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

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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They need to start using a direct wifi connection like airplay in their headphones, or create a new audio codec for bluetooth 5 that utilizes the extra bandwidth.
 
Iconoclysm said:
They need to start using a direct wifi connection like airplay in their headphones, or create a new audio codec for bluetooth 5 that utilizes the extra bandwidth.
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Airplay 2 doesn't support high-resolution audio, you need UPnP / DLNA for that.
 
roncron said:
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 sounbd 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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Good to know. Will this change the annoying thing where some tracks are louder than others?
 
EricNau said:
Listening to a playlist and having it cycle between songs that are and are not available in Dolby atmos doesn’t seem like it would be a good listening experience.

I understand they’ll have dedicated Dolby atmos playlists, but this does add a whole new level of complication that I’m not sure is worth it?
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If you listen to music with instruments, updates and remixes will likely start showing up. Many bands were experimenting with this in the late 90's and early 2000's but regular CD and MP3 couldn't take advantage of it, so there is at least interest there. If you listen to non-instrument stuff, a lot of it won't matter but there could be a lot done with the pre-existing digital effects that would add a more psychedelic feel. I'm interested, but not so much for music with headphones as in the car or a surround system.
 
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Here’s confirmation that you can’t purchase or upgrade to lossless files:

www.theverge.com

Apple announces lossless Apple Music is coming in June at no added cost

To compete with Amazon, Spotify, and Tidal.
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com

“Apple has confirmed to The Verge that lossless audio is exclusive to Apple Music and thus subscription-only. The company won’t offer music purchases in lossless quality, nor will there be any way to upgrade owned tracks to lossless with the paid iTunes Match service.”
 
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Finally a reason to crank this up!

Screen Shot 2021-05-17 at 5-17, 12.22.23 PM.png
 
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I would be interested in a full story on this as more information is released with actual comparison of the new tiers in reference to listening to a CD, SACD, and ALAC ripped from CD.

I’ve only ever really purchased CDs and ripped them to ALAC although I’ve started buying tracks online when they are offered as a lossless download. If iTunes doesn’t allow lossless download purchases and track upgrades it will be a shame… Renting music isn’t really viable for people who have massive collections and don’t stream.
 
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Do we know whether it‘s just Dolby Atmos on HomePods or do the HomePods also get the lossless format(s)?
 
Is spatial audio really any good at the AirPod level? Forgive me if this is a dumb question from a layman...
 
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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.
Click to expand...

It all depends on the transmission. I don't think Apple is capable of ensuring bit-perfect transmission using Bluetooth AAC? So in most scenarios, you have a lossy source (256 kbps AAC) being transcoded using a lossy transmission (Bluetooth AAC) before the digital to analogue conversion is happening on your headphones.

I'm sure Apple has very good control over the Bluetooth AAC transmission happening on their AirPods line-up (AirPods, AirPods Pro and AirPods Max) so I'd bet you will need to have some poor connection before you start running into trouble. But transcoding a lossy source will run the risk of degrading its quality.

Using Apple Lossless as your source will ensure that Bluetooth AAC is working with a perfect copy of the source material before it starts transcoding it for the Bluetooth transmission so you are limiting the chance of having your quality degraded during the transmission between your phone and the headphones.

This is only true if Apple doesn't already somehow ensures that Apple Music playback is happening bit-perfect between the phone and the headphones already. If they already do that then playing back lossless won't give you any benefits at all. At least not until Apple does something with the Bluetooth transmission to ensure that playing back Apple Lossless gives you higher quality than 256 kbps AAC can provide.


None of this really matters for 99,99% of people. Double-blind tests have show time and time again that even on high-tier equipment even those who call themselves audiophiles are able to tell lossless and ~200 kbps VBR lossy apart when derived from the same high-quality masters.

Apple is supposedly using the very same high-quality Apple Digital Masters (24-bit, 192kHz) for all versions. So no matter if you playback the Apple Lossless Hi-Res 24-bit, 192kHz version, the Apple Lossless 16-bit, 44.1kHz version or the 16-bit, 44.1kHz 256 kbps or 128 kbps AAC versions they all created using the same high-quality masters.

All evidence points to barely anyone having the hearing to tell any of this apart. Pretty much all double-blind tests done on top tier equipment concluded that things become transparent (you can't tell them apart anymore) at around ~200 VBR lossy using good encoding. You sure need to have some special hearing and some expensive equipment for being able to tell Apple's 256 kbps AAC encodings apart from the top tier Apple Lossless Hi-Res versions. It's mostly placebo.

The biggest benefit of having access to lossless is to ensure that you have a bit-perfect version going in your pipeline for as long as possible. As Bluetooth AAC adds one additional layer of lossy transcoding you are lowering the risk of anything bad happening along in the transmission when feeding it a lossless source instead of a lossy source. Unless Apple already has something in place in the Bluetooth stack to ensure that playing back Apple Music with 256 kbps AAC is transferred bit-perfect using Bluetooth AAC but I'm not aware of any such capabilities. But Apple doesn't really provide any technical details on how this is working.

https://www.mojo-audio.com/blog/the-24bit-delusion/ is a good read for anyone trying to convince themselves that 24-bit and 192kHz matters for audio playback. It's not like we are lacking in dynamic range or distortion when using 16-bit and 44.1kHz so what do people expect the additional bit-depth and sampling range to offer?

Apple is trying to ensure great masters through their Apple Digital Masters program:
www.apple.com

Apple Music - Apple Digital Masters

Apple Digital Masters Studio-quality sound. For everyone.
www.apple.com


And when tracks are being encoded using 24-bit, 192kHz high-quality sources barely anyone will be able to tell the difference between 24-bit, 192kHz lossless, 16-bit, 44.1kHz lossless and 16-bit, 44.1kHz lossy no matter how much money you are putting into the equipment. That's if the transmission is bit-perfect. For Bluetooth playback having lossless might prove to be beneficial as I doubt your lossy playback is having a bit-perfect transfer to the headphones so you are lowering the risk of something bad happening during transmission by using a lossless source instead of a lossy one. Having it being 24-bit or 16-bit, 192kHz or 44.1kHz shouldn't make any difference. In fact, when it comes to Bluetooth you are wasting precious bandwidth by tossing in unneeded bit-depth and sampling range.
 
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I'd really like to see this available for iTunes Match but I hope it doesn't mess up with current matches!

Btw, it will also be interesting to see how this will impact the global network traffic...
 
I honestly have no idea what’s even mine in my music library anymore. I’ve been an iTunes/Apple Music person for 20 years+, and had phases where I bought, ripped cd’s at high quality, and regular quality. I feel like tunes match actually downgraded all the high quality stuff years ago, and since it was originally ripped on an older computer, I no longer have the high quality versions.

I also don’t care, I do want the best quality available, but it needs to be convenient, so I think this is great news all around. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but it was the same way with wired vs wireless. Wired sounds better, but wireless was more convenient.
 
roncron said:
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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For someone looking to get a DAC for iPad Pro with USB-C/Thunderbolt - would you recommend Dragonfly?
 
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