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Amazon Music HD expands 3D audio library with Warner Music Group tracks
Echo Studio, one of Amazon's latest smart speakers, might sound great, but until now it offered a limited library of 3D audio through Amazon Music HD. However, if you picked up the speaker and signed up for the hi-res streaming plan, you now have more 3D music options. You can listen to tracks from across the Warner Music Group empire in Dolby Atmos starting today.
Engadget Giveaway: win one of two pairs of Sync by 50 wireless over-ear headphones!
This week we're once again bringing the audio goods to you, and today's giveaway should be incredibly tempting. 50 Cent's brand, SMS Audio, wants to hook you up with a pair of its premium wireless over-ear headphones, Sync by 50. Priced at $400, these cans are spendier than a fair number of smartphones, but it offers Kleer technology with CD-quality lossless audio and will work up to 50 feet away from your device. And just for kicks and giggles, SMS Audio is also throwing in a snapback hat, shirt and a backpack to go along with your prize, so it's definitely worth heading below the rules and leaving a comment to enter. Good luck!
Dolby ups TrueHD lossless audio on Blu-ray to 96k, says every upsampled bit is amazing (video)
Just because your home theater can handle lossless audio doesn't mean the sound is as good as it could be. Dolby is now giving Blu-ray producers using Dolby Media Producer Encoder v2 the choice of premastering TrueHD surround sound at an upsampled 96k. Along with just squeezing the most possible clarity and depth out of 48kHz audio, the encoding purportedly eliminates some of the harshness of digital sound through an apodizing (signal altering) filter. At least three projects have already been given the 96k treatment, and authoring firms like Technicolor have upgrades in place to give that noticeable boost to your next Blu-ray movie.
Apple's lossless ALAC goes open source, it's like FLAC for iPods
Well, it's not nearly as exciting as a new iPhone, but Apple recently announced a bit of news that will set people in certain circles abuzz. The company's lossless audio codec, ALAC, is going open source. Similar to FLAC, the Apple Lossless Audio Codec offers some file compression while still delivering a bit-for-bit recreation of the original source material. The primary difference being that Apple devices and software do not support FLAC (at least without some tinkering) but can handle the Cupertino developed ALAC. The decision to release the code under the Apache license won't have much of an immediate impact on your digital audio routine, but expect support for ALAC to start popping up in more media players (both hardware and software) soon.
BDP-S300 firmware 4.20 adds Dolby TrueHD support, finally
Still hanging onto that old Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray player? Your faith has been rewarded now that the 4.20 firmware update adds Dolby TrueHD audio decoding. Support was rumored in past firmware updates, but as of 8/29, it's official, along with BD-Java fixes and BD-/RE BDMV compatibility. Remember when we thought $600 for a player with limited audio support and no Bonus View or BD-Live compatibility was cheap? Oh, how expectations change.[Thanks, Mick]
With some help from Realtek, PowerDVD will support 24-bit lossless audio
Some Blu-ray Discs offer the highest quality audio around, but up until now every PC solution has been forced to re-sample the higher fidelity tracks to 16-bit because of the lack of a protected audio path. Thankfully this is rapidly changing with the newer hardware coming out, and today CyberLink has announced that with a little help from Realtek's embedded ALC889 audio codec, PowerDVD will no longer be limited to 48kHz/16-bit and will now be able to deliver audio playback at 192kHz/24-bit. The bad news is that the free update to PowerDVD won't be available until sometime in the second half of 2008, and we're a little confused on what hardware we'll need in addition to PowerDVD to obtain audio bliss.
