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just gonna have to say it now. if you expect an amazing experience with the hifi audio, you're probably gonna have a bad time. you'll need an external DAC and a high quality audiophile level headphone to even have the possibility of hearing the better quality. neither of these things are provided by Apple. your entry level option is to go buy a Sennheiser HD6XX, Schiit Modi, and Schiit Magni, but this will already set you back $420 (plux tax).

i don't wanna be that guy to say "steve jobs would've blah blah blah", but steve jobs probably wouldn't bother with the hifi business because of the clunkiness of needing an external amp, dac, and headphone that isn't sold by Apple. not only that, steve jobs cares more about the user experience than the technical specs. 90% of you guys will probably not be able to tell the difference between 256 AAC and ALAC.

now spatial audio might be decent, but it's not even one of Apple's tech.
 
Is there some sort of compression tech, because streaming those big files would need Wi-Fi or 5G connection to stream, without it lagging. And only Apple headphones are compatible, aren’t they in a lawsuit for being anticompetitive.
 
Here’s confirmation that you can’t purchase or upgrade to lossless files:


“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.”
Oh…. Oh wow. And there’s no way for me to replicate my iTunes library in Apple Music without significant effort on my part?
 
I’m not complaining about this announcement, but the failure of the HomePod did illustrate most people don’t care about sound quality. So I’m not sure this will boost AM subscriptions.
 
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I wonder how this implementation will handle multi-room? For example, what happens if I'm playing an Atmos song on my Apple TV, and then I add an Airplay 2 device? My guess is both the Apple TV and Airplay device will both then play CD quality.
 
So ideally using a headphone dac is the way to go? Not up to date on offerings but have seen some streaming ones.

As the AirPods Max don't have analogue outputs you are starting to really mess around with Digital-to-Analogue, Analogue-to-Digital and back to Digital-to-Analogue conversions.

If you connect a DAC to your iPhone/iPad/Mac you are going from Digital-to-Analogue using your connected DAC. The signal is being converted from Digital-to-Analogue. But as the AirPods Max only have a digital input your minijack to lightning cable has its own onboard Analogue-to-Digital converter converting the signal back to digital for the AirPods Max to apply its computational audio processing and digital audio processing before converting it yet again from Digital-to-Analogue.

Having so many steps taking it from Digital-to-Analogue, Analogue-to-Digital and back to Digital-to-Analogue you are most likely causing more harm than good. Sure when using wireless you are taking a lossy source (256 kbps AAC) and transmitting it using a lossy transcoder (Bluetooth AAC) but at least it stays all digital until it reaches the AirPods Max.

But utilising Apple Lossless before transmitting using Bluetooth AAC you are transmitting using lossy transcoding but the transcoding is happening from a lossless source. You will have to be really unlucky with the transcoding for it to do anything bad considering how pretty much every double-blind test have concluded that having ~200 VBR lossy is next to impossible for pretty much anyone to tell apart from a lossless version.

I encourage people to actually try and participate in a double-blind test themselves. It's hard to do in these COVID-19 times but many Hi-Fi shops offer double-blind tests. You just have to make sure you go to a trustworthy shop as many tries to skew the test to make you believe their own equipment is that much better and whatnot. But participating in a good double-blind test using top-quality equipment that you are not previously familiar with so you can't base yourself on memory and trying to listen to various versions created using the same masters and you will have to have some top-notch hearing to be able to tell the difference. And our hearing is degrading with time, so the moment you get past 15-16 years old you are already getting a disadvantage by the day.
 
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Hopefully the Apple Music App for Android will get the same treatment! I am using a dedicated DAP (Sony NW-ZX507) for my music experience! Wanna leave Amazon Music HD, it just sucks!
 
Users will also be able to hear Dolby Atmos music using the built‑in speakers on a compatible iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, or HomePod, or by connecting an Apple TV 4K to a compatible TV or audiovisual receiver.
You forgot to include the new iMac 24”!
 
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.
This is not true. In it's current form the AirPods Max does not support lossless listening via their existing optional bi-directional wire. There is still a small DAC inside those cable.

Unless Apple, with a firmware update, activates direct listening of wired to by-pass their cable so users can use their own DAC and only use the APM as an amp then this will be great news.
 
Is there some sort of compression tech, because streaming those big files would need Wi-Fi or 5G connection to stream, without it lagging. And only Apple headphones are compatible, aren’t they in a lawsuit for being anticompetitive.

I had this problem when we tried Amazon Music HD. Any improvement in audio quality was marginal (if not placebo), and all it did was cause us to lag quite a bit - and that's on Verizon with a solid (at the time) 4G/LTE connection pretty much everywhere we go.
 
Instead of throwing audio mud around - for those who want to make an educated decision:

Loss or lossless

This is about data compression. You can reduce the amount of data for storage in a lossless fashion utilising clever logic. The simplest example would be to code a section of silence (large number of zeros in the datastream) by writing 0 and the number of times it will be repeated (two numbers). This is of course much more compact than writing a thousand times zero. More complex algorithms look at the difference between subsequent numbers (which is often smaller than the numbers themselves) or do even more clever things (same concepts as in standard file compression, which of course has to be lossless).

Compression formats such as MP3 utilise the fact that the human hearing suffers from frequency and temporal masking effects: that some sounds in a signal will inadvertently mask other sounds. You can try this easily yourself: play some music, switch on the vacuum cleaner and voila - part of the music is inaudible. However, most will realise that bass still gets through. In fact, you can often hear baselines much more distinguished when higher frequencies of the music are masked by noise.

Recording and measurement microphones will pick up the full details of the signal and all this information would go into the original file. By analysing the signal and removing higher frequencies (because they would be masked anyway) file complexity can be drastically reduced and file size shrunk significantly. To some degree, this can be done without being detectable by even the most trained listener ... because of the phsyical limits of our hearing. Still the reduction in complexity would already yield much smaller file sizes. Of course this can be pushed further by removing components that would actually be only partially masked or even very audible, i.e. by moving the threshold for acceptable losses, which has given MP3 and co the bad reputation (for an otherwise very clever idea).

Spatial audio

Is about our hearing's ability to detect where sounds come from. For that the human hearing uses clues such as small time differences of the same signal arriving at the left and right ear respectively. Sound, that has to travel around the head, gets filtered (higher frequencies reduced if compared to the side that faced the sound source) and even the shape of the outer ears helps detecting, whether sound came from the front or back, above or below.

To capture sound with all necessary information one has to utilise a sound field microphone, often consisting of four mics closely spaced together (in a pyramid) - often not much bigger than 2 inches or so in overall extend. This allows to collect the directional information of all incoming sound in an almost perfect single point. From there you can calculate back and reproduce the sound ambience with spatially distributed loudspeakers or a headset.

Using a "spatial setup" has the advantage that all of the complicated filtering around and close to your head happens as it would in the original location. The problem is that there must be no or only very weak reflections from the surrounding room. Otherwise, they would interfere with the signals from the loudspeakers, since even the reflections contributing to the sound environment have to be part of the "scene" created by the speakers. Furthermore, you will have to be in the perfect spot (or very close to it), since the entire loudspeaker model needs to take the time differences between each loudspeaker and you as the listener into account. Sound arriving from the different directions has to be perfectly timed. A clever setup would put a sensor on you and measure your location and correct the sound field generation real-time. I guess this should actually be possible using the power of the A, U and M chips.

But all in all, the perfect set up is an anechoic environment, where sound once it has passed your head will be 100% absorbed by the walls. A well damped living or listening room will do as well. But anything "normal" with reflective surfaces will ruin the experience. If you ever have listened to spatial sound reproduction in an anechoic environment, you will know what is possible, how amazing the experience can be, but you will also know what it takes in terms of setup and my hopes would not be high for most users.

The advantage of headsets is of course that all sound is directly presented at your ears. However, every head is different, i.e. the signal would have to be correlated for your head and ears, and it makes a huge difference whether you use over-ear or in-ear headsets. This needs to be part of the filtering. For a perfect experience the listener would have to get her/his "Head Related Transfer Functions" (yes, that is a thing) measured and the headset must be corrected for its characteristics as well. Again, if you have experienced the perfect setup you are wowed, but I have also seen how little it takes to ruin this.

All in all

To experience any of this (lossless and spatial) requires high end audio equipment. A chain is just as strong as the weakest link. If you plan to use this in your car then ... don't really consider it. The car itself creates wind, tyre and engine noises, classical enemies of lossless sound. Unless you listen through active noise headsets ... in that case make sure you keep an extra eye on the road.

Most people will be wowed by spatial (could even be done in the car, especially since you will be in a very specific spot all the time). But whether it is authentic or not in most scenarios ... I would be doubtful.

I am biased and would probably have too high expectations to be satisfied. But I am quite sure that none of this will be fully amazing unless you take your time to listen. For headsets you might need to tweak ... but maybe Apple has some software that guides you through a setup similar to calibrating screens? "You should now hear the bee and mosquito in the same spot. If not move the slider ... "
 
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How about those with a $299-$350 speaker less that 4 years old that was sold on sound quality?
If you're talking about the original HomePod, that support Spatial Audio / Dolby Atmos. Nothing has been confirmed about Lossless Audio.
 
Good to know. Will this change the annoying thing where some tracks are louder than others?
I don't know, but I'm guessing the issue you're talking about is not related to the bit rate of the tracks being streamed. So, I'd guess no.
 
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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.

Honestly, I'm highly doubtful that the AirPods Max are good enough to enjoy lossless audio. I'm thrilled for lossless, and I own the Max's, and they just don't really compare to audiophile level headphones.
 
Hopefully the Apple Music App for Android will get the same treatment! I am using a dedicated DAP (Sony NW-ZX507) for my music experience! Wanna leave Amazon Music HD, it just sucks!
I suspect Apple Music for Android will get support for Lossless / Hi-Res Lossless but not Dolby Atmos / Spatial Audio as the latter requires headphones to be used with a supported iPhone, iPad, Mac or ATV.
 
I don't know, but I'm guessing the issue you're talking about is not related to the bit rate of the tracks being streamed. So, I'd guess no.
All I know is it’s annoying. I wish Apple Music had a way of adjusting so the volume level was constant.
 
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I really miss the “available now” Apple. They could’ve at least had an open beta available immediately or something.

A June release without a firm date is a bit weak tbh.
 
Is there some sort of compression tech, because streaming those big files would need Wi-Fi or 5G connection to stream, without it lagging. And only Apple headphones are compatible, aren’t they in a lawsuit for being anticompetitive.

It's not all that much.

For example, CD quality audio, uncompressed (lossless) is about 1.5mbps. This is the same as SD quality video.

Bump that to 96Khz and it's up to about 3Mbps.

Bump it further to 96KHz 24 bit and it's about 5Mbps. Still well within easy reach of an LTE connection; that's about the same as a 1080p stream on YouTube.

Add in some lossless compression like ALAC/FLAC and you shrink it down a bit, too. Lossless audio compression actually gets MORE efficient as the sample rate goes up because there's more redundancy in the data.


As for only Apple headphones being compatible, this has less to do with trying to be anticompetitive and more to do with the fact that bluetooth standards don't support lossless audio. Apple is able to do it by extending the protocol beyond standard Bluetooth because they're designing the hardware. Your typical Bose or Sennheiser cans are going to use standard Bluetooth where you're limited to SBC, AAC or AptX, all lossy codecs.
 
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