Netflix is ​​now putting on a high quality sound to make binge watching more immersive



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Netflix, arguably the most popular video streaming service in the world, raises the level of gaming. The company announced that it now brings high quality audio content to the platform's content, claiming that it was a "studio quality" sound. Not to complicate matters with technical jargon, here is a simple description of the operation of this software: Netflix will be able to broadcast the new high quality audio stream with a maximum rate of 640 kbps for a 5.1 channel audio stream and up to At 768kbps for a Dolby Atmos mix. This means a significantly better audio experience with the TV shows and movies that you broadcast, provided you have a TV or audio system capable of reproducing the extra details that Netflix will now be able to & dquo; # 39; offer.

However, the crucial point is perhaps the Adaptive Streaming feature, which will continue to automatically adjust the flow rate according to the speed of the Internet on your broadband connection at that time. Until now, the bit rate of the audio stream of a TV show or a Netflix movie was determined by the speed of the Internet by the time you started reading all of what you are looking at This meant that you had access to a static flow. In fact, there was no option to manually adjust the audio quality, in case you wanted to increase or decrease the quality of the audio stream for any reason. Sometimes this meant that you could encounter one of these two problems: either you had to listen to a low-quality sound even though your Internet bandwidth was increasing in the meantime, or you had started with a better start-up bit rate, but you had trouble buffering videos if the internet speeds shrank at some point.

As Netflix now changes the audio bit rate to your Internet connection speed at regular intervals, the company confirms that it can now be upgraded to 192 kbps to avoid the hbadle of buffering the Internet. videos if the Internet transmission speed is lower than expected.
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The reason this is possible is purely related to the way Netflix now treats audio as data, and more importantly, as smaller pieces of that data. Each of these clips carries a few seconds of audio, and the Adaptive Streaming Engine runs continuously to determine the quality of your Internet connection, and then the next audio content is generated. The idea is to not pause in the audio, not have the video buffer and do not clutter you with lower audio quality when Internet bandwidth can handle better audio streams. Netflix said it believed that these algorithms would improve significantly over time.
This brings us to the question of the sound of "studio quality". Netflix themselves claim that a typical studio recording is usually done at 48 KHz and that the audio is in 24 bits with a bitrate of about 1 Mbps per channel. However, they say, "Our high quality audio functionality is not lossless, but transparent. This means that even if the sound is compressed, it is impossible to distinguish it from the original source. Based on in-house listening tests, the results of Dolby's listening tests and scientific studies, we determined that for Dolby Digital Plus from 640 kbps, the quality of audio coding is transparent over the visual plan. They claim that if they want to send audio to your TV higher than 640 Kbps, it would use purely more bandwidth and would not necessarily enhance the visual experience.

Netflix also updated the Dolby Atmos audio quality. The maximum it can now reach is 768 kbps.

The audio experience you now get with the visual processing that is a standard rate of viewing content on Netflix will depend greatly on the audio hardware between you and Netflix. Whether it's speakers built into the TV, a sound bar or a full-fledged home theater system that you may have hooked up to your TV or to your projector, they must be able to read the high quality audio streams and the brightness that accompanies them details.

This latest update from Netflix has just announced a positive start to the year, putting it in a good position to face current rivals such as Amazon Video, Hulu, HBO Now and Hotstar, as well the upcoming challenges of streaming services, including Apple TV + and Disney & # 39; s Disney +.

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