![]() ![]() To stream lossless and hi-rez music on an iPhone or iPad, go to the Music section of the Settings menu, and then tap Audio Quality. Until you turn it on, Apple Music will continue to stream to your device in the AAC format. On all of these devices, lossless playback is turned off by default. Those are the latest iterations of Apple’s operating systems as I’m writing this article of course, lossless and hi-rez playback will work with later versions as well. To stream lossless and hi-rez audio from Apple Music, you need an iPhone running iOS 14.6, an iPad running iPadOS 14.6, an Apple TV media adapter running tvOS 14.6, or a Macintosh running macOS 11.4. ![]() The company clearly believes the gains from lossless and hi-rez playback are incremental rather than transformative: “While the difference between AAC and lossless audio is virtually indistinguishable,” the company states on a support page for lossless playback, “we’re offering Apple Music subscribers the option to access music in lossless audio compression.” It will continue to stream in AAC format-the lower data rate is obviously advantageous for subscribers streaming over cellular networks. Until June 7, Apple Music streamed audio in the lossy Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format at 256kbps. Apple does not charge extra for spatial audio, and this feature also went live on June 7. A Qobuz Studio subscription costs $14.99/month.Īlong with the launch of its lossless and hi-rez streaming service, Apple made another announcement: the availability of “thousands of songs in Spatial Audio from some of the world’s biggest artists and music across all genres, including hip-hop, country, Latin, pop, and classical.” Spatial audio tracks are encoded using Dolby Laboratories’ Atmos immersive audio technology. By contrast, Tidal charges $19.99/month for its hi-rez tier. Amazon Music HD also costs $9.99/month, or $7.99/month for Prime members. A single-user subscription to Apple Music costs $9.99/month (all prices in USD). Primephonic, Qobuz, and Tidal also offer hi-rez content-but Apple Music provides lossless and hi-rez music at no additional cost. Of course, many smaller services, including Deezer, Idagio, Primephonic, Qobuz, and Tidal, have had lossless tiers for years. So, strictly speaking, Apple got to the party before Spotify-but after Amazon. Apple began offering lossless and hi-rez music on June 7, day 1 of its 2021 Worldwide Developers Conference. But it has not yet launched Spotify Hifi, or announced details such as pricing. Spotify announced plans for a lossless tier during the company’s Stream On event on February 22. ![]() In fact, it would make sense to flip the order around. With the company’s May 17 announcement that it was planning to make the 75 million songs in its Apple Music catalog available in lossless format, and that a substantial number of tracks would be available in high resolution (up to 24-bit/192kHz ALAC), all the major streaming services have now joined the lossless party. First Amazon, then Spotify, and now Apple. ![]()
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