A Step In The Right Direction

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Last week Apple announced an improvement to the Enhance Dialog option in tvOS 18. In and of itself this has nothing to do with HiFi, but it’s a step in the right direction that provides a template for the music industry.

Enhance Dialogue gets smarter with tvOS 18, leveraging machine learning and computational audio to deliver greater vocal clarity over music, action, and background noise on Apple TV 4K. In addition to HomePod speakers, users can now enjoy Enhance Dialogue when listening through built-in TV or HDMI-connected speakers, AirPods, and other Bluetooth-connected devices, and when playing supported content on iPhone and iPad.

Note: Apple didn't invent this, but Apple makes things popular and places them in the public consciousness. 

No, I don’t want enhanced vocals on my Pearl Jam bootlegs, I want engineers and artists to deliver the product they want to deliver, regardless of the playback device. What does Enhance Dialogue have to do with this? It’s all about putting the sound adjusting options on the consumer device, rather than baking them into the mix.

As an audiophile, I want to hear whatever the creative team puts on an album, exactly as it was put on the album. If that means dynamics are crushed, then so be it. However, I’d much prefer an album with a lot of dynamic range.

According to many engineers I talk to, they need to mix and master NOT for the ideal listening environment, but for the environment in which most listeners will consume music. For decades that has been on headphones, in automobiles, and other noisy environments. Requiring listeners to use the volume control to make several adjustments within each track is a bit over the top. Compressing dynamics, so nearly everything sounds the same (yuck!), has been the solution for a long time.

The best solution in my opinion, is to enable consumer devices to either sense the environment or provide listeners an on/off option for dynamic range compression. Brand it whatever you want, “Enhance Music” for all I care, but put the option on the consumer device, don’t bake it into the music. Enable engineers and artists to create incredibly dynamic recordings, if they wish, and enable those of us with listening rooms to hear this, while simultaneously enabling us to listening to a dynamically compressed version in our noisy cars going down the highway.

Doesn’t Apple Music’s Sound Check, or any other service’s normalization option, already do this? No, that option dynamically raises and lowers the volume from track to track to make all tracks roughly the same volume. It doesn’t change the dynamic compression or adjust volume within a track.

Again, Apple’s Enhance Dialog option isn’t about music or dynamic range compression or HiFi. It’s all about giving consumers the option to adjust how the audio mix sounds on their devices, rather than demanding professionals in the movie industry change their art. This is exactly what could help enable music industry professionals to create whatever they want, regardless of the playback environment. Creating a single mix for every environment, actually creates a mix for no environment. Create the best version of the art, and let consumers dumb it down / change it to suit their needs.

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