Article: Using Apple Music as Your Entry to Immersive Audio

[111MilesToGo]

Yes, strange indeed. Even more:

- All track transitions stuttered when I played them for the first time, on the 5G cell network.

- Closed the Apple Music App and opened it again.

- Then, still in the same location outside, I repeated the same transitions several times. Some do play fine now - I vaguely would suppose the app is reading from a storage buffer left after it got closed. But other transitions keep stuttering repeatedly - no idea.

- Remark: I did not download those albums to the iPhone, just kept streaming from cell.

 

Whatever Apple‘s secrets are behind this and so much else of what they do …

[bobfa]

I have no issues with Gapless, either.   Just for the fun of it.  Reboot your phone and play dark side of the moon out of the speaker on the phone.  Then add other hardware and try again.

 

 

[ksalno]

This article got me interested in doing some experiments today. I’ve been ripping Immersive music from BluRay and downloading MCH (mostly 5.1) from Native DSD for a while. But this article got me interested in streaming, so I thought I’d try it today. I have a theater configured with 11.6.8 speakers that already has a last year’s Apple TV 4K and an Amazon FireTV cube (2nd gen). Both devices are connected to a Trinnov 32 and the room has been professionally calibrated, so I have no need for a PC or Mac for room correction DSP. I signed up for a trial of both Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited.

 

I tried Amazon first. Content choices were not great but I found some Dolby Atmos tagged music and tried it. The Trinnov told me I was receiving a Dolby Digital bitstream at a sample rate of 48KHz and a bitrate of a little over 700K. It sounded okay and the Trinnov showed it was exercising most of my surround and top speakers, but I wasn’t as impressed as I am when listening to 5.1 DSD via Roon (downsampled to 176.4KHz by Roon for the Trinnov DACs, which can only handle up to 192Khz. 

 

I then tried Apple Music. If I stuck to music that was tagged Dolby Atmos, the Trinnov was showing it was receiving Dolby Atmos/TrueHD, still bit streaming at 48KHz. Bitrate was significantly higher at about 12.8Mhz. I’ve read that you can’t get TrueHD from Apple Music with an Apple TV, so I found this a bit puzzling. If it isn’t bit perfect TrueHD, it’s doing a good job of fooling the Trinnov. Sound from Apple was much more immersive and clean sounding, so at least they are putting that extra bandwidth to good purpose. 

 

I wasn’t crazy about either service in terms of titles available but I’m going to cancel Amazon Music for now and stick with Apple for a month or two, so I have more time to learn more about Apple Music and how to more easily find Classical or Jazz albums remixed in TrueHD.

[The Computer Audiophile]

7 minutes ago, ksalno said:

This article got me interested in doing some experiments today. I’ve been ripping Immersive music from BluRay and downloading MCH (mostly 5.1) from Native DSD for a while. But this article got me interested in streaming, so I thought I’d try it today. I have a theater configured with 11.6.8 speakers that already has a last year’s Apple TV 4K and an Amazon FireTV cube (2nd gen). Both devices are connected to a Trinnov 32 and the room has been professionally calibrated, so I have no need for a PC or Mac for room correction DSP. I signed up for a trial of both Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited.

 

I tried Amazon first. Content choices were not great but I found some Dolby Atmos tagged music and tried it. The Trinnov told me I was receiving a Dolby Digital bitstream at a sample rate of 48KHz and a bitrate of a little over 700K. It sounded okay and the Trinnov showed it was exercising most of my surround and top speakers, but I wasn’t as impressed as I am when listening to 5.1 DSD via Roon (downsampled to 176.4KHz by Roon for the Trinnov DACs, which can only handle up to 192Khz. 

 

I then tried Apple Music. If I stuck to music that was tagged Dolby Atmos, the Trinnov was showing it was receiving Dolby Atmos/TrueHD, still bit streaming at 48KHz. Bitrate was significantly higher at about 12.8Mhz. I’ve read that you can’t get TrueHD from Apple Music with an Apple TV, so I found this a bit puzzling. If it isn’t bit perfect TrueHD, it’s doing a good job of fooling the Trinnov. Sound from Apple was much more immersive and clean sounding, so at least they are putting that extra bandwidth to good purpose. 

 

I wasn’t crazy about either service in terms of titles available but I’m going to cancel Amazon Music for now and stick with Apple for a month or two, so I have more time to learn more about Apple Music and how to more easily find Classical or Jazz albums remixed in TrueHD.

Thanks for the post @ksalno

 

Your Trinnov is being fooled. It’s all DD+. 
 

In my experience, Apple is the only way to go for immersive audio. 

[JoeWhip]

My Anthem’s panel shows Dolby48 for both forms of Atmos whether from my Apple TV+ or my 4K Blu ray player. I would not be surprised if the read out on my iPad for the Anthem is a little more detailed on that front. Will have to check that out later.

[bbosler]

21 hours ago, ksalno said:

If it isn’t bit perfect TrueHD, it’s doing a good job of fooling the Trinnov

I have a Trinnov 16 and everything Atmos (True HD and DD+) is identified as TrueHD. I don't think it is getting fooled, I  think the Trinnov software just  doesn't have an option for displaying anything except True HD. It sees Atmos encoding and that triggers it to display below since that it is the only Atmos display option... Apple added Atmos in 2021 while Trinnov added Atmos decoding years before that so may not have anticipated DD+ streaming....  at least that seems to me like a reasonable explanation. 

 

[jkelly]

Bob,

Will this work for a starter set up?

 

I have a M1 Mac Mini and a Topping DM7 8 Ch. dac,

and a 5.1 HT system.

Can I connect the Mini to the dac and run a 5.1 mix from Apple Spatial

out the dac to the 5.1 line-in inputs of the AV receiver for 5.1 music playback?

 

Do I need any software to define the 5.1 mix?

 

TY.

Jeff

 

[bobfa]

4 minutes ago, jkelly said:

Bob,

Will this work for a starter set up?

 

I have a M1 Mac Mini and a Topping DM7 8 Ch. dac,

and a 5.1 HT system.

Can I connect the Mini to the dac and run a 5.1 mix from Apple Spatial

out the dac to the 5.1 line-in inputs of the AV receiver for 5.1 music playback?

 

Do I need any software to define the 5.1 mix?

 

TY.

Jeff

 

Just use AudioMidi on the Mac to configure the DAC channels to match your 5.1 system inputs.

[ksalno]

2 hours ago, bbosler said:

I have a Trinnov 16 and everything Atmos (True HD and DD+) is identified as TrueHD. I don't think it is getting fooled, I  think the Trinnov software just  doesn't have an option for displaying anything except True HD. It sees Atmos encoding and that triggers it to display below since that it is the only Atmos display option... Apple added Atmos in 2021 while Trinnov added Atmos decoding years before that so may not have anticipated DD+ streaming....  at least that seems to me like a reasonable explanation. 

 

 

Thanks. So, does that also mean the Apple Music bitstream is NOT 12.8 Mbps? Therefore, the actually streaming quality may not be any better/different than what Amazon Unlimited Dolby Atmos is offering?

[The Computer Audiophile]

29 minutes ago, ksalno said:

 

Thanks. So, does that also mean the Apple Music bitstream is NOT 12.8 Mbps? Therefore, the actually streaming quality may not be any better/different than what Amazon Unlimited Dolby Atmos is offering?

The bitstream is definitely not 12.8 Mbps. 
 

The quality of the stream may be different based on the encoding and renderer. 

[bobfa]

I have never tried to look at the data rates for ATMOS file delivery.  I can imagine that the files full of objects are non-linear in size.

[DigiPete]

Check my:

The €200 Atmos system - Headphone with head tracker

A price reasonable headphone option if you have an Apple scilicon Mac and Apple Music sub.

[bbosler]

12 hours ago, ksalno said:

Thanks. So, does that also mean the Apple Music bitstream is NOT 12.8 Mbps?

 

12 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The bitstream is definitely not 12.8 Mbps. 

 

I'll defer to Chris on the rate. All I know for sure is the Trinnov reports that rate and TrueHD for anything Atmos. Beyond that, anything I said is a somewhat educated guess. I did send a question to Trinnov support asking what is going on... stay tuned. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

4 hours ago, bbosler said:

 

 

I'll defer to Chris on the rate. All I know for sure is the Trinnov reports that rate and TrueHD for anything Atmos. Beyond that, anything I said is a somewhat educated guess. I did send a question to Trinnov support asking what is going on... stay tuned. 

Trinnov told me a couple years ago that it misreported everything from AppleTV as TrueHD. 

[bbosler]

3 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Trinnov told me a couple years ago that it misreported everything from AppleTV as TrueHD. 

as usual, a step ahead. They just responded with the same, all Atmos is reported the same

[JoeWhip]

The same with Anthem. All as Atmos48.

[jkelly]

In a depressing December Stereophile As We See It, they state “Apple Music streaming version of Atmos for speakers bitrate at 768 kps and Apple Music Atmos for headphones at 256kps.” If I read it correctly.

[The Computer Audiophile]

7 minutes ago, jkelly said:

In a depressing December Stereophile As We See It, they state “Apple Music streaming version of Atmos for speakers bitrate at 768 kps and Apple Music Atmos for headphones at 256kps.” If I read it correctly.

Be very careful what you read from the old guard about immersive audio. Lossy MQA was their birth of a new world. A single file delivers from two to sixteen channels. Just because a song is played in headphones doesn’t mean music is thrown away. If the file is 768 for sixteen channels it’s 768 for two channels. 
 

We must also realize that for many albums a higher bit rate than 768 doesn’t exist outside the studio. It’s a unicorn. Complaining about something that doesn’t exist is a bit crazy. 
 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

What the old guard should also say is that via wireless Bluetooth to AirPods, MQA is also 256 kbps, as is 24/192. 
 

Via my RAAL-requisite SR1a, Atmos is the same bit rate as when it’s played through speakers. 

[ksalno]

36 minutes ago, jkelly said:

In a depressing December Stereophile As We See It, they state “Apple Music streaming version of Atmos for speakers bitrate at 768 kps and Apple Music Atmos for headphones at 256kps.” If I read it correctly.

That 768kps would compare pretty closely to what I was seeing from Amazon Music. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 minutes ago, ksalno said:

That 768kps would compare pretty closely to what I was seeing from Amazon Music. 

768 kbps is accurate for Dolby Digital Plus, which uses compression. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

By the way, the bit rate of a lossless stereo album in my collection, the first one I checked, is between 400 - 500 kbps. 

[bobfa]

I really do not understand why we care what the over-the-air bit rate is.  ATMOS file delivery is not the same as delivering “audio files”

 

 

 

[grinner]

10 hours ago, jkelly said:

In a depressing December Stereophile As We See It, they state “Apple Music streaming version of Atmos for speakers bitrate at 768 kps and Apple Music Atmos for headphones at 256kps.” If I read it correctly.

Are they talking about the bit rate of the actual audio itself or the data rate of the transmission mechanism? 

[The Computer Audiophile]

15 hours ago, jkelly said:

In a depressing December Stereophile As We See It, they state “Apple Music streaming version of Atmos for speakers bitrate at 768 kps and Apple Music Atmos for headphones at 256kps.” If I read it correctly.

This is likely what they were referencing. However, these guys have zero experience with any of this, so they don't realize the real world is different from this guy's little infographic.