Apple Music  Now with lossless high-res and spatial audio

[CharlyBrown]

Wouldn’t that be just great? HiFi / High Res (unfortunately no information about Bitrate, quality given) at zero additional cost rumored.

Let’s speculate, quality would be the same as Tidal. Differentiation came down only to “AI“ Features, Suggestions. Maybe content, are they different these days, anyway?


Rumor: Apple to Announce Third-Generation AirPods and HiFi Apple Music Tier in 'Coming Weeks'

Update 21/06/07

Apple Music supporting Lossless Audio, High-Res Lossless Audio and Dolby Atmos (Spatial Audio) is now released to the public!

Read the news on Macrumors


Update 21/05/17:

It’s now official, starting as soon as in June: Apple Announcement

- Spacial Audio
- Dolby Atmos
- Lossless Audio Streaming at now additional costs! (Apple says 20 million songs will be available in Lossless Audio at launch, with the full 75 million songs available by the end of the year.)

W O W! This will give the other services a headache, I think!!

From macrumors:

Apple Music's standard Lossless tier will start at "CD quality," which is 16 bit at 44.1 kHz, and goes up to 24 bit at 48 kHz, according to Apple. Apple Music will also offer Hi-Res Lossless up to 24 bit at 192 kHz.

By default, Apple Music will automatically play Dolby Atmos tracks on all AirPods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip, as well as the built-in speakers in the latest versions of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, according to Apple.


Apple Music will be getting new Dolby Atmos tracks constantly and will offer a curated selection of Dolby Atmos playlists, according to Apple. Dolby Atmos albums will have a badge on their detail page for easy discovery.

Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio will be available on iOS 14.6, iPadOS 14.6, macOS 11.4, and tvOS 14.6 or later.

Add: Lossless seems to work with ANY kind of headphone, connected through external DAC/AMP:

How can I listen to lossless audio?​

You can listen to lossless audio using the latest Apple Music app on an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV.7 ('https://www.apple.com/apple-music/#footnote-8') Turn on lossless audio in Settings > Music > Audio Quality. You can choose between Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless for cellular or Wi-Fi connections. Note that Hi-Res Lossless requires external equipment such as a USB digital to analog converter.

„Apple Digital Master“ - Sounds like a direct attack on Tidal MQA:

 

[SnowRang3r]

Especially if they add a Hi-Fi tier to Apple Music they really need to look at including AptX-HD, LDAC support. Although knowing Apple they’ll probably create their own higher bitrate codec.

 

[CharlyBrown]

Definitely! Apples bluetooth implementation is a joke currently.

 

[originalsnuffy]

Yes, they would need LDAC or the equivalent to really pursue HiRes.

My personal beef with Apple Music services is that if you use them, it pretty much takes over the Apple music app. Which means that as far as I can tell you can't use that ecosystem to upload your own music. Yes, you could put other music apps on your phone and play music that way; but it gets messy. Of course you could argue that using Spotify etc. is equally messy.

 

[new2mus]

It would be great to have another competitor with lossless CD or better quality service. But, I still have reservations from the iTunes days. At least streaming won't have the same DRM (even with purchase) issues. It'd be especially easier given some cell phone providers add Apple Music for free ... at least worth a trial.

 

[jwbrent]

Likely CD lossless quality only, not hi res. I certainly wouldn’t mind if I was proven wrong.

 

[CharlyBrown]

Yes, they would need LDAC or the equivalent to really pursue HiRes.

My personal beef with Apple Music services is that if you use them, it pretty much takes over the Apple music app. Which means that as far as I can tell you can't use that ecosystem to upload your own music. Yes, you could put other music apps on your phone and play music that way; but it gets messy. Of course you could argue that using Spotify etc. is equally messy.

Well you can upload your music but there are some limitations in place. I think only files better than 96kbit/s and max 200MB / less than 2h playtime or so are possible (not sure). So at current date I think it’s not possible to upload ultra high res files with more than 200MB (or whatever the limitation is…).

 

[myromeo]

This is interesting news. I hope they do it right and support other high bitrate bluetooth codecs. Perfect opportunity.

I’m they doing need to allow you to load your local ALAC library in addition to cloud music / downloads tho. It seems crazy I can’t sync my library to my 256gb iPhone but can stream them back at a lower bitrate!

come one apple, give us high res bluetooth compatible with existing third party brands and let us sync our local files with Apple Music. This could be amazing.

 

[originalsnuffy]

Well you can upload your music but there are some limitations in place. I think only files better than 96kbit/s and max 200MB / less than 2h playtime or so are possible (not sure). So at current date I think it’s not possible to upload ultra high res files with more than 200MB (or whatever the limitation is…).

Is this process documented somewhere? I trialed Apple Music and got frustrated with the way it took over my phone. I have playlists or lectures (sort of like podcasts) that were lost when Apple Music took over the phone.

Right now, at least on iphones, music is limited to 24 bit 48 khz. I do wonder if Apple will ever lift those restrictions. And of course there is no lossless on Apple Music (at least to my knowledge) let alone hi res.

Fortunately Amazon Music HD works fine on the phone. I limit it to HD (which is basically redbook), as getting hi res out of a phone requires an external DAC. That is a good compromise for me as it mates well with my wife's car. She has wireless carplay that can apparently handle up to 16 bit 44 khz. In my car I can directly connect the phone to the car DAC via USB and limiting to HD works pretty well also. However my car has an aux input so I typically feed music from my HiBy R5. On that device Amazon HD is set for hi res.

 

[CharlyBrown]

I just googled, and it seems that the 200MB limitation is now gone?

Reddit

In the end, the whole process with local high-res files doesn’t seem to be ideal as it is today. I think it is best to use a separate app for high-res music and Apple Music for streaming.

 

[ubs28]

That would be great news if they can also introduce a new high quality bluetooth codec. Since my iPhone 12 Pro Max and Apple AirPods Max are restricted to AAC, it won't benefit from this high-quality streaming option.

 

[PopZeus]

This is a really silly move by Apple when they've gone through considerable effort to cap audio quality at 256 kbps AAC throughout their entire hardware lineup. For a company that prides itself on ease of use, getting CD-quality audio from an iPhone is very cumbersome, if not completely impractical.

 

[CharlyBrown]

I think you can say a lot about Apple but not that they wouldn’t improve their lineup in iterations.

 

[PopZeus]

I think you can say a lot about Apple but not that they wouldn’t improve their lineup in iterations.

What does "improve" even mean to Apple? What does it mean to the typical audiophile? I don't think they're the same thing. At least not historically. I don't need to go through every instance of Apple choosing convenience over quality to point out that there's good reason to be skeptical of Apple discovering CD quality audio when they still can't play back FLAC natively on any of their platforms. I won't say never though. I'm sure if they do introduce HQ bluetooth audio tech to their products, it'll sound great. But this is about goosing their low Apple Music subs, mostly. They're not going to start playing super nice with wired headphones when their brand is wireless audio. As a devoted Apple user, I feel okay in saying that Android will likely continue to be the audiophile mobile OS platform of choice. As much as I would love to be wrong, it's doubtful we'll see an explosion of dope 3rd party dongle DACs for iPhone anytime soon either.

 

[visanj]

Just now noticed this thread

It looks like Apple may introduce both 24/48 and 24 192 as stated in the link

The code discovered in the Android app reveals the two choices for lossless playback:

Lossless
ALAC up to 24-bit/48 kHz
High-Res Lossless
ALAC up to 24-bit/192 kHz

https://www.xda-developers.com/apple-music-lossless-audio-animated-covers/

The problem is how they are going to achieve this. iPhones don't have headphone jack. so the only option is bluetooth and right now they support only AAC codec. So unless apple comes with some proprietary bluetooth codec for ALAC, this is not authentic news. I don't think Apple is so dumb to introduce lossless music service with iphones supporting only AAC bluetooth codec