Apple updates Apple music with lossless audio, promises a large upgrade to the sound quality offered, and without increasing monthly subscription prices. In addition, Apple Music added spatial audio with the support of Dolby atmos, for a more profound experience – even though you have to listen through the right hardware to truly enjoy it.
Spatial audio promised to music what sound surround for film and TV shows. It allows artists and producers to mix their tracks in a way that takes into account directionity, so that different elements in music can be considered from various places in the room.
To listen, you must use a compatible device. By default, Apple said, Apple Music will automatically play Dolby Atmos tracks on all airpods and beat headphones, as long as they use the H1 or W1 chip. It will also play through default speakers in the latest version of iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
To get started, there will be “thousands of songs” that support the format, Apple said. They will reach a genre of hip-hop, country, latin, pop, and classic, and there will be a Dolby Atmos playlist reduced to make songs that really find compatible songs easier. More content will be added progressively, Apple promises, and seems to work to make the Dolby Studio atmos more easily accessible by artists.
As for lossless audio, it will be a much larger change, at least for now. Each path in the Apple music catalog – which means more than 75 million today, the company says – will be upgraded to use Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC); Effective the same thing, Apple said, because artists were truly recorded in their studio.
Update: Apple said that it would have “20 million songs in lossless audio when launched with 75 million full songs available at the end of the year.”
Because the bandwidth needed for lossless tracks can be significantly higher than what is needed for more compressed music, switching to the most powerful file will be optional. There will be an option to set different defaults depending on your current connection: whether you use cellular, when you might want smaller files to avoid burning through your data benefits quickly, on WiFi, when bandwidth may not be like that obstacle, And to download when you might just want to take quality as high as possible from GET-GO.
Lossless tracks will begin on the quality of CDs, or 16 bits at 44.1 kHz, and run up to 24 bits at 48 kHz. There is also an Apple Music Hi-resolocient lossless, which takes it to 24 bits in 192 KHz, even though you will need more hardware for it like a USB digital-to-analog converter (DAC).
What makes all this a bigger deal is that Apple does not change the price. Spatial audio with Dolby Atmos support, and lossless audio, both will be included in subscribing to ordinary apple music, both individuals or families. Apple will allow new functionality from June 2021.