Other than the fact that you wouldn't be able to hear the difference on any of them anyway.
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HomePod Will Support Spatial Audio for Apple Music, But Not Lossless Audio
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Other than the fact that you wouldn't be able to hear the difference on any of them anyway.
Ehm, wait a minute, Macrumors. T3 says that Apple have confirmed to them that the Apple TV AND the Homepod will support lossless audio. Something is wrong here.
Great post! So on point.
Hope the Apple TV HD is able to output 24/192 via HDMi PCM or so, as I have it connected to a Hi-Res Sony home cinema 5.1, where the hi-res digital albums I have really sound way better than Apple Music versions of them.
Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but didn’t Apple remove the optical port in their 2021 ATVs?
> Therefore unable to plug directly into an DAC+AMP setup
> Therefore how do you get lossless?
Edit: Ah, PCM over HDMI. Silly question. Disregard.
Well, my apple tv via HDMI passes PCM 5.1 dolby digital, so why not PCM 2.0 at 24/192? I guess HDMI has bandwidth enough for it. My 5.1 home cinema is Hi-res, and has an internal DAC, amp. and everything.
Yeah, and it's not an issue. Someone definitely got their wires crossed.
Saying the Homepod won't support lossless audio is like saying we will never have electric cars. It's already happened.
I play lossless audio on my Homepod most every day.
Do people not remember the excitement and surprise when Apple first announced that the Homepod supported FLAC in addition to ALAC? I do.
That's not true at all.
You are probably thinking of the comparisons between hi-res audio and CD quality audio. Yes, it's true that most people can't tell the difference between those two. But with a good quality audio system the average person can hear the difference between compressed formats and lossless (CD quality).
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Sorry, but that's just wrong. Just look it up and you'll see that real blind tests showed that you won't be able to distinguish 256 AAC/320MP3 and lossless. Or feel free to do the same blind test (under real scientific conditions - same master, same volume, not knowing which is which) and fail. Maybe there's even one "golden ear" out of 100 people (which everybody here seems to believe he/she is), but the average person won't hear the difference even on a 10.000$+ system.
There are higher bitrate Bluetooth codecs than AAC. LDAC and AptXD to name a few. Neither of them are truly lossless, but they're still capable of transmitting more data than AAC.
Audio limitations keep AirPods, HomePod from playing Apple Music Lossless tracks
Apple rolled out a new hi-res audio tier, but the AirPods and HomePod won't be able to enjoy it.
www.macworld.com
These answers are making even less and less sense, not to mention not really even providing a reason:
"While (HomePod) speakers use AirPlay rather than Bluetooth to connect to devices, Apple says they won’t benefit from Apple Music’s higher bitrate either." WHY NOT?
Completely understood why BT doesn't support CD-quality, but why wouldn't AirPlay 2, which does play Apple's proprietary codec ("music at a higher bitrate")... and which it has already shown to be capable of using Home Library. So why wouldn't it work via streaming?
What a press release fiasco.
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That's the trouble with Apple. It is both a software and hardware vendor, so we assume that if they make changes to software, it automatically translates to Apple hardware. Which may not be the case.
Take a deep breath and take your mind back to better days...
Rushing from the local record store with the just released album by (insert the name of a fave band of yours) to your friend's place to the basement rec room where you would open the album, carefully place it on the turntable and play it through whatever stereo rig he had. Maybe smoke a little something or open some stubby beer bottles, devour the liner notes and enjoy side 1. Bit rate, lossless, codec...what the hell is that? Just get into the music.
Once side 1 concludes, refresh the beverages and let side 2 take you away from your everyday cares.
That is life.
Rushing from the local record store with the just released album by (insert the name of a fave band of yours) to your friend's place to the basement rec room where you would open the album, carefully place it on the turntable and play it through whatever stereo rig he had. Maybe smoke a little something or open some stubby beer bottles, devour the liner notes and enjoy side 1. Bit rate, lossless, codec...what the hell is that? Just get into the music.
Once side 1 concludes, refresh the beverages and let side 2 take you away from your everyday cares.
That is life.
When it comes to lossless, just a reminder... the human limit of hearing is 20kHz....when you're a child. It goes down from there.
The standard sampling rate of AAC is 44.1kHz which covers everything under 22 kHz. Happy that Apple is trying to improve the audio experience. However, this is largely in same bucket as 8K TVs. 5% improvement, 95% marketing.
You likely don't have the setup to enjoy this and if you did, 95% of you out there wouldn't hear the difference.
The standard sampling rate of AAC is 44.1kHz which covers everything under 22 kHz. Happy that Apple is trying to improve the audio experience. However, this is largely in same bucket as 8K TVs. 5% improvement, 95% marketing.
You likely don't have the setup to enjoy this and if you did, 95% of you out there wouldn't hear the difference.
Because it gives people a reason to upgrade the devices that they'd be otherwise content to have. Apple knows what they're doing.
Apple Music Lossless Audio – what we do and don't know - 9to5Mac
A day after the Apple Music Lossless Audio announcement, there's still a great deal of confusion. A few things have become clear, but ...
9to5mac.com
This is how it’s done: what you know (with supporting evidence and/or references), what you don’t know (with information gaps) and what you think (with reasonable assessments).
That said, I’m still skeptical that it’s clear (i.e. hopeful that it’s unclear) if the OG HomePod will be supported. Answers and sources to this question seem to be the least explained (“According to Apple” with no link or reference? C’mon…), and they really only talk about lossless as if it’s a binary improvement they’re making. I’m holding out for when this can be tested.
I’d happily take CD-streaming Apple Music on my stereo HomePods (AirPods, etc.) - referred to in this article as “the middle quality of Apple Music Lossless Audio”… maybe that’s the better question to ask/answer!
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And then you get people complaining that you have to be in the Apple eco system to use a certain feature. They give people a free upgraded feature and people moan because you can't use it within their eco system haha, madness.
Give me an example then.
I HAVE done third-party blind tests myself. I did one online with other random internet people and scored 10/10 for songs I don't know well, while listening on computer speakers. Most of the other participants scored 8/10 or better.
While the differences were subtle, most everyone involved said they could easily hear those differences. These weren't people that claimed to have golden ears, and most were evaluating using very basic speaker systems.
My favorite line so far (from https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/18/apple-music-lossless-audio-confusion/):
“I suspect the real answer here is that Apple didn’t want to create a mess by saying, ‘Yeah, so you get Lossless on our discontinued HomePod, but not on the model we still sell’.” 🔥🥵😅
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I suspect the lack of official support for lossless comes down to items: the signal chain in HomePods (and AirPods) and a healthy dose of lawyerly CYA.
While I would be shocked if the HomePod couldn't accept lossless digital at 44.1/16, or even 48.0/16, there is no simple signal path in this device. That is to say, the signal isn't coming into the HomePod, being handed off in short order to the DAC, and then hitting the output stage. The HomePod (and the AirPods) are applying a crapload of DSP to the signal before it's output. There is currently no way to defeat this. We also know very little about the DSP and probably never will since the details are probably behind several different legal barriers. What sort of upsampling, resampling, eq, etc. is going on will likely never be known.
Which leads to the second item. Since Apple is marketing lossless as, rather inanely and inaccurately, as, "the way the artists created them in the studio," they really can't claim this if the signal is being heavily processed on the device. It's no longer being presented in the way "artists created them." If Apple didn't disqualify its current speakers and DSP-reliant headphones, I would give it less than a month before the first lawsuit was filed in the US and less than a year before the EU was poking about for deceptive marketing practices.
While I would be shocked if the HomePod couldn't accept lossless digital at 44.1/16, or even 48.0/16, there is no simple signal path in this device. That is to say, the signal isn't coming into the HomePod, being handed off in short order to the DAC, and then hitting the output stage. The HomePod (and the AirPods) are applying a crapload of DSP to the signal before it's output. There is currently no way to defeat this. We also know very little about the DSP and probably never will since the details are probably behind several different legal barriers. What sort of upsampling, resampling, eq, etc. is going on will likely never be known.
Which leads to the second item. Since Apple is marketing lossless as, rather inanely and inaccurately, as, "the way the artists created them in the studio," they really can't claim this if the signal is being heavily processed on the device. It's no longer being presented in the way "artists created them." If Apple didn't disqualify its current speakers and DSP-reliant headphones, I would give it less than a month before the first lawsuit was filed in the US and less than a year before the EU was poking about for deceptive marketing practices.
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No one plays music to savor the sweet tones at 20kHz. The point of hi-res is to provide better sound reproduction at the frequencies people can hear. People don't listen to music with an oscilloscope, they listen with their ears.
The people saying hi-res doesn't matter are the same ones who used to claim that 128kbps MP3's are fine because the Ignorant Masses can't tell the difference between 128kbps and 16/44 CD's. In addition to portability and storage capacity, there are reasons we don't use 78 rpm shellac discs anymore. Newer technologies sound better.
A cheap $200 or $300 dollar DAC upgrade can provide a huge improvement in sound quality. If measured kHz were the only relevant factor, that would not be the case.
I would never claim that 128 is already enough and yeah: People are listening with their human ears and not an oscilloscope – and that's exactly why they are not able to distinguish AAC 256 and lossless anymore, let alone hi-res 192kHz voodoo madness or whatever.