Apple Music Now Rolling Out Support for Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

Does your iPhone heats up after playing in lossless for a while?
Mine is a 12P with the 15 dev beta
 
Marco Klobas said:
Good for them. In this case it's not a forced remix.
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While it may not be a forced remix, it’s nothing like the Dolby Atmos mix that came with the Abbey Road Super Deluxe box set from 2019 (which is AMAZING). Here it sounds like the soundfield collapsed, the volume and frequency response dropped, and, well, bad.
 
lanomds1 said:
Make sure “Spatial Audio” is enabled on the control center for the AirPods Pro, go to Apple Music settings and set “Always on” for Dolby Atmos.

Also, when you’re listening to a track it must show “Dolby Atmos” written below the time bar.
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In control center after you squeeze the AirPods volume mixer. A bright blue icon indicates that Spatial Audio is enabled, but if the sound waves are static it's not supported by the content you're watching. If the waves are pulsing, Spatial Audio is enabled and working.

Well I guess Spatial Audio does not work with music at the moment.
 
uburoibob said:
In general, Dolby Atmos through Airpods Max sounds terrible. The sound stage is compressed, volume levels are wildly different from song to song. frequency extremes are gone. most unimpressed
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yes i actually agree! I can see how this feature might make more basic headphones sound better however the Airpods Max have such a decent soundstage already, you can pick out seperate insturments so well already. For me the clarity is lost as soon as you switch to Dolby Atmos. It feels too 'forced'. The bass really suffers too. Normal stereo produces a stunning intimate experience with the airpods max but everything feels unecessarily distant in Atmos with loads of reverb and poor timing. Its frustrating that they haven't matched the volume either ... almost like they've made them totally different volumes on purpose to emphasize the different modes.

I'd be interested to experience proper spatial audio with head tracking but again i think it will be a gimmick.

One benefit that might come out of this is that producers become a bit more creative with their mixing. Pop songs are so uninspiring with their use of of the soundstage. Almost a lost art from the days of classic rock where the majority of people had a decent hifi system. Away from the charts, there are some cracking tracks which make use of it, Four Tet comes to mind. Lets have more of that!
 
With Big Sur 11.5 beta 2 Apple Music seems to play the first track in lossless but then plays only lossy versions. Relaunching Music app helps sometimes. Anyone else seeing this with macOS 11.4?
 
A couple of questions...

Turning on Spatial Audio adds a layer over Dolby Atmos right? My "super old" 9.7 iPad pro does not have the feature (spatial audio) yet can still play Atmos...

Also, do you have "follow iPhone" off? Its weird for the sound of music to change around like a movie would...
 
just listened to it, it's quite incredible. I was skeptical I'd notice a significant difference. There definitely is. well done apple
 
Has anyone been able to ascertain the relative quality between Dolby Atmos and Lossless with Apple Music? On MacOS, Music appears to be automatically choosing the Atmos streams for my USB DAC (odd), but if I force Atmos off, it’s clear some of the Atmos tracks are encoded at least 96KHz/24bit.

However, when Atmos is playing the sample rate isn’t shown anymore - so I’m wondering is the Atmos sample rate as high as the non-Atmos sample rate, or is it reduced?
 
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knigma said:
Has anyone been able to ascertain the relative quality between Dolby Atmos and Lossless with Apple Music? On MacOS, Music appears to be automatically choosing the Atmos streams for my USB DAC (odd), but if I force Dolby off it’s clear some of the Atmos tracks are encoded at least 96KHz/24bit.

However, when Atmos is playing the sample rate isn’t shown anymore - so I’m wondering is the Atmos sample rate as high as the non-Atmos sample rate, or is it reduced?
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Hi, don't know if this could help but you can "force" the rate for the USB DAC on the Mac within the AudioMidi app
 
Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves is one of my favourite albums of the past few years, so it seemed like one I’d hear an immediate difference in. While I can’t tell if it’s playing in spatial, I can absolutely hear the difference in lossless. It’s pristine, individual instruments are easier to pick out, and reverbs and washes have smoother blooms.

One thing that isn’t great: I had to go to the special version in Apple Music, the version in my library is still just showing as a standard Apple Digital Master. I hope they roll lossless out to existing iTunes purchases.
 
Can absolutely hear the difference when listening to lossless.

I'm going to be actively listening to music again, which I'm now completely looking forward to. Compression was a necessary downgrade/tradeoff back in the day but it's an anachronism now, and we can finally go back to mid-80s CD quality music.

Looking forward to picking up a nice DAC, more IEMs and some higher quality cans for home listening.
 
Ok spacial audio is pretty impressive even on OG AirPods. Very cool. Testing lossless on my home theater system next!
 
H-B0mb said:
Has anyone tried airplay to a sonos arc? Wondering if the sonos is picking up Dolby atmos
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I just tried on the 13.2 Sonos Beta. It doesn't work. I had the Atmos Logo when playing from my phone and AirPods Pro, but as soon as I started Airplay to the Arc, it disappeared.

Edit: I was just able to get it to work on Sonos Arc via Airplay by going to Settings > Music > Dolby Atmos > Always On

IMG_1131.jpegIMG_1130.PNG

In a similar vein, I'm hoping Sonos will add Siri voice support that was announced yesterday. That said, getting them to add support for that may be an uphill battle given that they specified in the keynote that third-party devices will have to sends their Siri requests through a HomePod so as not to send your requests through a third-party server. I feel like Sonos isn't going to want people to buy a HomePod instead one of their competing products to add Siri support.
 
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Can someone help me, I can’t hear a difference. All the settings are on, I have the AirPods Pro. Everything’s updated, I see all the symbols. I seriously can’t tell a difference even in their tutorial. I compared it to Tidal, the exact song and it sounds louder on Tidal (maybe better) so I don’t know.
 
Just hoping they make it available on more of the music I listen to. So far the jazz genre has been mostly ignored.
 
I haven't read the whole thread, so maybe it has been said before, but I'm able to listen to Hi-res Lossless on a MacBook Pro with an external audio card. BUT I had to manually switch the external audio card to 96khz. It didn't change automatically. but this can depend on the audio card driver, so could change with other external DAC.

how it sounds? pretty good indeed! but I think the most difference is from aac 256 to lossless. going to Hi-res Lossless has less impact (at least form my ears).

To give some context, I'm listening in a room with good acoustic treatments and studio grade monitor speakers, with a Motu dac, and not using Spatial Audio
 

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I can definitely hear the difference on my AirPod Pros and I like it. I have the newer AppleTV 4K and when a Dolby Atmos track plays, it does fill my 5.1 surround sound and it sounds really good. I know it's not true Dolby Atmos, but the center channel has the voice and the music fills the room, plus my sub hits pretty good too. I have HomePod minis in my living room setup as a pair which I'll still use, but as time passes and more Dolby Atmos is added, I'll definitely migrate to listening to it via 5.1.

I've turned on Lossless (CD quality) on all of my wired to speakers devices as well.
 
After not being impressed with Atmos through AirPods Max I just played all sorts on the Apple TV (4K 2nd gen) through my AVR with Atmos speaker setup and it sounded fantastic!
The proper speaker and sub separation must make the difference but it sounds great.
 
rumoursmac said:
On iOS it does change sample rates but macOs it hasn't for years, even local hi-res in iTunes

I expect this will come via a macOS update later

Remember we haven't needed to update macOS or iOS for lossless to start working

I expect a future macOS will make this work properly
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Well, that seriously sucks. Apple Music Hi-Res Lossless on a Mac .... isn't hi-res lossless. The song on Apple Music might say Hi-Res Lossless, but my DAC isn't getting any.
On my Mac, today, after activating all Apple Music lossless settings, Qobuz works, Tidal works, Roon works, but Apple Music doesn't.
 
andrmu said:
Well, that seriously sucks. Apple Music Hi-Res Lossless on a Mac .... isn't hi-res lossless. The song on Apple Music might say Hi-Res Lossless, but my DAC isn't getting any.
On my Mac, today, after activating all Apple Music lossless settings, Qobuz works, Tidal works, Roon works, but Apple Music doesn't.
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You can change the sample rate for audio output devices on the AudioMidi app on the Mac.
 
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