Many more people listen to classical music on streaming services than attend live concerts. Streaming is forcing important changes on recorded classical music, and these changes are little understood, or, in some notable cases, not understood at all. As an example, on the music industry-endorsed Slipped Disc classical influencer Norman Lebrecht gives an enthusiastic welcome to Apple Classical , saying: 'In a Shostakovich tenth symphony from Berlin, the internal definition seemed to me clearer than the orchestra’s own-label recording and, weirdly, than my aural memory of hearing it in the hall. If this is to be the future quality of sound, bring it on'. In his linked article for The Critic headlined Apple of My Ear Lebrecht explains that he auditioned Apple Classical using the Dolby Atmos/Apple Spatial Audio format. So we need to dig down into the use of PR-speak such as "the sound on Apple is as good as it gets, actually better" by a prominent music critic
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This is patently tangential, but I have just to observe that as a piece of music journalism it was vastly best than that ludicrous tosh about "Jennens' Messiah" in the Telegraph yesterday. Mind you, I think there was a crossover there with another current topic, for I suspect the PR/Promotions dunderheads at the Handel Museum were behind it. And a right embarrassing hash they made of it.