I'd rather beat myself with a hammer than listen to that Killers track five times.
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Apple Music Lossless: What Devices are Supported?
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I think that many of you are confusing lossless with HiFi.
Lossless is CD quality. If you load a ripped CD in WAV format to your Mac, iPhone or iPod touch, they'll play it back because those PCs and devices have DACs that support the 16bit@44.1KHz playback resolution. Wireless headphones need compression to keep up with the stream of data, so no lossless for you there.
If you jump to 24bit@48, 96 or 192KHz resolution, that's HiFi and you'll need a decent outboard DAC to listen to some differences because your PC or device does not include a DAC that supports said playback resolutions. Expect to find very small differences in reverb tails, maybe wider stereo imaging and a bit more contrast in loudness vs. quiet perception. All of these you'll get if the mixer does not compress the hell out of the musical piece.
If your perception is mild to dramatic differences between a regular lossless or good quality mp4 file when compared to a HiFi file, the culprit is the mixing and mastering process, not the recording/playback resolution. Same applies between vinyl and CD. Different mixing and mastering processes.
EDIT: DAC means Digital to Analog Converter, and it's a piece of hardware that interprets digital information and converts it to electrical impulses that get sent to a speaker, resulting in sound.
Lossless is CD quality. If you load a ripped CD in WAV format to your Mac, iPhone or iPod touch, they'll play it back because those PCs and devices have DACs that support the 16bit@44.1KHz playback resolution. Wireless headphones need compression to keep up with the stream of data, so no lossless for you there.
If you jump to 24bit@48, 96 or 192KHz resolution, that's HiFi and you'll need a decent outboard DAC to listen to some differences because your PC or device does not include a DAC that supports said playback resolutions. Expect to find very small differences in reverb tails, maybe wider stereo imaging and a bit more contrast in loudness vs. quiet perception. All of these you'll get if the mixer does not compress the hell out of the musical piece.
If your perception is mild to dramatic differences between a regular lossless or good quality mp4 file when compared to a HiFi file, the culprit is the mixing and mastering process, not the recording/playback resolution. Same applies between vinyl and CD. Different mixing and mastering processes.
EDIT: DAC means Digital to Analog Converter, and it's a piece of hardware that interprets digital information and converts it to electrical impulses that get sent to a speaker, resulting in sound.
This is just annoying and confusing. All my critical listening stuff is attached to my PC which uses windows and foobar2000. I use my Apple Pro Max headphones for work with my MacBook pro. So if I'm correct I will need to move all of my critical listening gear over to my MacBook Pro, and buy a USB-A to USB-C dongle and hope my DAC has mac drivers to actually use this? Then I can give my girlfriend my APM headphones cause I won't be using them for work, and I won't be using them for after-work listening... I am confused why I bought these then 
Just do what I do and ignore the lossless stuff. As for the spatial audio, hopefully this can be toggled off if sounds like garbage. Otherwise, much ado about nothing.
The big announcement was the widespread support of Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos. This is what most Apple Music users will care about the most. Lossless / Hi-Res Lossless was gravy on top for those audiophiles that care about this feature.
I beleive there is a bit of a false narrative being created around HomePods not supporting lossless. I can not find any direct statement to that effect on the Apple Music site. However, this is pretty common knowledge to anyone who has looked into it:
Both HomePod models support lossless FLAC and Apple Lossless:
"Audio Formats
HE-AAC (V1), AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV, and FLAC. " https://www.bechtle.com/shop/medias...FiMDM5YTQyMGYyZDcyNjQ5MTI5NDNlMzRiN2ExNGYzMTk
and this for airplay: "AirPlay does not compress audio; it converts it to Apple Lossless, which is then played back on the target device". https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/contributors/what-airplay-2-means-for-your-listening-setup-r717/
I cannot find any non-sketchy sites which detail the sampling rate for Airplay 2, some say 48 kHz and others say 96 kHz. if the 48 kHz is correct, you will be able to play the lossless tier, but not the hi-res lossless tier. However, this has nothing to do with playing music directly on the HomePods of course.
so I am remaining unconvinced until there is an official apple statement.
Both HomePod models support lossless FLAC and Apple Lossless:
"Audio Formats
HE-AAC (V1), AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV, and FLAC. " https://www.bechtle.com/shop/medias...FiMDM5YTQyMGYyZDcyNjQ5MTI5NDNlMzRiN2ExNGYzMTk
and this for airplay: "AirPlay does not compress audio; it converts it to Apple Lossless, which is then played back on the target device". https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/contributors/what-airplay-2-means-for-your-listening-setup-r717/
I cannot find any non-sketchy sites which detail the sampling rate for Airplay 2, some say 48 kHz and others say 96 kHz. if the 48 kHz is correct, you will be able to play the lossless tier, but not the hi-res lossless tier. However, this has nothing to do with playing music directly on the HomePods of course.
so I am remaining unconvinced until there is an official apple statement.
Here is what Sonos had to say about this:
"We’re unable to confirm when/if this feature is coming to Sonos. It’s up to the music service provider (Apple in this case) to work with us and decide which features are/are not available on Sonos products. We’ve written an article explaining a lot about Music Services on Sonos that I’ll link below that contains some more information on this. You should let Apple know that you’d like to see spatial/lossless audio on Apple Music on Sonos
Go to Youtube and do a search for Virtual Barber Shop and try it. It really is amazing! Don't forget to put on your AirPods.
It is disappointing that I can't listen to lossless unless it is through the phone or iPad and my $260 AirPods Pro are useless in this regard. I don't have any wired headphones any more.
Mhhh… the comment is probably out of the Sonos community forum, right?Here is what Sonos had to say about this:
"We’re unable to confirm when/if this feature is coming to Sonos. It’s up to the music service provider (Apple in this case) to work with us and decide which features are/are not available on Sonos products. We’ve written an article explaining a lot about Music Services on Sonos that I’ll link below that contains some more information on this. You should let Apple know that you’d like to see spatial/lossless audio on Apple Music on Sonos"
In my opinion this don’t sound quite official.
Let‘s wait and hope.
We all know original HomePod has been discontinued.
My guess..... There will be some new "Home Bar" which will be a sound bar with full Dolby Atmos and Lossless support (and will have an AppleTV interface built in). So basically, one HDMI cable between the bar and your TV and you get the whole thing.....
My guess..... There will be some new "Home Bar" which will be a sound bar with full Dolby Atmos and Lossless support (and will have an AppleTV interface built in). So basically, one HDMI cable between the bar and your TV and you get the whole thing.....
Not supporting homepod is just typical Apple spitting in the face of their early adopters
As long as your USB DAC is "class-compliant"(which they usually are), there is no need for any additional drivers. It'll just work. Both USB Audio Class 1 and 2 have been supported on Macs for a long time (the latter is required for listening to higher resolution files) and the same is true for Windows 10 these days, which used to require drivers for UAC2.This is just annoying and confusing. All my critical listening stuff is attached to my PC which uses windows and foobar2000. I use my Apple Pro Max headphones for work with my MacBook pro. So if I'm correct I will need to move all of my critical listening gear over to my MacBook Pro, and buy a USB-A to USB-C dongle and hope my DAC has mac drivers to actually use this? Then I can give my girlfriend my APM headphones cause I won't be using them for work, and I won't be using them for after-work listening... I am confused why I bought these then
A+ for this article because I was confused. I'm just happy Apple added these features without raising the price, especially since the lossless feature won't work with our wireless headphones.
I get that this is a niche service to keep and maintain or draw in new subscribers, but I have used Ogg in the past as well as other Lossless codecs and the difference can really only be heard on a full stereo setup in a living room.
Every time I have tried on a Harmon Kardon or Bang and Olufsen headset, the difference is negligible and mostly there for people to be snobs. It's kind of like putting truffles in a Mac and cheese. Sure, it has truffles, but that's all you can taste. Lossless doesn't work on headphones due to their small tweeters, and lackluster bass.
Every time I have tried on a Harmon Kardon or Bang and Olufsen headset, the difference is negligible and mostly there for people to be snobs. It's kind of like putting truffles in a Mac and cheese. Sure, it has truffles, but that's all you can taste. Lossless doesn't work on headphones due to their small tweeters, and lackluster bass.
Same here. It doesn´t make any sense whatsoever that the Homepods dont support this...
According to this article, Homepod does support Apple lossless. Not sure about HomePod mini.
AirPods Max and AirPods Pro don't support Apple Music Lossless, Apple confirms
Apple Music is getting higher-quality streaming tiers, but Apple's best headphones can't make full use of them
According to this, it does
AirPods Max and AirPods Pro don't support Apple Music Lossless, Apple confirms
Apple Music is getting higher-quality streaming tiers, but Apple's best headphones can't make full use of them
I checked prices on a DAC and it can get really expensive and makes the Air Max headphones seem really inexpensive. There is no way I am going to spend that much money on lossless audio when I can't even hear any difference. Just going to enjoy the sound of uncompressed audio from my iMac M1 speakers at full volume for free.