Anybody else finding that many tracks in Apple's "Made for Spatial Audio/Dolb Atmos" playlist are not Dolby Atmos versions? They lack the DA indicator in the what's playing window - see attached screen grabs taken on my laptop. Eilish is DA, Kanye is not - both are on that playlist. It's not just that some lack the logo... play a DA track from the playlist and while it's playing toggle the DA on and off in preferences/playback. Example the Eilish track (when you turn DA from on to off or vice versa then click ok in the preference pane) it drops out for a second then comes back completely different. The Kanye track when tested similarly doesn't drop out or change at all. Unless my computer is the only one experiencing this many of the tracks that people notice no difference between the DA version it is because there is no difference - dolby is not applied.
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Apple Music Now Rolling Out Support for Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio
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It seems to depend on the device. On my Apple TV 4K, I have audio quality set to Lossless, but it plays Atmos for songs that support it, but on my iPhone 12 Pro Max, I also have audio quality set to Lossless, but even on tracks that are available in Atmos, I only see the Lossless logo on the now playing screen when playing to my AirPods Pro.
edit: Oh crap, it seems like this behavior is undefined / buggy. On my iPhone, I just changed Wi-Fi streaming audio quality to High Quality so I would be able to listen to Dolby Atmos, and then when I finished listening, I changed it back to Lossless and listened again, but now it defaults to Atmos, even after a restart of the Music app and iPhone, so now I am having to set Dolby Atmos to Off to hear Lossless on tracks that support Atmos, which is the opposite of how it was working before. I guess Apple still needs to work out some bugs.
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I’ve barely found much with Dolby atmos on. The stuff there is does sound phenomenal though.
typical apple making it confusing though. Couldn’t work out for the life of me why when I downloaded a song to my library it removed the Dolby atmos logo. Turns out you have to turn it on in the settings. Most people won’t know this.
typical apple making it confusing though. Couldn’t work out for the life of me why when I downloaded a song to my library it removed the Dolby atmos logo. Turns out you have to turn it on in the settings. Most people won’t know this.
Figured out a work around - though many of the tracks in the cloud weren't Atmos when I played them from the cloud once I downloaded suddenly they were Atmos.
iPod touch 7 has all the options for lossless and Dolby Atmos, and when enabled no actually plays in either. Apple support says both require iPhones running iOS 14.6, wouldn’t the iPod touch be covered?
I don't care about BT not supporting lossless, my AirPods Pro haven't sounded so good ever. Maybe the better bit-rate makes a difference. A wider sound stage, better bass response, more separation (jazz genre). I've actually disabled lossless in settings to prove I hear some difference..... and yes I do. Thanks Apple Music!
I'm in the same boat. The Bluesound crew keeps bringing up AirPlay 2 every time they discuss Apple Music Lossless, but AirPlay 2 is up to 24 bit / 48kHz, so no Hi-Res. There are multiple discussions of the issue in the Bluesound support community with no clear solutions:
https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/1500001313502-Apple-Music-Lossless-Hi-Res
Apple‘s ALAC 24/192 via AirPlay2
Which Bluesound products will fully support Apple’s 24/192 ALAC via AirPlay 2?
support1.bluesound.com
I'm considering connecting an AppleTV to our Samsung QLED TV via HDMI, and then the Samsung TV to Node 2i with an optical cable. But I have no idea if digital signal would passed through to Node 2i without conversions in between.
I really don't see how going from 256 AAC to lossless would make the soundstage wider with any gear. I'm also very skeptical about the bass response claim. The main difference between lossy and lossless is actually supposed to be in the highs.
The only way to test it properly is to run a blind test repeatedly: someone else has to switch lossless on and off without telling you what you are hearing, repeat many times and calculate the success rate in identifying lossless correctly.
I've run such a test on my son (an 18-years old jazz musician) using Sennheiser HD800 with iFi micro iDSD Black Label DAC/Amp. He correctly identified lossless in 8 out of 10 trials. His description of lossless vs lossy was more clarity and musicality, as if a thin layer of dust was lifted.
Yes. Very frustrating. The entire playlist is dedicated to Made for Spatial Audio yet.. it doesn't play in Spatial Audio... seems like they still need to work out some bugs.
The rollout has been terrible for me on M1 Air in California
-songs that streamed in high res lossless would then download at 256kps and then other songs from the same album would download at high res. Then I would go to play the high res downloaded song, and no sound would come out and all of the lossless icons would disappear. 2 days of the lossless icons appearing and disappearing and then songs not playing.
I have 384khz external dac with usb 2 audio support and nice Harbeth speakers. If audio midi automatically changed sampling rates, I wouldn't even bother with high resolution since lossless is fine (obviously 256aac is fine and indistinguishable too - but i have no problem just using lossless if it's there either)
Since there are going to be sample rate conversions on the mac i would just assume use the high res for now once they get their stuff together there.
-songs that streamed in high res lossless would then download at 256kps and then other songs from the same album would download at high res. Then I would go to play the high res downloaded song, and no sound would come out and all of the lossless icons would disappear. 2 days of the lossless icons appearing and disappearing and then songs not playing.
I have 384khz external dac with usb 2 audio support and nice Harbeth speakers. If audio midi automatically changed sampling rates, I wouldn't even bother with high resolution since lossless is fine (obviously 256aac is fine and indistinguishable too - but i have no problem just using lossless if it's there either)
Since there are going to be sample rate conversions on the mac i would just assume use the high res for now once they get their stuff together there.
Other than spatial audio on or off, you shouldn't be able to hear a difference between lossless and not-lossless - try and see if you have have a friend help you do a blind test. Placebo is powerful.
(I'm surprised there are not more "objectivists" on here)
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Thank you sir. I did just that with my wife doing the switching and I can confirm 100% it sounded different. I used mostly the jazz genre and that was the best result. But I did pop classical and r&b
REALLY powerful
The mind does some wonderful tricks - particularly when there's a strong bias for a user to want to believe "they have the best" and "they can hear the benefits" and "it's all worth it"
The resulting pleasure of listening to (what I know/believe is) lossless audio is real though, for me anyway, so even if it was just based on the placebo effect, that would actually be reason enough for me.
The resulting pleasure of listening to (what I know/believe is) lossless audio is real though, for me anyway, so even if it was just based on the placebo effect, that would actually be reason enough for me.
Fair enough and I don't disagree at all!
Placebo is powerful and in fact useful in many situations in life.
Enjoy!
The resulting pleasure of listening to (what I know/believe is) lossless audio is real though, for me anyway, so even if it was just based on the placebo effect, that would actually be reason enough for me.
Send me a direct message. I have some wonderful placebo-based treatments to offer at perfectly reasonable prices.
UPDATE: It no longer works today: uploaded ALAC files now appear as AAC on other devices and the file sizes are now much smaller than the originals. One thing that changed between yesterday and today is that I was still on MacOS 11.3.something and have upgraded to 11.4 only today. I'll try again later with another Mac that's on an older version.
thanks, you too!
lol. Honestly, though, I'd rather be treated with a placebo than with nothing at all. Thankfully, this particular "treatment" comes for free. Admittedly, I've already spent way too much on lossless music when lossy audio was readily available to me. Oh well... there are probably worse and more costly self-delusions.
One Atmos track I’ve heard that I like is Norah Jones “Don’t Know Why”. It’s pretty stunning. So far, it’s the only one.
From what I understand, if you delete and re-download, you will get whatever version you’ve specified in Apple Music’s prefs.