10.2 surround?

[Ray Shackleford]

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/04/apple-hires-thx-inventor-to-head-up-audio-projects/

This HAS to be good news.

[Highlander]

That's great news Ray, thanks for sharing. I remember reading his
monthly column in an audio trade magazine, Surround Sound
(unfortunately long defunct), and he certainly knows audio inside and
out with surround sound being a major focus. It gives me hope for a
better iTunes experience in the future.

On May 4, 6:10 pm, Ray Shackleford <mos...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/04/apple-hires-thx-inventor-to-head-up-au...

[Joe A]

My expectations for anything coming out of this are very low. I just
think Mr. Shackleford is going to be used as a status symbol or trophy
hire by Apple.

Today's Apple is not the Apple of yore that was known for the best
high end media production and consumption. Today's Apple is the "good
enough" mass market iDevice and iTunes garbage Apple.

Apple joined the Blu-Ray Disc Association in 2005 and had a seat on
the board of directors, but six years later it still doesn't support
Blu-Ray playback on OSX and probably never will (IMO because it
threatens the low-quality 720p iTunes movie store's revenue stream).

My pessimistic $.02.

[Joe A]

Also to keep things on the group topic of surround, Apple has never
released a Mac with multichannel analog (though it appears to support
it in control panel). In fact the only Mac capable of multichannel
output at all is the recently refreshed Mac Mini with HDMI.

[Ray Shackleford]

> My expectations for anything coming out of this are very low.  I just
> think Mr. Shackleford is going to be used as a status symbol or trophy
> hire by Apple.

If only ;) Tomlinson Holman is the name of the actual new hire.

>
> Today's Apple is not the Apple of yore that was known for the best
> high end media production and consumption.  Today's Apple is the "good
> enough" mass market iDevice and iTunes garbage Apple.

I think that Apple is mostly guilty of fighting a multi-front war.
They can't be as good as they can be when they are more focused and
now that the audience is bigger, scale starts to get in the way of
quality. They are capable of true artistry, the question is if their
wide margins will ever give them the financial piece of mind to stop
trying to expand into too many emerging markets and settle back into
another decade of R&D. Hopefully this guy will be one of the "group of
eggheads" Jobs has working on whatever comes after the iPad.

> Apple joined the Blu-Ray Disc Association in 2005 and had a seat on
> the board of directors, but six years later it still doesn't support
> Blu-Ray playback on OSX and probably never will (IMO because it
> threatens the low-quality 720p iTunes movie store's revenue stream).
>
> My pessimistic $.02.

I am less surprised at this than I am that M$ backed HDDVD and it
tanked. When I looked at it all I could see was that HDDVD didn't
support region codes and was doomed to failure. I see the same thing
with Blu-Ray and download video services vs streaming/cloud sites.
Streaming takes care of the piracy problem and eliminates having to
ship "bits in boxes" to customers. If you've played with an OnLive
video game console, you can see that video streaming is about to take
another big leap the way Flash did when it hit the market. OnLive has
also announced plans to support applications for game developers. In
the end, Blu-Ray, as cool as it is, is just another format like the CD
to get you to buy your collection over again with bonus tracks. When
broadband hits the tipping point it will become all about access to
the various repositories around the web. That said, I don't think
there will ever stop being a market for some of the beautiful
packaging that is available from people like Rhino.

Yeah, I was sad to see that the new iMac doesn't have it and the only
way to pump video out is via Thunderbolt and no one even makes
monitors that support that standard yet. The iterations of machines
and waiting until they get the right combination of things for you to
finally want to buy one can be a real pain. Apple beat Dell by
adopting their strategy toward inventory and not making machines that
they weren't selling. Seems like they could open up the BTO orders a
bit and make a lot more happy customers and maybe save themselves some
money. As a Mac user and non-iPhone/iPad owner, I'm tired of hearing
about the iPod economy while there are people out there buying $1500-
$2000 machines that they would gladly spend money customizing over
their 4-7 year lifespan if Apple would help people serve them. OWC has
got to be pissed that Apple is making it so that you can no longer go
to anyone else to buy an internal hard drive. I'm sure it's to aid
security and help find stolen machines, but there has to be some
middle ground. Making the machines hard to take apart is a double
edged sword, it's had for a thief to take apart and only a LITTLE
easier for a trained technician. I am tired of having to give my
computer up for a week if I want to have a new hard drive installed.
And don't get me started on the whole not being able to take batteries
out of laptops anymore...

For a company that once tried to get CHRP together and make it easier
(with the G3 and G4 case designs) to work on your computer no matter
who you were, to where we are now in just 10 yrs is a little scary. I
love Apple's products, but they confuse the heck out of me some days.

[Joe A]

On May 14, 5:58 pm, Ray Shackleford <mos...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If only ;)  Tomlinson Holman is the name of the actual new hire.

Whoops, sorry, comprehension fail on my part. ;)

> I think that Apple is mostly guilty of fighting a multi-front war.
> They can't be as good as they can be when they are more focused and
> now that the audience is bigger, scale starts to get in the way of
> quality.

I think it's worse than that. I think they are deliberately choosing
the "easy" path of the mass market and abandoning the professionals
and high end consumers that previously defined the brand.

It's the iTunes mentality. It started out with 128kbps DRM-infested
"good enough" music. Although the bitrates have improved, they still
don't even dabble in selling lossless music let alone anything high-
res or multichannel. On the video side, their so-called HD is very
limited in selection and tops out at poor-bitrate 720p. Apple today
is all about iTunes, and iTunes is all about "good enough" for the non-
discerning masses.

Apple's devices such as AppleTV are among the only mainstream devices
that max out at 720p.

Most of Apple's lineup languishes for years (Mac Pro, Mac Mini, for
example), and there is no presence in the mid tower market at all.
Large swaths of the product lineup use obsolete technology (the Core 2
Duo is still used in several products, for example). The pro tools
languish for years and are neglected (thankfully they announced an
update to Final Cut, many were worried it would be dropped). And as I
mentioned before, they still don't support Blu-Ray playback despite
the format being mainstream for a few years now.

> > Apple joined the Blu-Ray Disc Association in 2005 and had a seat on
> > the board of directors, but six years later it still doesn't support
> > Blu-Ray playback on OSX and probably never will (IMO because it
> > threatens the low-quality 720p iTunes movie store's revenue stream).
>
> > My pessimistic $.02.
>
> I am less surprised at this than I am that M$ backed HDDVD and it
> tanked. When I looked at it all I could see was that HDDVD didn't
> support region codes and was doomed to failure. I see the same thing
> with Blu-Ray and download video services vs streaming/cloud sites.
> Streaming takes care of the piracy problem and eliminates having to
> ship "bits in boxes" to customers. If you've played with an OnLive
> video game console, you can see that video streaming is about to take
> another big leap the way Flash did when it hit the market. OnLive has
> also announced plans to support applications for game developers. In
> the end, Blu-Ray, as cool as it is, is just another format like the CD
> to get you to buy your collection over again with bonus tracks. When
> broadband hits the tipping point it will become all about access to
> the various repositories around the web. That said, I don't think
> there will ever stop being a market for some of the beautiful
> packaging that is available from people like Rhino.

I'm very familiar with the various online streaming technologies, and
again it comes down to quality, or the lack thereof.

Streaming is convenient but it's always a compromise on quality.
Staying on the topic of Apple, they offer a limited selection of low-
bitrate 720p content. Not quite in the same league as a 1080p
lossless surround Blu-Ray which typically reach bitrates of
30-50mbps.

You're not going to match those kinds of bitrates any time soon over
even the best internet connection. Then there's the additional
problem of the net neutrality fight (ISPs want the right to throttle
non-approved traffic such as video, I'm sure they're going to be
thrilled with all of their customers streaming 30mbps videos at the
same time) and bandwidth caps (my ISP, for example, caps bandwidth at
250GB per month and I heard AT&T wants to cap to 125GB; I already run
into bandwidth problems just with music alone). Let alone having a
level of ISP service nationwide or across the globe to support such a
system. I don't see it happening within Blu-Ray's life span.

The biggest specter with online streaming however, is the DRM
implications. You complain Blu-Ray is "just another format to get you
to buy your collection again". While I see the argument, it also
gives you 1080p video and lossless audio in the process. Online
streaming formats as they exist today are a giant step backwards, in
some cases worse than DVD quality. But back on topic, the dirty
secret is that Hollywood studios for a long time have disliked the
ability of a consumer to "own" a film. Their desired model is pay-per-
view (recall the failed Circuit City DIVX competitor to DVD). Online
streaming makes this model a reality because the consumer no longer
has the bits so the day will come where you no longer "own" anything
and they can revoke titles at will. So they day we go streaming is
the day we no longer "own" the content.

[jolson]

*Only* 11.1? Sheesh...

http://dtsac3.blogspot.com/2009/07/222-channel-surround.html


On 11 Maj, 22:07, Tab Cursor <tabcur...@gmail.com> wrote:
> UPDATE: I just saw a diagram of the latest DTS standard. It's 11.1
> speaker configuration is called "NEO : X" technology. It includes
> front height, floor width, side speakers, as well as the front channel
> and rear channel pair, and center channel. Incredible. We've come a
> long way from 2-channel stereo. That's great news for all of us.
>
> On May 11, 12:48 pm, Tab Cursor <tabcur...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > This is good news. Having Apple join the hi-res surround world is
> > exciting. Maybe a Mac could make a surround sound HTPC one day.
>
> > I read in this month's Home Theater Magazine that DTS is focusing on
> > 10.1 surround. I can say that 5.1 surround with the added Dolby Z
> > (height or width) enhances both 5.1 recordings and 2.0 recordings. The
> > idea of 10 speakers allows for both DTS front height and width
> > simultaneously. I'm not clear how they're configuring the back of the
> > room -- rear, rear-left, rear-right? And I'm not sure why they're
> > skipping the ".2" I can say that I prefer front speakers in enhancingC
> > 5.1 instead of using side rear channels. So I'm probably more open to
> > trying front width over side surround down the road.
>
> > Also, Yamaha has this technology built-in to their receivers. They're
> > not waiting for DTS, Dolby, or anyone else. In their current line of
> > receivers, the front speakers are called "presence". Also, their
> > Adventage models (and others) have 11.2, though I know no one who's
> > using this configuration today. That's theater quality surround 11.2,
> > 24-192 all digital.
>
> > To think that our home theater can technically come close to our local
> > theaters is something I never dreamed of in our lifetime. Now it's
> > already here. And others are following. Now if they'd just stop this
> > 3D non-sense!

[Lokkerman]

10 Petabytes of storage. A
> petabyte is 1000 terabytes

>>or ten thousand macbooks each with a terabyte; in that context very little
not really gargantuan

-----Original Message-----
From: surrou...@googlegroups.com [mailto:surrou...@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of Tab Cursor
Sent: 24 May 2011 14:46
To: SurroundSound
Subject: [SurroundSound] Re: 10.2 surround?

One more thing: if you want to encode in the newer bluray audio formats,
such as DTS-HD, what platform do your turn to?

The PC.

How about True HD?

The Mac.

On May 24, 6:26 am, Tab Cursor <tabcur...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I must add another comment here.
>
> The 11.1 is new like the dolby Z or "presence" height / width stuff.
> They're even changing the way the upmixing is done. It's called a
> roll- up (or fold-up) to the 11.1 surround and a fold-down to
> 2-channel sound. It is a different technology from matrix sound. I
> have always contended that a dolby surround encoded CD qualifies as
> surround sound. It is matrixed, lossy, but encoded for surround sound.
> But is there much audio quality in that old technology? I guess it
> doesn't really matter, since it's surround history.
>
> On Apple: don't count them out as a surround sound contender. The Ipad
> 2 is 1080P when output through HDMI (not sure about the quality of
> surround). The Mac will have the IOS features added to its hardware
> soon. A Macintosh can perform 2 to 7.1 upmixing. Some of the latest
> upmixing software is only available for the Mac. For example, Apple's
> Logic Studio coupled with Soundfield's Upmix (UPM-1) claims broadcast
> 5.1 quality. Final Cut Pro is being used for full-blown Hollywood
> movies. And Adobe has jumped into the IOS world too. You can get Adobe
> IOS programs and SDK's that talk to Photoshop CS5.5. The latest Adobe
> Audition does interactive 5.1 upmixing on a Mac or PC (output is Dolby
> 5.1). Adobe added conversion technology to their flash servers -- when
> you hit a flash site your IOS devices can see the flash movies because
> the server performs an on-the-fly conversion to h.264. Apple also
> recently spent a little of their money on 10 Petabytes of storage. A
> petabyte is 1000 terrabytes. They must have some plans for large
> files?
>
> Exciting stuff in our lifetime.

> > > > > > This HAS to be good news.- Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

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[Joe A]

Apple's top 27" and 30" displays and the 27" iMac are 2560x1600.

But two problems here:

(1) Apple doesn't make the display hardware, and the display hardware
they use tends to be a few generations behind.
(2) The best content Apple offers on iTunes is 720p and they don't
even support Blu-Ray playback.

On May 24, 4:19 pm, Tab Cursor <tabcur...@gmail.com> wrote:
> And maybe --- could it be possible? -- that Apple is planning for up-
> scaling hardware that exceeds the resolution of 1080P (1920 X 1024).
> Afterall, gamers are running Crysis at 6,400 X 4,800--they call it
> ultra hi-res. Why not upscale 1080P to 1080 PPP? Source article here:
>
> http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,690489/Crysis-at-6-400-x-4-000-Ult...
>
> And if you all thought that storage is for the largest penis database,
> you are mistaken:
>
> http://male-health.org/the-world%E2%80%99s-largest-penis-size-database/
>
> On May 24, 12:45 pm, Tab Cursor <tabcur...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > More fun factoids courtesy of Google:
>
> > Pronounced "pet uh" byte:
>
> >http://www.forvo.com/word/petabyte/
>
> > You could triple all of AT&T's communications with a single Petabyte.
> > However, it takes 2.8 Petabytes to run the National Energy Research
> > Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). Source article:
>
> >http://www.focus.com/fyi/operations/10-largest-databases-in-the-world/
>
> > Incredible.
>
> > On May 24, 12:20 pm, Tab Cursor <tabcur...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Good point, Lokks....
>
> > > I was mistaken about the 10 part. It's actually a rumour only. And
> > > it's 12 Petabyes (do you say "peet uh"? or "pet uh". And it's just for
> > > Itunes video storage. Stated another way, One Petabyte is around
> > > 21,000 dual-layer blu-rays. Here's the source article:
>
> > >http://www.tuaw.com/2011/04/06/rumor-apple-buys-12-petabytes-of-video...

> > > > For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/SurroundSound-Hidequotedtext -