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Apple Music Lossless: What Devices are Supported?
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Just because you can’t hear the diff , don’t speak for everyone. I’m tired of seeing so many people spreading misinformation about “being able to hear the difference” .. Amazon music HD is leaps and bounds more noticeable than Spotify’s 320kbps and Apples AAC. **** and stop spreading BS because you fail to hear the difference .
Apple in June 2021 is adding new Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless tiers to Apple Music, but so far, it's a bit confusing trying to determine which devices support Apple Music's Lossless Audio and which devices do not.
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This guide covers everything that we know so far about Lossless Audio, and we'll be updating it as we learn more after the new feature launches.
What is Lossless Audio?
Apple is upgrading its entire streaming music catalog to lossless audio using the ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) format. ALAC is a lossless compression format that lets Apple make smaller file sizes without impacting the integrity of the original audio recording.
Lossless means that after compression and then decompression, the audio that you're hearing is identical to the audio as it was recorded by the artist, preserving the texture, detail, and sound that went into the music when it was created.
With lossless audio, Apple Music subscribers can listen to songs exactly as the artists recorded them in the studio and intended them to be heard.
Lossless Device Support
Supported
According to Apple, lossless audio on Apple Music can be listened to on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV.
Unsupported
None of Apple's headphones, however, work with lossless audio, nor does the HomePod or the HomePod mini. The AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max are limited to the Bluetooth AAC codec and simply cannot support the ALAC format.
Lossless Audio Quality
The standard Lossless tier will start at CD quality, which is 16-bit at 44.1 kHz, and it goes up to 24-bit at 48 kHz. Apple is also adding a Hi-Res Lossless tier for audiophiles, which is available at 24-bit 192 kHz, but Hi-Res Lossless will require a USB digital-to-analog converter, or DAC.
Even when connected by a physical wire, the AirPods Max won't support true lossless audio.
It is not clear if ALAC support is something that Apple can add in the future because technically, Bluetooth 5.0 should support higher bitrates, nor is it known if Apple plans to add support to future audio devices.
Lossless Audio Songs
When Apple launches lossless music tracks, 20 million songs will support the codec, and all 75 million+ songs on Apple Music will support lossless audio by the end of 2021.
The feature is limited to Apple Music streaming subscribers. Lossless quality will not be available for iTunes purchases and there is no way to upgrade owned music to lossless via iTunes Match.
Can You Even Hear Lossless Audio?
Lossless audio is not a new concept, and has in fact been supported via iTunes and the Apple Music app for Mac for years now. There is some controversy over lossless audio, and there are quite a few people out there who are unable to hear the difference between lossy audio and uncompressed lossless audio files.
There are also other considerations to take into account, such as the quality of the device that you're listening to music on. Lossless audio is designed for audiophiles and most people will not miss lossless quality on their HomePod, AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max.
Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos
Apple's more notable Apple Music announcement has been somewhat overshadowed by the lossless music feature. The HomePod, all AirPods, and all Beats headphones with Apple's H1 or W1 chip automatically support a new Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos feature that Apple is bringing to Apple Music. Spatial Audio for other headphones paired with an Apple device can be enabled manually via the Settings app on your device.
With this feature, artists are able to record multi-dimensional audio that will make it sound like the music is coming from all around you.
Apple Music Launch Date
Apple is laying the groundwork for the new Apple Music update in iOS 14.6, tvOS 14.6, and macOS Big Sur 11.4, and plans to enable lossless audio and Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos in June.
Article Link: Apple Music Lossless: What Devices are Supported?
I’m trying to figure out if Apple will even allow ALAC to be streamed.. I have a feeling they will lock it to AAC unless wired. I hope I’m wrong though because I agree with you . I can def hear the difference streaming Amazon music HD to my AirPods.
Watch your language and damn ... I would LOVE to arrange a public abx blind test with everyone like you here to sort out this placebo nonsense (resp. different master sources) once and for all.
Hopefully I can be of some help here, to folks just looking for some practical advice. In my opinion, Apple hasn't done themselves any favors with this roll out so far by just stating which devices won't support their new tier. While you won't be able to reap the total benefits of lossless with the Non Supported list of products here, you will hear a difference.
In my work, using high quality DACs, my Tidal subscription is used as intended and works very well. When mobile, and on Bluetooth, the difference between lossy and lossless is still quite noticeable, despite even Bluetooth's shortcomings. Your experience with Apple Music Lossless should be similar. You should, with even a reasonably good system, have a much better listening experience.
In my work, using high quality DACs, my Tidal subscription is used as intended and works very well. When mobile, and on Bluetooth, the difference between lossy and lossless is still quite noticeable, despite even Bluetooth's shortcomings. Your experience with Apple Music Lossless should be similar. You should, with even a reasonably good system, have a much better listening experience.
1). I have a B&W Zepplin streaming music via WiFi. Will i be able to send it lossless audio using my iPhone? It has an excellent DAC built in. Same question using an Airport Express or old AppleTV that has a digital audio outpouring.
Folks won't hear it. I have ripped CDs in uncompressed WAV format that I use as reference for mixing and mastering purposes, and have compared them directly to their Apple Music high quality streams versions within the iMac I have for recording plugged to my audio interfaces and monitor speakers... It's extremely hard to discern one from the other.
Also, people here waiting to hear any difference between lossless and HiFi using a DAC and "expensive" wired headphones, are in for a rude awakening. Unless your high end headphones have a frequency response beyond the 20Hz-20KHz range (human hearing range) you won't hear the real difference. To actually kinda "hear" the 24bit/96KHz range, your headphones or speakers should go from 15Hz up to at least 48KHz. If you wanna try hearing the 24bit/192KHz range, your headphones gotta go below 15Hz up to 96KHz. I say try, but in reality I mean trick yourself into believing you can hear it. You can't. Period. Those resolutions are used when recording only, especially when using virtual instruments and space or reverberation plugins for movies. Increased resolution results in a little bit clearer reverb tails and bass response that when bounced down to human hearing range, won't mess with the overall mix and retain clarity. But it's extremely surgical, so regular people won't notice it.
Anyways, headphones are a very bad medium for stereo image, that's why they are NOT used when mixing or mastering. They are just a comparison reference to check if your final master won't sound weird in them. Enter Atmos and other psychoacustic systems like Waves' Nx spatial audio positioning (I own a plugin of the latter for my DAW to mix using headphones.) They are used to simulate an acoustic space with high-end speakers in front and around you using your headphones. The hard part is that for these systems to work, you need precise response curves from your headphone set for the positional audio system to make the compensation and translate the high-end acoustic space to your ears. Apple has standardized their Mac, wired and wireless speakers, so now they are in a position to implement a system like Atmos. We have predictable speakers if we are in their ecosystem. Don't expect surround effects in regular music recordings. Expect improved stereo image with headphones, as if you were in a mastering room with two extremely high end speakers in front of you, or even surround setups when watching movies. You can rotate your head and will get the effect that audio bounces back and in front of the room accordingly. Also, these spatial audio systems are compression and resolution independent, that's why they are supported with AirPods and wireless streaming.
Posting this just trying to clarify some audio tech lingo being thrown around so folks don't have the wrong expectations regarding lossless, spatial audio and HiFi playback.
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To be honest, I wouldn't even rule out anymore that Apple secretly "tunes" their Music App now so that the AACs are played just a liiiitle bit more muffled than before and everybody can say: "Wow, lossless sounds so much better!" 😀 Cause otherwise – no chance to hear the difference.
Curious about the spatial audio though – I'm a bit afraid this will be extremely gimmicky like early stereo recordings when the music went from left to right just for the "wow" effect, but I don't know enough about this and maybe it will really offer a great new stereo image dimension. Would be great.
Curious about the spatial audio though – I'm a bit afraid this will be extremely gimmicky like early stereo recordings when the music went from left to right just for the "wow" effect, but I don't know enough about this and maybe it will really offer a great new stereo image dimension. Would be great.
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Spatial audio is the real deal...I watched the Marvel movies with it on Disney+ and the effect is just marvelous, especially on those AirPods Max!
Have to try this out with my AirPods, too - thanks for the hint, didn't really remember about that Apple already has movies with spatial support out there. Owning an Apple TV, too, I guess it already supports Spatial.
I'm curious if music can be "re-mastered" to good spatial so that it makes sense and is not, as mentioned, only a gimmick which gets annoying after one track.
this kind of explains why apple was so reluctant to offer lossless streaming. It goes against their mobile devices. all the other music streaming providers have no such baggage. To be honest, it is more for people who listen over their desktops and through an external DAC and decent wired headphones, say HD-650 or better.
It is possible to be able to hear the difference, but it depends on a lot of factors: the source material needs to be properly recorded, the DAC must be both fast (reacting) and powerful enough to get the signal to the speakers. You need multiple speakers (which may need a crossover circuit) to separate bass and mid range and high frequency sounds. The final 2 things you need are very important: you need an area for listening that’s not contaminated by noise pollution and the person listening needs to have good hearing.
Earphones with only a left and right speaker can probably sound better with lossless but not as good as a decent set of speakers. You’re asking a lot for very small speakers to accurately reproduce sound across the entire human audible spectrum.
DAC does not react fast. If it indicates in its specs that it samples at 96KHz, it means it can reproduce 48KHz frequencies by the Nyquist sampling theorem (you need to sample twice as fast as the highest frequency you'll record.) The power to get the resulting DAC output signal into speakers is provided by an amplifier, not the DAC itself. Regarding volume, 24 bit recordings have a greater dynamic range (how loud and how quiet a sound is) than 16 bit recordings. If you notice a small difference in volume between a 24 and 16 bit audio file is because of this, and not the sampling rate. Of course, you need to be listening through a 24 bit DAC output, regardless of its amplifier.
I’ll take your word for DAC technology. Audio purity is a race I dropped out of initially because of cost but now because of hearing damage. I know that I don’t hear as well as I used to.
Humans lose hearing sensitivity as they age. Only kids retain full hearing range (up to 20KHz) until they begin listening to music in loud environments or headphones, or get hearing damage for whatever reasons. We should be listening to music or movies to sound pressure levels of no more than 80-82dB. Adults beyond their 30s on average have a hearing range up to 16KHz and even 12KHz due to being exposed to high sound pressure levels (high volume sounds.)
And yes, that audiophile hobby gets expensive if you believe marketing and BS from salesmen or other hobbyists that don't really know how things work. I got familiar with all of this because I studied piano and music as a child, and continued learning until I got into recording for myself and fellow musicians when I was around 19 or 20 years old. I even setup a Pro Tools TDM recording system for a salsa studio! I ended up studying architecture and I'm a construction contractor for fire protection systems now, but never put aside music. I got into learning electric guitar, bass and drums in my 40s, and it's something I do for fun, so I have a small collection of instruments and recording gear that I can assure are way less expensive and relaxing as a whole than a high-end audio playback system.
Tried the first two of those already and cancelled them. They both charge a premium for high resolution audio. Both have terrible apps that make it difficult or impossible to sort the high res/surround sound content from the rest. Amazon will only play Atmos content through it's premium echo speaker, which, as a single speaker device, can't actually create surround sound, so that's a profoundly odd choice. So the first two were definitely out of the gate earlier, but implemented by people who seem less interested in actually delivering the premium content than they are in charging a premium for it.
Don't know about Deezer.
Apple uses services to sell hardware. My guess is the official launch will be at WWDC along with new lossless capable AirPods. Only question is whether it will be backwards compatible with existing AirPods
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People may lose some of their hearing naturally, but working in a metal stamping plant with noise levels averaging above 95 db and sometimes hitting 110 probably doesn’t help me.
But at least I never fell for that Monster Cable BS.
lightning cable into USB-A jack in car for Apple Music, and also tried lightning to adapter to 3.5” jack. That’s as good as it can be, and the CD was night and day clearer. Not even close. To suggest that it is the “wrong comparison” is silly. It is the method of how I am listening to music. If the lossless sounds way better than Apple Music, then it is the perfect comparison.
Apple commented to say that wired from iPhone to Max that as it undergoes a conversion from analog to digital, it cannot truly be considered lossless, but the inference was still that it is far more data than 256kbps AAC
The Dolby Atmos surround content will be mixed in that format, by engineers in a recording studio. I don't think Apple will be using some sort of filter effect to simulate surround from stereo sources. That would be terrible.
I'm 42 and at 75% volume I can still hear up to 18.5khz. At 100% volume I can hear up to 19khz with normal background noise in the room (Sennheiser Amperior + NI Audio 4).
If a CRT TV is just turned on within 30ft I can hear it clearly from a couple doors down.