Hacker News Reader

Comment by pasc1878 | Hacker News Reader

Now if only Apple could provide Classical app on anything but an iPhone.

Even on iPad landscape it is a small thing in the middle.

Considering I do most of my critical listening in front of the big system, I would love a tvOS version. While Atmos can be a bit of a gimmick depending on the mix (I am here exclusively talking about listening with a full surround system, and Atmos really should not be judged on how it renders to headphones), multi-channel can be very nice for bringing the concert ambience to the listener. I have been buying multi-channel FLACs from Pentatone [1] for years, but a streaming service would be neat.

[1] https://www.pentatonemusic.com

Yes! I'm a bit surprised it's still iPhone-only.

I was in fact listening to classical music in Music on my Apple TV only yesterday (and found a nasty bug where it wouldn't play the track I asked for, which I should probably report).

I was doing this because Dolby Atmos tracks AirPlayed to my Apple TV + non-Atmos receiver come out only as stereo, but the same tracks played in the Apple TV Music app come out as 5.1.

*Iphone and Android

Not only can Atmos be a bit of a gimmick, but there have already been cases of mere stereo recordings converted to Atmos through trickery, instead of having been originally recorded as multi-channel. Consumers are getting scammed.

Could you explain what you mean by this? Very few things are recorded as stereo. Things are recorded on individual tracks and then mixed in stereo. Access to the original recordings allows remixing in Atmos.

That’s the thing. There have been Atmos releases where there was no access to the original recordings, only the stereo mix. Fake surround-sound was then created without consumers being aware of this. This was reported by a poster on the ILM message board[0]:

> OK, so I had a conversation today with producer John Snyder (worked with Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, did tons of archival jazz stuff for decades, blah blah blah) and he was telling me about how some Atmos "conversions" are being done and this is some snake-oil bullshit. In a lot of cases, they're taking stereo masters (not even the original tapes, but the album masters), playing them back in the big room of a studio with microphones set up in three different positions relative to the speaker horns, and using those new recordings to build the Atmos "mixes".

[0] https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?sh...

Could I, your average listener, notice the difference in quality? If not, then it sounds like Atmos, so what's the problem?

Wow. Seems like such a waste of time. Especially given on iOS at least you can hit the “spatialise stereo” toggle to do this automatically if you’re so inclined.

I think the Classical app is both for the sake of the music but also a play at multiple interfaces over the same literal .app, which is different enough from how they've been doing things that it will take longer to figure it out. I say this because when I start listening to the Classical app and then connect to CarPlay, it still appears to just be Music, but not in the way that any app could read Apple Music and serve sounds from it, more like a different entry point to Music, akin to multiple activities on an Android app. Without any inside knowledge and very minimal sleuthing, I'm definitely ready to be super wrong, but interested and kinda hopeful to be see if I'm right.

The Music Classical app is basically just a separate Music UI for searching/discovering. Anything you add to your library also appears in the regular Music app. Which I personally found disappointing cause I would have liked my libraries to be separate since my classical listening is going to differ from my normal music listening and I'd rather a random movement of a random piece to not show up in my shuffle.

Though it also seems kind of necessary because the Classical app is missing some basic playback features like "play next" or queue management.

I was excited to subscribe to the service, but my #1 (really, only) place I'd listen to classical music is at my desk while working. I know people listen to contemporary music on their phones most of the time, but I was surprised to learn that the same is apparently true for classical?

There's an Apple Classical app in the Android Play Store. I used to use Primephonic before Apple bought it, so I might give it a shot...

https://play-lh.googleusercontent.com/ld7w0VJtHjYIPEtRL-QyKI...

It even has an (almost) identical UI to the iOS version

I don't' think Apple will bother with "custom" or even scaled iPadOS versions of most applications anymore now that they have Stage Manager.

I think they’re working on that. Anyway Apple Music has the same stuff on it and that’s available on other platforms now as well.

Apple Music Classical is available for Android, so you're not limited to the Iphone!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com