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Apple Music Beta for Android Confirms Lossless Audio Streaming in the Works

tubular said:
Every few years I'll poke my nose into Apple Music to see whether they've gotten any better about supporting classical music.
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The support is there, but Apple must do much more to convince their record companies to update/add the information. Deutsche Gramophon have the better releases.

I guess the problem is that the classical labels don’t see Apple Music attractive enough to invest resources for this job, as the majority of the subscribers are primarily after popular music.
 
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SamRyouji said:
This is great for me to listen every single details of my favourite music and concentrate on my works while at Starbucks. Finally free WiFi has earned another usefulness instead of just working or gaming on public.

Edit: My country has a minimal lockdown measures with still the same strict health and safety protocols, if you wonder why I still could get outside.
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I love high fidelity audio, which I why I preferred physical Blu-ray Discs with DTS-HD-MA track. So much better.

We’ve been fully open for 6 months and no masks or restrictions for almost 3 months. Cases have dropped every week since…
Starbucks has been open since last July
 
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ouimetnick said:
Maybe, just maybe the H1 chip has the capability and it just hasn’t been utilized yet? I would imagine a firmware upgrade would be necessary for the H1 devices (AirPods, Pro, Max)
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The patent is from the same year that the H1 was released so I have my doubts, but it is possible. It would be strange to release the AirPods Max knowing that they will be obsolete for their possible top-tier audio. Unless they already have version 2 ready on the table. And a H2 chip.
 
I really hope Apple either update the AirPlay protocol to support 24bit/192kHz playback (AirPlay 3 announced at WWDC maybe?) or develop something similar to Tidal Connect or Spotify Connect for third-party Hi-Fi equipment manufacturers to incorporate into their devices to enable lossless hi-res playback.

This is really exciting news. I currently use Qobuz with Roon to playback hi-res music wirelessly, but Apple Music Lossless with Hi-Res would be cool!
 
Digital Skunk said:
Honestly, I love the current iPhone model. But if Apple decides to port iTunes, iWork Apps, and at least most of the Apple Ecosystem over to Android I'd consider picking up a Galaxy or Pixel .... just one of those two.
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iWork works in the web. Same apps. At least Pages and Numbers.
 
incoherent_1 said:
Research data shows it’s actually far lower than even that, but people convince themselves of the strangest things.
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True. I think people are far more likely to hear the difference in remastered recordings rather than bit rate.

I have a good example, I have Green Day’s American Idiot on CD, imported as .AIFF in iTunes, synced to my devices. AirPlay streams it as is as AirPlay’s max resolution is 16-bit and 44.1kHz which is identical to CD quality. I also have a remastered version in high res (can’t quite remember what res it is, will check) but it was also remastered to remove the loudness. The original CD mastering is very compressed, the HD tracks version sounds slightly cleaner as well. I can take the HDTracks file and convert it into 256kbit/s and that smaller file still sounds better than the larger CD file does.
 
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ouimetnick said:
Holy smokes. If Apple does actually offer this, and also redesigns the AirPlay 2 protocol to support streaming higher than CD quality (higher resolution audio is down sampled to CD resolution when using AirPlay 2) I may very well subscribe, especially if it’s $9. I’d like to see them offer the option to purchase and download high resolution music from the iTunes Store or whatever it’s called after this announcement. My music library is mostly CDs imported as .AIFF in iTunes, with some higher resolution music also in .AIFF purchased from HDTracks in 24/48 and some albums in 24/192. Would love to see a Apple solution.
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Air play 2 already supports 24 bit 192 kHz music. I routinely stream from my Mac to my Denon receiver at that resolution.
 
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Superhai said:
The patent is from the same year that the H1 was released so I have my doubts, but it is possible. It would be strange to release the AirPods Max knowing that they will be obsolete for their possible top-tier audio. Unless they already have version 2 ready on the table. And a H2 chip.
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I refuse to believe that the Max (& Pro) won’t be supported for streaming Hi-Fi, however I am also aware of how Apple burns 1st Gen adopters.
 
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Hopefully they’ll release a revved-up iPod of some sort to haul around the lossless!
 
xxray said:
Not gonna lie, as a Spotify user, this is appealing. And the fact that such a high-profile streaming service is taking it seriously and adding it as a feature is huge. It used to be that you could only get music this high-quality if you bought an album online from specific websites at 2-3x the cost of a normal album.
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Spotify has been said to have something like this coming for a while now. Lossless audio isn't enough to tempt me. Spotify to me is so much better plus I get a free sub to Hulu through it.
 
bommai said:
Air play 2 already supports 24 bit 192 kHz music. I routinely stream from my Mac to my Denon receiver at that resolution.
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Really? I always assumed that on this aspect AirPlay2 and AirPlay1 were identical: limited to 44.1kHz. Does your Denon receiver's DAC somehow show that's receiving a 192 kHz signal? Are different sample rates switched automatically?
 
I don’t see how this could possibly be included in the normal subscription cost — look at the difference in file sizes between the quality levels — with the extra demand put on their servers, this will have to be an extra optional cost.
 
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Contemporary mainstream pop is a lost cause in my opinion ;-)

But there are many other genres which will benefit from lossless.
 
ouimetnick said:
The original CD mastering is very compressed, the HD tracks version sounds slightly cleaner as well. I can take the HDTracks file and convert it into 256kbit/s and that smaller file still sounds better than the larger CD file does.
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Yes lots of people and surprisingly many “audiophiles” are not very aware of how the mastering process works.

Especially pop music coined for teenagers and young adults are produced and engineered to sound good at parties and boom blasters (at least music produced in the nineties). It should be easily be picked up at radio and tv, even at relatively low volume.

The easiest way to achieve this is to limit dynamic range.

With the advent of streaming curiously enough, radio upsell is not the same and more use of headphones of higher quality even among younger audiences have helped counter this somewhat.

For older people with more money in their hands have got better sounding systems and are not content with compressed (as in dynamic analog limiting, not digital space saving) sound.

At the same time mastering equipment used up to the mid and late nineties were not particularly good. At least by today’s standards. Usually the ADC converters used during the mastering was limited to 14 bits, and often the mastering engineers limited the dynamic range even more to avoid the harsh clipping. You can see that if you are normalizing older CDs that they typically can put a gain of +12 to +18 dB.

So no wonder it is popular to remaster older CD releases.
 
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Kierkegaarden said:
I don’t see how this could possibly be included in the normal subscription cost — look at the difference in file sizes between the quality levels — with the extra demand put on their servers, this will have to be an extra optional cost.
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Think different
 
Want to know whether it would be worth upgrading? Do the following test using your highest end equipment to check if you can hear the difference between lossless and 256aac. Truth is, most people can't.

Is your audio system really ready for lossless?

Do an ABX test in your browser, and see if you can tell the difference between lossless and iTunes-compression quality audio
abx.digitalfeed.net abx.digitalfeed.net
 
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Digital Skunk said:
Honestly, I love the current iPhone model. But if Apple decides to port iTunes, iWork Apps, and at least most of the Apple Ecosystem over to Android I'd consider picking up a Galaxy or Pixel .... just one of those two.
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I love iWork Numbers - so much less buggy and crashy than excel, and a much better UI. But I seriously doubt that Apple would write free apps for android. With so many free spreadsheets (all better than excel btw) I can’t see this as a for fee offering. So your best bet is an app developer that might clone it

but seriously. No one integrates devices, software and security like Apple. So until android ups it’s game (I readily admit android is excellent and has many nice features ) in this area - not for me
 
Nice, I hope Anthem will add support for this with their new AV hardware.

Would love to see Apple switch to Opus for lossy music, I know they’ve dipped their toes in with Opus with iMessage audio clips. Hoping as they move to AV1 they also move to OPUS and AVIF, for once the open source choices wipe the floor with anything else out there.
 
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Spungoflex said:
This is pretty huge news.

It not only indicates that Apple will be offering a "hi-res" audio option up to 24-bit/192 kHz, but even bigger news is that the "lossless" audio will be standard at 24-bit/48 kHz, which would be an industry-changing decision. CD is 16-bit/44.1 kHz.

Would absolutely LOVE Apple to push mainstream lossless to 48 kHz. That should have been the standard for CDs from the beginning.
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Looks like Jack Dorsey bought Tidal at exactly the wrong time.
 
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anza said:
Please god let this be in conjunction with a top down rewrite of all versions of Apple Music, but especially macOS. Embarrassingly bad for a flagship service, just abysmal.
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Except for all the others.
 
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