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Ok I’m going to say it: If you’re listening to Apple Music on your Airpods, don’t waste your money on the Hi-Fi streaming tier. You need a really solid pair of headphones to take advantage of it.
The rumor indicates that there's no price difference for the HiFi tier. So subscribers will probably just get it (or there's a setting for it in the app).
 
Ok I’m going to say it: If you’re listening to Apple Music on your Airpods, don’t waste your money on the Hi-Fi streaming tier. You need a really solid pair of headphones to take advantage of it.
Did you read in the article where it says the HiFi tier is the same price as the standard tier? No wasting of money.
 
HiFi Music matters little until Apple fixes the buggy mess that is the Music App.

The Music App is stunningly shoddy software, particularly on the Mac. I find myself rebooting it daily because it loses connection to Apple Music, Airpods, play buttons stop working. and the UI flow needs so much work. It doesn’t even support swipe-backs.

Apple wants to be serious about Music, fix the app that is the foundation of this offfering.
 
The rumor indicates that there's no price difference for the HiFi tier. So subscribers will probably just get it (or there's a setting for it in the app).
Did you read in the article where it says the HiFi tier is the same price as the standard tier? No wasting of money.
Ok, that’s really surprising. Companies always charge more for high fidelity and I thought Apple would be no exception.
 
I have my ifi micro idsd black label dac and my Sennheiser HD 600’s ready. I hope it’s really true.
 
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I'm excited for this, even though I'm not so sure if my Airpods Pro and Airpods Max will ever benefit from this upgrade at all.

Any audiophile can tell us if AirPods Pro and Max are good enough for telling a difference with HIFI music?

(Probably not? 😉
 
Studies have proven you right time and again. Anyone can say they “can tell” a difference, but the testing shows most people can’t. It takes the right equipment in the right settings, with the right listener, and even then the numbers of people who can tell a difference are low.
Exactly. I’m sure there are some people under insanely controlled conditions and premium equipment who can tell the difference, but the data has proven that — basically — 99%+ of people who claim it’s “night and day” are actually just flexing in some effort of bizarre toxic masculinity.
 
Hopefully this means that all of my iTunes Match and Apple Music music gets auto upgraded, with an option to re-rip CDs at full quality.

Then the question becomes… what Apple hardware can actually output high fidelity? I’d assume the discontinued full-size HomePods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max?
 
Hopefully comes alongside an Airplay 3 announcement that existing HomePods will support. Not sure what devices could support this since they took the headphone jack out of everything. Apple TV and Macs is it.

nevermind: just learned Airplay 2 is WiFi based so looks like they are primed for launch of this. I had always figured airplay used WiFi to connect but Bluetooth to stream.
 
HiFi means something different to us older folks but I'm glad Apple is getting on the bandwagon. I think music seems deeper, more enveloping in high def but you have to have a good track to start with. Hopefully FLAC will start being supported in the music app and Apple devices.
 
In reality, supported by statistics and real double-blind listening tests, majority of people, whether they claimed they're audiophiles or not, will find ~128kbps on modern codecs transparent to the source. There's a reason 128kbps MP3 became the "norm," and more modern codec can push the bitrate even further down.

The rest plays with emotion, ego, and status symbol.

Having said that, lossless is still important for archival purposes.
Agree with you. Mostly for modern music studio recordings.
I’d argue mixing in the studio is the real problem. The dynamic range is compressed to hell. No codec or bitrate can rescue that.
 
WTF is happening in the world when folk are now starting to reference CD Quality as Audiophile, do we need any additional kit to play CD quality files, I mean c'mon seriously?
For folk that have bought into this 256kbs AAC is enough, remember back to when iTunes launched & we were told 128kbs AAC was enough, until it seemingly wasn't.
CD quality is not audiophile in the strictest meaning of the word, it's just as things should sound.
Just play the Foo Fighters new album on iTunes & tell me it sounds ok, just about right, it sounds god awful, as does any other kind of music on there.
256kps is a convenience only.
IIRC, I remember someone saying that the music source files that Apple holds are lossless anyway, so storage issues should face any additional cost.
 
Well, in order for you to be able to take advantage of high-resolution wireless audio, Apple will have to adopt LDAC on the iPhone. I hope to see them do so. If it’s wired then this doesn’t apply, of course.
True. The headphones are wireless Sony WH-H910N, but they do have audio jack. It's a little bit off topic but I'd like to say that I'm gonna return them because the audio quality sucks really hard. My much cheaper Sennheiser HD 380 Pro sounds like much more expensive headphones in comparison. If you can recommend some good headphones I'd really appreciate that.
 
Looking forward to this on my apm and homepods, Certain both will be supported by this, probably even the app‘s
 


Citing sources within the music industry, Hits Double Daily reports that Apple is preparing to launch a new HiFi Apple Music tier in the "coming weeks," which will come alongside the release of the rumored third-generation AirPods.

apple-music-logo.jpg

According to the report, the new tier, which will offer high-fidelity music streaming, will cost the same $9.99 monthly subscription as the current individual tier. Spotify, Apple Music's most fierce competitor, has announced that later in 2021, Spotify users will be able to "upgrade their sound quality to Spotify HiFi and listen to their favorite songs the way artists intended."

The report says that an announcement of the new Apple Musc tier and the launch of the third-generation AirPods will take place in the "coming weeks." Apple plans to hold its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 7, and while no hardware was announced at the conference last year, hardware announcements are possible at the software-focused event.

The third-generation AirPods are expected to feature a design that's similar to the design language of the AirPods Pro but lack certain "Pro" features such as Active Noise Cancelation. If the rumor is to be accurate, the new AirPods release comes on the backdrop of a report signaling that Apple is cutting back on AirPods production due to decreasing sales.

Article Link: Rumor: Apple to Announce Third-Generation AirPods and HiFi Apple Music Tier in 'Coming Weeks'
 
Ok, that’s really surprising. Companies always charge more for high fidelity and I thought Apple would be no exception.
Admittedly, I completely glossed over the part about cost 😂 Only thing that came to mind was that I'm paying for the Premier tier of Apple One, so the first thought was "what's that going to do to that cost?" I'd be ok with paying a couple extra bucks for it, but if they really do keep the price the same...that's a nice bonus!
 
Hopefully this means that all of my iTunes Match and Apple Music music gets auto upgraded, with an option to re-rip CDs at full quality.

Then the question becomes… what Apple hardware can actually output high fidelity? I’d assume the discontinued full-size HomePods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max?
Certainly their only active standalone speaker will support it. No it wont sound as good, but I’m pretty confident whatever codec they use will be supported by the mini.
 
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Any audiophile can tell us if AirPods Pro and Max are good enough for telling a difference with HIFI music?

(Probably not? 😉
The Airpods series only supports SBC and AAC anyway. The nice thing is since current iTunes music are already in AAC format, basically there will be no transcoding when they are being streamed to Airpods.

The question is, what format would Apple use for these new HiFi music. Anything other than AAC will probably be transcoded to AAC/SBC when streamed to the Airpods.
 
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Well, in order for you to be able to take advantage of high-resolution wireless audio, Apple will have to adopt LDAC on the iPhone. I hope to see them do so. If it’s wired then this doesn’t apply, of course.
I don't think Apple will want to pay Sony for LDAC support.
With the H1 chip, maybe Apple will just do their own wireless lossless format.
 
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