UCrazyKid
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Are your listening impressions via Bluetooth or wired connection between AirPod Max and iPad? Thanks
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Apple lossless official announcement
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JuliaCoder
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My, not blind, Lossless vs AAC test was with AppleTV -> Toslink -> JDS OL DAC (it's not on their site anymore!) -> 20 year old Rotel receiver -> Dan Clark RT head phones (closed). I played Allman Brothers Live at Fillmore East: In Memory of Elizabeth Reed. I've played it so many times I'd be surprised if I heard anything new. The first surprise was a splash cymbal, where before it always sounded like a ride cymbal. Drums were sharper too. The interplay of all 6 musicians at their most intense was more distinct. I went back and forth with AAC and Lossless and still heard the same differences.
Quick impressions with the Rudy Van Gelder classic - Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers' Moaning from 1958.
First, all four services sounded excellent. However, Tidal and Apple used the 2013 48KHz master and Amazon and Qobuz used the 2021 192KHz master.
Both masters are excellent. I will check the vintage LP (which I better have!), but my sense is, after listening to tons of Van Gelder recordings, is that 2013 master sounds closer to the LP sound. Newest version has extra dynamics and maybe detail - but it sounds more like Atlantic Jazz than Blue Note. The instrumental lines are noticeably easier to follow.
On the older master, Apple and Tidal/MQA aren't identical, but a tie overall. Trumpet and sax sound slightly better on MQA and piano sounds a tad more real in Apple. You can hear tape overload on piano peaks in either.
The new master seems just a bit better in Qobuz over Amazon. It holds the new master's fabulous dynamic range a little better. Piano distortion was reduced somehow. Musical intent is clearer with this release.
I think I can pick out the old vs. new but I didn't think I can pick out Tidal vs. Apple or Amazon vs. Qobuz.
The lossless/hires jazz content seems limited on Apple right now. Surely will change soon.
This experience made me think "what is a master?" In 1958, Art Blakey's band probably thought that Rudy's sound was great. However, the new master is technically better. I am pretty sure most musicians would prefer it.
I started the listening session looking for that Van Gelder sound, but after a while I changed my mind. If you are after a vintage look into the past, the older master was better. But if you were purely after the music, I hate to admit it, but this year's release wins.
My setup is iPad-powered USB adapter-powered USB hub-D90-Emotiva amplification chain-ET LFT 8Bs+Hsu Subs. All digital electronics are powered by LPSs.
First, all four services sounded excellent. However, Tidal and Apple used the 2013 48KHz master and Amazon and Qobuz used the 2021 192KHz master.
Both masters are excellent. I will check the vintage LP (which I better have!), but my sense is, after listening to tons of Van Gelder recordings, is that 2013 master sounds closer to the LP sound. Newest version has extra dynamics and maybe detail - but it sounds more like Atlantic Jazz than Blue Note. The instrumental lines are noticeably easier to follow.
On the older master, Apple and Tidal/MQA aren't identical, but a tie overall. Trumpet and sax sound slightly better on MQA and piano sounds a tad more real in Apple. You can hear tape overload on piano peaks in either.
The new master seems just a bit better in Qobuz over Amazon. It holds the new master's fabulous dynamic range a little better. Piano distortion was reduced somehow. Musical intent is clearer with this release.
I think I can pick out the old vs. new but I didn't think I can pick out Tidal vs. Apple or Amazon vs. Qobuz.
The lossless/hires jazz content seems limited on Apple right now. Surely will change soon.
This experience made me think "what is a master?" In 1958, Art Blakey's band probably thought that Rudy's sound was great. However, the new master is technically better. I am pretty sure most musicians would prefer it.
I started the listening session looking for that Van Gelder sound, but after a while I changed my mind. If you are after a vintage look into the past, the older master was better. But if you were purely after the music, I hate to admit it, but this year's release wins.
My setup is iPad-powered USB adapter-powered USB hub-D90-Emotiva amplification chain-ET LFT 8Bs+Hsu Subs. All digital electronics are powered by LPSs.
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DavidMcRoy
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Either way, everything I’ve ever heard from The Weeknd is terribly distorted, and I just can’t get past that to critique anything else about those recordings. Likewise my favorite pop song from a year or so back, ‘Circles’ by Post Malone sounds terrible. If there’s 30% distortion or whatever, who cares about minutia?
Something is definately not right here:
A: this track is supposed to be Dolby Atmos
B: the album clearly states it lossless, but I only see 256 kbps in the file info.
I have Dolby Atmos Always enabled, as well as Lossless up to the highest rates. Other albums seem to play fine losslessly.
One of those Dolby Atmos Playlists does not show the Atmos Logo Anywhere in the player with any songs. I'm pretty sure I've seen this yesterday though. File info on most of them just shows "stream", without any additional information, so could be anything.
On iOS I don't see issues. It plays the tracks as Atmos just fine.
Edit: it's get's even stranger.. Now restated Music, and went to the same song via a different entry point:
Still not Atmos though...
A: this track is supposed to be Dolby Atmos
B: the album clearly states it lossless, but I only see 256 kbps in the file info.
I have Dolby Atmos Always enabled, as well as Lossless up to the highest rates. Other albums seem to play fine losslessly.
One of those Dolby Atmos Playlists does not show the Atmos Logo Anywhere in the player with any songs. I'm pretty sure I've seen this yesterday though. File info on most of them just shows "stream", without any additional information, so could be anything.
On iOS I don't see issues. It plays the tracks as Atmos just fine.
Edit: it's get's even stranger.. Now restated Music, and went to the same song via a different entry point:
Still not Atmos though...
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I don’t think they dropped proper support for iTunes yet.
That's a different track...
This is all kinds of strange.. depending on how you enter a song or album, or when you look at the file info, it's different. I now see things I can't even reproduce anymore.
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This should be an Atmos track. So if you have Atmos set to "Always on", it should play the Atmos version.
Noted.
Are you expecting the Atmos version to be lossless?
I've read that Atmos audio on streaming services (Netflix, Amazon, Tidal) is using lossy Dolby Digital Plus codec.
No, Atmos is not lossless. But it's clearly not playing the Atmos version for some reason, while I set it to always use it if available.
Even more funny: if you click the "About Dolby Atmos" link, you'll go to a page where the word "Atmos" is not even mentioned once
And now some songs are not playing at all.. only silence.. Even after a restart of the app.. This is not a good experience
This is not a good experience
Yikes, I was going to say 'well at least it's free for existing customers' but silence is not what you pay $ for
Sooo.. Last night I did a late night session just before going to bed (they're the best) to A/B Apple music lossless and Tidal. Both with 44.1/16 tracks. I was not expecting to be able to hear any difference at all but I wanted to give it a go just in case. Both sounded good after few tracks of casual listening and then I settled for one of my favorites that I used to reference my mixes and test my gear: Fhin - Your Heart Sounds Like. It's full of micro details, fast transients all across the frequency range and perfect for some enjoyable critical listening I wanted to do.
And to my big surprise... Tidal sounded better.. but read till the end. I was definitely not expecting that. And kept listening the same 15 seconds of the track back and forth. Apple, Tidal, Apple, Tidal, and I could definitely pick up differences. For exemple Hihats on Tidal were lively, lifelike with more dynamic, with subtle changes in frequency and velocity whereas on apple they sounded more identical, linear, and flat. Note that I'm being picky and changes are subtle but I'm pretty confident in this listening condition I was, I could tell which one is which in a blind test.
I was actually very disappointed, not with apple, but with myself. How is it possible I let my brain trick me like this into believing tidal is better ?
Then I figured that tidal output was set up to use the DAC in exclusive mode. Could it be ... ? I changed the output of tidal to "system controlled" and did A/B tests again. And yep, now both sound the same. No differences to my hears, I could not tell which one is which. Then I went back to tidal and compared the output set up on system controlled and using the DAC in exclusive mode and yet again I could hear an improvement.
It's seem like the audio processing in a mac by the system still degrades the quality of the stream. (I knew it used to be a thing, hence why players like Audirvana exist I guess, but I thought this would have been fixed by Apple for a long time.) Whereas tidal with its exclusive mode option offers the possibility to give a (probably) bit perfect stream to your DAC.
I was quite disappointed with Apple that they didn't implement setting up the use of usb DACs directly in the player (just for convenience in the first place...) but I didn't think that it could worsen the sound by this much. I assume using airplay and a streamer, then you'd have a good quality stream but if you use USB DACs it seems like we won't be able to enjoy apple lossless to its full potential until they update the system output.
And to my big surprise... Tidal sounded better.. but read till the end. I was definitely not expecting that. And kept listening the same 15 seconds of the track back and forth. Apple, Tidal, Apple, Tidal, and I could definitely pick up differences. For exemple Hihats on Tidal were lively, lifelike with more dynamic, with subtle changes in frequency and velocity whereas on apple they sounded more identical, linear, and flat. Note that I'm being picky and changes are subtle but I'm pretty confident in this listening condition I was, I could tell which one is which in a blind test.
I was actually very disappointed, not with apple, but with myself. How is it possible I let my brain trick me like this into believing tidal is better ?
Then I figured that tidal output was set up to use the DAC in exclusive mode. Could it be ... ? I changed the output of tidal to "system controlled" and did A/B tests again. And yep, now both sound the same. No differences to my hears, I could not tell which one is which. Then I went back to tidal and compared the output set up on system controlled and using the DAC in exclusive mode and yet again I could hear an improvement.
It's seem like the audio processing in a mac by the system still degrades the quality of the stream. (I knew it used to be a thing, hence why players like Audirvana exist I guess, but I thought this would have been fixed by Apple for a long time.) Whereas tidal with its exclusive mode option offers the possibility to give a (probably) bit perfect stream to your DAC.
I was quite disappointed with Apple that they didn't implement setting up the use of usb DACs directly in the player (just for convenience in the first place...) but I didn't think that it could worsen the sound by this much. I assume using airplay and a streamer, then you'd have a good quality stream but if you use USB DACs it seems like we won't be able to enjoy apple lossless to its full potential until they update the system output.
What volume control did you use on both settings? It could very well be that the system mixer lowers volume slightly for all sources to accommodate inter-sample overs for upsampling. That volume difference alone could explain everything.
Volume maxed out. I did make sure it was not a factor even by raising the volume on my DAC when it went through the system control and lowering it when the DAC my on exclusive mode. However, my testing is definitely not scientific, might be skewed or biased, take everything I say with a hint of salt.
I'll bring back the ID14mk2 from the studio to do another go this week. When the Audient is plugged in, volume control is unavailable, I guess it bypasses the system.
Sounds like volume is a factor then unless you volume matched the sessions precisely.
I get your point and you are right, but I meant the "exclusive mode" still sounded better even when it was quieter.
Not to doubt your hearing but I've said and thought this many times only to fail once the time came to do blind test
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