I confess, even I was a little excited when I heard that Apple had upgraded the quality of many of its Apple Music tracks to lossless audio. While this isn’t a change you can hear now that the 75+ million lossless titles will hit the service starting June, it’s still something to be excited about. Law? Lossless audio means you can “hear exactly what the artists created in the studio,” as Apple describes it.
Spoiler: For most people, it won’t matter at all. Don’t use this as a reason to switch to Apple Music. The new spatial audio tracks, the competitive price of Apple Music, or the user interface of Apple Music (for everyone except Windows users) are much better reasons. Lossless audio is more of a great upgrade on paper.
Here’s why. For starters, you won’t even experience lossless audio on many of the Apple devices that you use to listen to Apple Music. I don’t shit you Tiny AirPods that you press in your ears? No. AirPods Max, also known as the over $ 500 headphones that Apple bought for “the perfect balance between exhilarating high-fidelity audio.” likes to say. No Regardless of whether you are wireless or wired, you cannot get “real” lossless audio. As Chris Welch from The Verge explained::
“Apple informs The Verge that when playing a lossless 24-bit / 48-kHz Apple Music track from an iPhone in the AirPods Max, both the cable and the Lightning dongle convert the audio to analog and then convert it to 24-bit is digitized / 48 kHz. This re-digitizing step is why Apple can’t tell you are hearing lossless audio. It is not an identical match with the source. “
What about your fancy new HomePod speaker? Or the HomePod mini speakers? No and no. While you can play with spatial audio, you won’t get lossless audio.
you (probably) won’t even be able to hear the difference
Then what is it about? Well, I think you can grab some analog headphones, plug them into an external DAC (which supports 24-bit audio at 192kHz), and then you can get started with an optimal listening setup. But that’s a lot of extra gear for … what exactly?
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If I were you I would start beating This practical little online test to see if you can even tell the difference between what you’re getting from Apple Music (256 kbps AAC) now and lossless audio. If you can’t, don’t worry about the extra equipment you need for “Hi Res Lossless” or the aforementioned 24-bit audio at 192 kHz. Regular, Middle class Apple Lossless audio works well through regular, analog headphones, and unless it sounds different, you probably won’t notice a difference between a better format and this one.
I have it?
If this is confusing or if you don’t feel like testing your listening skills, don’t worry. Just take Apple’s word for it. Lossless audio isn’t really going to matter to just about anyone.
