There have been leaks and rumours circulating around for the past few days about Apple’s plan to update Apple Music with lossless streaming. While we could only hope, it appears that the leaks and rumours were true.
Apple has just officially announced the next coming update to Apple Music which includes Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos, and Lossless Audio, which is a huge upgrade to sound quality.
The Lossless Audio will be available to more than 75 million songs available on Apple Music but most importantly, comes as a free upgrade to all Apple Music subscribers without additional subscription cost!
Apple will be using ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) and you can turn it on later on Apple Music settings by going to Settings -> Music -> Audio Quality. Apple Music Lossless tier starts at CD Quality (16-bit, 44.1kHz) to Hi-Resolution Lossless (24-bit, 192kHz).
The highest quality (Hi-Res Lossless) will most likely require large bandwidth but thankfully, Apple Music streaming is free with Telstra (which I’m at) and also requires external equipment, such as a USB digital-to-analog converter (DAC).
Unfortunately, if you have the AirPods Pro or even the AirPods Max, you can’t use them even to listen to Apple’s standard Lossless Audio as they are using Bluetooth AAC codec and not ALAC.
These features are coming in June 2021.
Source: Apple Newsroom
