Just listening to Atmos for the first time via my AirPods Pro.
Quite impressive for a mobile solution.
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Clearly the important feature of Apple Music Hifi is not lossless but spatial sound Dolby Atmos. With simple Airpods Pro and a good recording the result is impressive in terms of clarity, space and sonority.
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The vast majority of Apple Music users wonât be interested in lossless music.
Theyâll probably be âdeepâ into the Apple ecosystem, with an iPhone and/or iPad used with a pair of wireless buds/headphones.
PLUS the current range of Beats/AirPods wonât pass lossless via AAC Bluetooth.
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I did see this, will be curious how deep that toolkit is.
Totally agree with this.
Ultimately this is about cutting off an additional revenue stream for Spotify (they canât charge for lossless) and a USP (Atmos).
Whether people on this forum like Atmos or not, it sounds different, no question and general users will see that as something Spotify doesnât have.
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Discussed a few posts up
According to Eddie Cue, Apple think that only 1 person in 100 can hear high res, and then only on really expensive kit, so I donât think Apple are that interested in high res at all, they will push Atmos and spatialised music that they think gives an immediately obvious difference.
Eddie Cue: âBecause the reality of lossless is: if you take a 100 people and you take a stereo song in lossless and you take a song thatâs been in Apple Music thatâs compressed, I donât know if itâs 99 or 98 canât tell the difference.
For the difference of lossless, our ears arenât that good. Yeah, there are a set of people who have these incredible ears, and thatâs one piece of it. Thereâs the other piece of it, which is do you have the level of equipment that can really tell the difference? It requires very, very high-quality stereo equipment.
Now, weâre supporting lossless and we think thereâs a set of customers. Itâs a small set of customers, but they want it and weâll certainly give it to them, and theyâll have it as part of this. The good news is theyâll have lossless and theyâll have Dolby Atmos and Spatial. It really does work very well for that [set of customers], but itâs not going to be lossless [leading the way].â
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You state only 1 person in 100 can hear a difference in hires, but the quote above is talking about lossless (rather than hires specifically). I can definitely hear a difference between even high bitrate MP3 and lossless PCM. But its very much more difficult to hear a difference between lossless 16 bit v hires 24 bit audio.
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Heâs not saying no one can, just that most people canât. Thatâs what Apple believes and to be fair theyâve probably done a fair bit of market research to determine that.
Some people can, thatâs fine they can have the lossless but most people canât and so the focus is on Atmos, thatâs apples stance (doesnât mean anyone has to agree with that stance).
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^^ my experience too, and Apples âlosslessâ sounds much better than their AAC256 offerings.
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If thats the case I would not expect to see exclusive mode at all. Itâs never been added to iTunes so why would they now. And Airplay well perhaps up to cd quality but beyond that ? Itâs never had to deal with multiple bit depths and rates before itâs support one defined rate and it will now have to determine from devices what they can handle I guess before implementing streams, do they want the overheads of adding all this and likely making Airplay less reliable if they feel no one hears the difference? Look how flakey Chromecast can be with this stuff.
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Would you get the full resolution using HQPlayer NAA via itâs input/output method?
I use the HQPlayer setup to stream Spotify from my Macbook Pro HQPlayer desktop to a Raspberry Pi NAA.
I will test myself when Iâm back home but just curious if anyone else could chime in?
Maybe @jussi_laako would know?
Cheers
Wayne
They will probably add it because they already have it on iOS and while apple doesnât believe most people will benefit, they are hardly the type of company that implements a feature and then leaves it half done. Especially when exclusive mode already works in iOS and airplay can cast 4K HDR movies.
I get that but I was trying to clarify if the poster intended to mention hires, whereas the Apple exec was talking about lossless. They are not the same thing; âhearingâ lossless difference over lossy is pretty easy. Lossless v hires not so much.
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In this article âŚ
https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/08/eddy-cue-talks-apple-music-spatial-audio-addresses-lossless-audio-debate-in-interview/
Apple were referring to the difference between compressed vs lossless:
"Because the reality of lossless is: if you take a 100 people and you take a stereo song in lossless and you take a song thatâs been in Apple Music thatâs compressed, I donât know if itâs 99 or 98 canât tell the difference.â
It may be easy to you but itâs not easy for most people (according to Apple).
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Hmm, got the same Dragonfly. Somewhere. Just need to remember where and give it a try 