Apple today announced its new Apple Music service “Lossless”, a new way to listen to high-resolution music with Dolby Atmos spatial sound. How can I take advantage of this new functionality? We explain it to you below.
What is “lossless”, lossless music
The arrival of music streaming services meant leaving behind our CDs, and carrying our entire music library in our pocket, thanks to our smartphone. But it comes at a price: compression. In order to be able to transmit music via the Internet and to be able to store it on our device, compressed formats are used, which makes the files much smaller, and hence consume less data rate, less bandwidth and occupy less space. No matter how good the compression is, loss of quality is inevitable.
Lossless music ranges from “16 bit 44.1 kHz” to “24 bit 48 kHz” if we are talking about CD quality, while if we are talking about “high resolution” we are going to “24 bit 192 kHz”. If we go to the maximum of high resolution quality, a single song could take up around 145MB, compared to the 1.5MB of more compressed formats, or 6MB if we want something more quality. As you can see the difference is obvious.
Apple says that at launch, around 20 million songs in its catalog will be in lossless format, reaching over 75 million songs by the end of the year. These new lossless songs will use a codec called “ALAC” (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) and require you to update to iOS 14.6, iPadOS 14.6, tvOS 14.6, and macOS 11.4 to enjoy it.
Where can I listen to lossless music
Apple offered a list of devices that can play this music without losing quality, either in CD quality or in high resolution. Here are the minimum requirements to be able to reproduce it:
- iPhone 7
- 12.9-inch iPad Pro (3rd generation)
- iPad Pro 11 “
- iPad Air (3rd generation)
- iPad (6th generation)
- iPad mini (5th generation)
- MacBook Pro 2018
These devices will be able to play music in this quality, but that does not mean that you will be able to listen to it with any headphones that you connect them. The Bluetooth connection does not allow sufficient bandwidth for high resolution lossless music by any means and it could offer up to CD quality, but this depends a lot on the type of bluetooth used and the compatible codec. For example, According to Apple itself confirmed, neither AirPods Pro nor AirPods Max are compatible with ALAC codec, so wirelessly, they will not be able to play lossless music, nor in CD quality.
We don’t know at this time whether the AirPods Max, which allows a wired connection, will be able to play music without losing quality. using some type of compatible accessory. Apple says on its website that for high-resolution lossless music a DAC will be required, but at the moment we don’t have more details. HomePod and HomePod Mini situation is also a bit in limbo
What is Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos
Another of the new features of Apple Music will be compatibility with Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio. At this point, having read the different Apple websites several times and another good handful of websites with information on this, I cannot explain the difference between Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio as the two terms are used interchangeably. everywhere, even on Apple’s website. We can therefore say that Dolby Atmos or Spatial Audio is a type of surround sound in which we can distinguish the position of the instruments when listening.: the drums behind us, the vocals in front, the guitar on the right… it’s a “3D” sound, similar to watching a movie with a home theater system.
This Dolby Atmos will be available at the launch of this new service in a few thousand songs, the exact number is not specified, but We expect that the catalog will gradually increase, and above all, that the new music incorporated into it will already be compatible.
Where can I listen to Dolby Atmos music?
To be able to listen to this enveloping music At a minimum, you will need the following devices:
- iPhone 7
- 12.9-inch iPad Pro (3rd generation)
- iPad Pro 11 “
- iPad Air (3rd generation)
- iPad (6th generation)
- iPad mini (5th generation)
- MacBook Pro 2018
- HomePod
Here we can use any Apple headphones to enjoy this sound. AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods Max or Beats headphones, whatever, as long as they include H1 or W1 chips. If we use these headphones, Dolby Atmos will be activated automatically if available. If we use other third-party headphones, which may also be compatible, we need to enable it in Apple Music settings.
As for music without loss of quality, You must have your devices updated to iOS 14.6, iPadOS 14.6, tvOS 14.6 and macOS 11.4 to be able to enjoy this Dolby Atmos music.
Two independent and distinct novelties
Although they have gone hand in hand, Spatial Sound and lossless music each go their own way. As expected, Dolby Atmos will be quite usable in current devices. With our current iPhones, iPads, HomePods … we can enjoy this surround sound in our Apple headphones, without the need for new investments. Things change when it comes to lossless sound, especially high resolution. While waiting for Apple to clarify some remaining doubts, It appears to be something that is being prepared for the new material Coming soon.
This new Apple Music with Dolby Atmos and lossless sound quality will arrive in June, and there will be no price increase on Apple Music, which will maintain the same prices as at present.
Table of Contents
