Apple Music Not getting Atmos or Lossless when you expect to on Mac? Workaround here

[Kier-XF]

Have you found that on macOS you can be playing an album or playlist that is supposed to be Atmos enabled, only to find that some of the tracks don’t play Atmos versions at all?

There’s a workaround for this incredibly annoying glitch.

If you load an album or playlist then click directly on one of the tracks, there’s a good chance Apple Music will play the standard AAC track instead of the Atmos or Lossless version.

To get around this, do not select tracks directly but instead, hit the big red Play button to start playback with the first track, then navigate to your chosen song using the skip/back transport controls in the window header. This will reliably play the enhanced version of each track.

Try this experiment:

Open an Atmos album. Hit the big play button and the first track will start, with the Dolby logo showing in the header.

Now click on the second track, and observe the Dolby logo disappear and the standard AAC version start playing.

Stop playback and hit the big play button again, and you’ll be back to playing the Atmos version of track one.

Skip forward, and observe playback of the proper Atmos version of track two.

Let’s hope Apple fix this bug swiftly.

[Update 2021-06-17 - Apple engineers have been made aware of this issue and are working on a fix]

 

[Chrisandy]

What OS are you on? Might be a 12.0 beta bug but this workaround does not work for me. Do you have an example playlist or album? I've been trying their various Spatial Audio playlists but they seem janky even on my iPhone.

 

[Kier-XF]

These observations apply to macOS 11.4 only.

 

[zachz]

I'm having the same issues, also on 11.4.

Couldn't figure out how to fix it so thank you for this!

 

[ice29]

Thanks, I have seen the same behavior and the other workaround is to add the album to your library (don't have to download, just add the album), then the songs will play with Atmos/Lossless also when you click on them directly...
Now I see playing the album with the play-button next to it and navigating to the song is another workaround

 

[tomtad]

What OS are you on? Might be a 12.0 beta bug but this workaround does not work for me. Do you have an example playlist or album? I've been trying their various Spatial Audio playlists but they seem janky even on my iPhone.

I'm also on Monterey and can't get Atmos to work when listening on AirPods so seems to be a bug. It will play Atmos when listening through the speakers and and soon as I switch to AirPods it goes.

 

[Kier-XF]

the other workaround is to add the album to your library

I've just been testing this, and I'm afraid it does not work reliably - I am still able to get the regular AAC version to play back on Atmos albums added to my library. The only workaround I have found that will always play back the Atmos version is to use transport controls navigation.

 

[Julien]

Playing on my Mac is a hot mess of randomness with no pattern or consistency.

 

[justice4all77]

Thank you!! It was driving me crazy trying to figure out why some were playing and others weren't. Hopefully they fix this bug soon

Update: Can also confirm this is the same issue when trying to play back Lossless audio as well and this workaround works as well not only for Atmos but Lossless.

 

[JippaLippa]

Tried that Taylow Swift album and I get lossless playback and NOT dolby atmos...
What the hell?
Dolby atmos is set as "always on"

 

[Kier-XF]

Tried that Taylow Swift album and I get lossless playback and NOT dolby atmos...
What the hell?
Dolby atmos is set as "always on"

Assuming you’ve definitely selected the Dolby Atmos version of the album and you don’t have a downloaded version already, plug in headphones directly to the port on your Mac and see if you get different results.

 

[Ryand123]

Sooo many problems still. I may not cancel my Amazon Music HD account just yet. And lossless isn't even available at all in Windows. Plus many tracks aren't available losslessly yet on any platform........

They released the rough draft to the public. Probably just to beat Spotify to lossless and not be the last major music streaming app to not offer it.

 

[mattdeezy]

These observations apply to macOS 11.4 only.

I'm seeing the same issue on 11.5 Beta (20G5033c)

Edit: Playing the album/playlist from the start using the big 'play' button doesn't resolve the issue for me.

 

[RDowson]

I have the same issue. M1 MacBook Pro, Big Sur, internal DAC.

I have a Dev account and also an Enterprise AppleCare agreement. I'll log it with Apple.

 

[Kier-XF]

I've been in touch with Apple over the last few days getting this to the engineers' attention. The good news is that it has been accepted as a clear fault and attempts are now being made to fix it, but we are probably going to have to wait for a software update to macOS as it's doubtful that this can be mitigated server-side.

 

[Kier-XF]

@mattdeezy are you able to get Dolby Atmos playback at all?

 

[mattdeezy]

@mattdeezy are you able to get Dolby Atmos playback at all?

So I have played around with it a bit more. If i restart my M1 MBP, open apple music and then play one of the spatial albums using the 'Play' button, I get Atmos. If I then go click play on an individual track it then loses atmos and goes to lossless. Even when I go back and hit the big play button on the same, or another playlist/album, all I get is lossless.

The only way I have found to get Atmos back is to reboot the computer (quitting music and re-opening doesn't work) OR I have been able to get Atmos by repeatedly disconnecting and reconnecting my AirPods I took about five disconnects and reconnects (using toothfairy app) to get Atmos back.

 

[mattdeezy]

Try switching spatial audio on and off with this song;

I think this is an example of a bad atmos mix. Makes the lyrics super quiet.

 

[Ghost-Hardware]

Did anyone try to listen to that album from Billie Eilish in spatial audio?

It's very convincing with AirPods Pro. Amazing spatialization.

 

[Lvivske]

I've been in touch with Apple over the last few days getting this to the engineers' attention. The good news is that it has been accepted as a clear fault and attempts are now being made to fix it, but we are probably going to have to wait for a software update to macOS as it's doubtful that this can be mitigated server-side.

i just assumed it was a server side issue, similar to how if you click to show a track on music, often you get an error page

tracks, libraries, and quality versions are just not syncing properly