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IOS16 Ear Scan is no gimmick!
- Thread starter paulchiu
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I just did the calibration and listened to some spatial tracks... No front back, just side to side. It sounds nice, but it isn't surround by any stretch of the imagination. I have a lot of this music in 5.1 and know what the surround mix sounds like. This ain't it. I think this ear scan is a placebo device.
Without scanning shoulders, head and ear canal, this isn't an HRTF calibration. It's a gimmick.
Without scanning shoulders, head and ear canal, this isn't an HRTF calibration. It's a gimmick.
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Try listening to Blackpink's Pink Venom track on either Apple Music lossless or Youtube straight.
Rotate your head 180 degrees.
Now that you added HRTF. I will share that for over 2 decades, I have enthusiastically searched for refined out of the head headphone experiences. First, a British company came out with the Smyth Research Realiser A8. (There were never any A1 or A7)
It includes some mikes and software for the user to measure and establish personal HRTF figures for the environment they’re in. With their personal gear, room dimensions, and distances from source to each ear.
It was revolutionary for audiophiles in the late 1990s - early 00s when this became available for sale. I was one of the early clients. I went around recording different HRTF at churches. Concert halls, recital rooms, etc.
But there were a lot that was lacking.
Later Smyth remedied a few of the issues with the A16. I bought the 8th unit off the line. It provided adjustments for ear differences and now works with ATMOS and other current systems.
Still, what is lacking is an actual scan of the outer ear. Head and middle ear.
Where this Apple gimmick venture into is a further addition to the quest for the ultimate headphone experience. One that allow for any headphones to provide the sound of music in a room, a concert hall, or any place where music is performed.
Those Smyth gear are north of $5,000 base and add-ons can take it over $8,500. Then, you need to get high end headphones and amplifiers. Easily topping $15 to $20K.
Apple in their efforts is bringing audiophile sound reproduction for the masses at reasonable prices.
I hope they continue improving.
Nothing played through AirPods are lossless. They don't support lossless, and they are the only things that support spatial audio.
Lossless is as useless as teats on a bull hog. High data rate lossy and 16/44.1 are completely transparent. Any superiority of lossless is due to mastering, not the file format.
Shut Down with Airpods Max is thumping. Wishing Airpods Pro 2 has 90% of that bass.
Spatial audio for music sucks but Spatial audio for video and movies is where i hear and see the difference night and day, I’m weird i will use my AirPods Pro for movie content but i will use my shure’s aonic for music, granted some people like the music 360 and all around of them but for me it’s unrealisti, the whole gimmick is pretending that you are in the middle of a live recording of a song with instruments all around you but in reality in a concert the entire band is playing in front of you, hence why i don’t really care about dolby atmos in music but i do care about spatial audio in movies, you can hear the difference night and day for sure!!
Surround music isn't necessarily music all around you. The quality of anything depends on the mix. A really good mono mix can sound better than a multichannel mix. Multichannel, in particular Atmos can add depth to the front soundstage. It isn't just front/back. It can create a sound field that can place a sound object anywhere in the room. That way you can hear that the drums are behind the vocalist, even though they are both coming from the center.
That said, Spatial Audio is NOT the same as multichannel sound with speakers. It is absolutely nothing like the presentation that speakers give. It's just potting right and left as you turn your head with a little delay on the middle. It may work OK for TV, but it's still a gimmick.
That said, Spatial Audio is NOT the same as multichannel sound with speakers. It is absolutely nothing like the presentation that speakers give. It's just potting right and left as you turn your head with a little delay on the middle. It may work OK for TV, but it's still a gimmick.
Amen to that! LOL. Gotta have something to sell the new gadget, though. Think of all the people who will get a great pair of Air Pods or Air Pods Pros when the gotta have it gadgeteers get the latest and greatest.
Directionality is not really based on the shape of the exterior ear. The brain determines directionality by detecting the phase shift that occurs in the sound waves between the time the signal arrives at either the right or left ear firstly and the other ear secondly. With low frequencies, there isn't enough of a phase shift for the brain to detect because the wavelengths of low frequency signals are too long. This is why we have difficulty discerning the location of a low frequency sound source (like a subwoofer reproducing sub 100 Hz signals). I have to admit that I can hear a difference after scanning my ear shape. But, I'm still skeptical as to how much this is incorporated in the "magic" of this spatial personalization feature. I think it would be interesting to listen to spatial recordings on another individual's device where they had scanned their own ears in conjunction with their Air Pods Pro. I suspect that as with all things Apple it is a marketing stunt intended to fuel sales of the newer grossly over priced Air Pods Pro.
Yes that is something I didn’t mention in my comment. The brain can tell which ear sound reaches first even if it’s a sub-millisecond difference. However it also uses volume and frequency-change to determine the direction, both of which are affected by the shape of your ears.
Here’s a video by SmarterEveryDay explaining this.