dubious and mostly bullshit claims around lossless and high-res audio formats.
Hopefully the outcome will be that we'll be hearing fewer bullshit arguments about how "Tidal sounds better than Apple Music". The people who like their placebos can enjoy their placebos; the rest of us can get on with our lives.