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Apple Music Gaining Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio in iOS 14.6, Not All Tracks Supported at Launch

I've got some Anker Q30s. Will those be able to take advantage of this, or will I need something else to decode the audio to take advantage of it? I was hoping for fresh AirPods to drop today, but I guess that's not happening, so I'm gonna stick with what I have.
 
valkov9191 said:
this will change the game, bye Spotify
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Amazon Music has already backtracked and merged their hi-res options into their basic Music sub at no additional cost.

I‘m really waiting for Spotify‘s answer to this. They revealed Spotify Hifi a few months ago with little to no pricing info, but the general consensus is that they plan on up-charging for the Hifi tier. Makes sense to me considering Spotify is a crap company anyways when it comes to moneyflow and how they do licensing / pay artists etc. Don‘t think they can bankroll the up-tick in resources that hifi streaming produces.
 
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ra4oasis said:
I really wonder how many people will be able to tell the difference. Great news none the less, but unless you're trained, or have very high end headphones, I wonder how evident this higher quality will sound.
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Even less people will have the right set up to even play it. I bet you could tell people your music is lossless and they wouldn’t even doubt it, even if it isn’t 😅
 
Meanwhile Tidal is sweating bullets… that was their selling point, offering hifi for those who felt they needed it
 

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asr113 said:
Why do people assume Aipods will still be limited to AAC? The H1 is apple's own chip and has no doubt had the capability to run an apple lossless codec from the start. I am very confident a firmware update will unlock a much better ALAC codec.
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The bottleneck is bluetooth. Apple would need to come up with a way to transmit a lossless codec to Airpods. WiFi would be the only alternative and that is probably a battery hog compared to bluetooth. Would also require putting a wifi chip in airpods.
 
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Prabas said:
If you are listening to lossless on AirPods or AirPods Pro, forget it: there’s just no way that you’re going to hear any difference. With AirPods Max, they do support Hi-Resolution Lossless – but only when used as wired headphones.
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Again, this is just untrue.
Apple Lossless can easily be played over Bluetooth.
all the AirPods would need is a firmware update
 
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Rogifan said:
I currently listen to Apple music using this (with a USB-A to USB-C adapter). Will I notice a difference?

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Yes. I have a Dragonfly Red, too. I use it to listen to lossless music from TIDAL and Qobuz, and I can definitely tell the difference between lossless and Apple Music's current 256kbps streaming. This should be true with any decent DAC.

I think the ability to enjoy a sound quality improvement from Apple's switch to lossless tracks will be limited to a fairly small set of users and use-cases, in particular people who listen using a wired connection from their iphone or mac to their headphones or speakers. And the headphones or speakers should be better than average consumer grade for the best chance of being able to enjoy a difference.

Bluetooth is lossy; Airplay 2 is supposedly losses but in my experience it doesn't sound nearly as good as a wired connection when streaming hi-res tracks to a hi-fi network streamer or even HomePods.

That said, Apple Music's 256kb AAC streams are very good, and certainly good enough for most people and most use-cases. So people who don't notice a difference from the switch to lossless streams should continue to be as happy as they were previously.
 
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ra4oasis said:
I really wonder how many people will be able to tell the difference. Great news none the less, but unless you're trained, or have very high end headphones, I wonder how evident this higher quality will sound.
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At home, listening on my Bowers & Wilkins 804 D3s speakers with Emotiva amps and processor… the difference on Amazon Music Lossless or Tidal is significant and instantly recognizable.

I’ve been waiting for this since I prefer the Apple experience but have to keep Amazon around for active listening. I didn’t think Apple would pay attention - so thank you Apple for finally addressing the minority crowd.
 
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bsamcash said:
All good news. Unfortunately my AirPods Max will limit me to AAC while listening wirelessly and I refuse to buy Apple’s adapter. So I guess my lossless listening with be done with my m50x.
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But what if you want to listen to it in Dolby Atmos? The Max will be perfect for it.
 
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