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Amazed with the sound quality of Apple Music
- Thread starter Basilfawltyone
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This doesn't totally surprise me. Symphonic music has a much greater dynamic range than rock/pop/electronic/r&b/hip hop, etc. Furthermore, most masterings of symphonic music in CD are done to preserve that dynamic range and try not to boost the EQ. Thus you end up with excellent, dynamic mixes on CD that will be tougher to replicate in a lossy format.
I think most streaming services would have an issue with symphonic music as a result, except for Tidal's lossless streams.
Anyone compare Apple Music to Spotify 320kbps? I was on Spotify and I'm on Apple and my brain is telling me Spotify sounded better even though I can't say I remember what it sounded like. I think it just thinks that because of the higher number. Anyone care to chime in?
It is because of dynamic range compression. Our brains naturally perceive louder as better sounding even though details are lost. So at first listen Spotify can sound better. However if you listed to the details in music you will find more in Apple Music/iTunes. Apple has rightly refused to participate the in loudness wars.
Here is an explanation of the phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
That was a very interesting read...it's making me think I should turn on Sound Check...
Any added DSP (EQ included) will lower the quality. Use the volume control for the best SQ.
Actually, codecs like MP3 and AAC are perfectly capable of reproducing the full dynamic range of a CD. Encoding dynamic mixes is no harder than "flat" ones. What is true though is that certain instruments used in classical music are more prone to artifacting, and artifacts sometimes are easier to pinpoint than in "wall of music"-type rock/pop music.
Using Sound Check is fine. It's just Apple's name for replay gain. What it does is to adjust the playback volume automatically based on metadata contained in the music file. It does not affect sound quality any more than using the volume control manually.
Of course, if you use software volume control this can theoretically reduce dynamic range somewhat if your output bit-depth is the same as the bit-depth of the file. So if you want to use the software controls, you should set your output bit-depth to 24 bits on your computer (assuming your DAC can handle it). If that's not possible, you're better off setting the volume to 100% and only using the knob on your amplifier to adjust volume.
I have a pair of Zik 2.0 and they aren't really very good at determining the sound quality differences between files. They are Bluetooth -which adds lossy compression on top of the lossy compression Apple is using. Their app also has many EQ settings that can affect overall sound. The settings make it easier to dial in a sound you find pleasing, but it distorts the sound of audio before it ever gets to your ears.
I haven't done any comparisons since I don't want a reason to spend another $10 a month for Tidal and I prefer having Siri integration anyway.
This is a very interesting discussion.
MP3 format has been conceived by trying to compress Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner" (original a cappella version). While it's a great piece of trivia, it ignores the fact that human voice is actually quite limited when it comes to frequencies. I haven't done my homework on how AAC has been engineered, but it wouldn't surprise me if Apple Music catered mostly to popular music consumers, ignoring the classical listeners. I listen to music on studio monitors (my setup is a home music studio), and I can't hear difference between a CD rip and 256kbps AAC. This can mean two things: 1. either I am deaf (which wouldn't be very good for someone who is trying to become a pro musician) or 2. I don't listen to the type of music that would highlight the differences.
MP3 format has been conceived by trying to compress Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner" (original a cappella version). While it's a great piece of trivia, it ignores the fact that human voice is actually quite limited when it comes to frequencies. I haven't done my homework on how AAC has been engineered, but it wouldn't surprise me if Apple Music catered mostly to popular music consumers, ignoring the classical listeners. I listen to music on studio monitors (my setup is a home music studio), and I can't hear difference between a CD rip and 256kbps AAC. This can mean two things: 1. either I am deaf (which wouldn't be very good for someone who is trying to become a pro musician) or 2. I don't listen to the type of music that would highlight the differences.
Mind, this only applies to Mastered For iTunes albums, of which I believe there is a very small percentage. It doesn't matter whether you listen to Garbage's Not Your Kind Of People or Depeche Mode's Playing The Angel via Spotify, TIDAL, iTunes download or Apple Music, they will still sound terrible, because they have been delivered to Apple and all other platforms already mastered. (Or butchered if you please.)
Well, this is a bit oversimplified. While it's true that Brandenburg reportedly used the song to tune the original encoder implementation, his PhD thesis (which laid the groundwork for MP3) was done before that. Over the years, MP3 codecs have been tested and tuned using a large variety of music (there is a huge difference between the first implementations and mature codecs such as later versions of LAME). The experiences from MP3 then went into the improvements added to AAC by the MPEG contributors, and the codec was of course extensively tested as well.
Very few (if any) people can reproducably hear differences at such a high bitrate (with the exception of certain "killer samples").
Actually Spotify and others add EVEN more dynamic range compression on top of what is already done in the master provided them in order to make their service sound louder.
To my knowledge Spotify does not apply dynamic range compression provided you turn off the option "set the same volume level for all tracks" (which is a badly implemented volume normalization function that indeed appears to reduce dynamic range).