Earlier than expected last week, Apple today announced 3D audio with Dolby Atmos and Lossless Audio for Apple Music. The new features should be available to subscribers at no additional cost from June this year.
Apple Lossless Audio Codec up to 24 bits at 192 kHz
Apple has announced that it will make the entire Apple Music catalog, which currently includes around 75 million pieces of music, accessible in Lossless Audio. At the start in June, 20 million titles should be available in Lossless Audio, by the end of the year all songs should be offered lossless. Apple uses its own codec for this with ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec). To listen to Lossless Audio, subscribers using the latest version of Apple Music can use the feature under Settings & gt; Music & gt; Activate audio quality. Different resolutions can be selected here for different connections such as cellular network, WLAN or for downloading. Apple Music's lossless formats start at CD quality, which is 16 bits at 44.1 kHz, and go up to 24 bits at 48 kHz. In addition, Apple Music also offers Hi-Resolution Lossless up to 24 bit at 192 kHz. Due to the large file sizes and bandwidth required for Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless Audio, subscribers must actively select this option in the settings. Hi-Res Lossless also requires external devices such as a USB digital-to-analog converter (DAC).
In addition, Apple is giving up iOS 14.6, iPadOS 14.6, macOS 11.4 and tvOS 14.6 the respective devices as a requirement for Lossless Audio in Apple Music.
Dolby Atmos on AirPods, Beats, iPhone, iPad and Mac
With 3D audio with Dolby Atmos, on the other hand, only selected, specially recorded titles will be available for the time being. At the start, Apple speaks of “thousands of songs in 3D audio”. However, Apple is constantly adding more tracks in this format to Apple Music and curating special Dolby Atmos playlists to make the content easier for users to find. In addition, albums that are available in Dolby Atmos are marked with a logo on the detail page for easy location. By default, Apple Music automatically plays Dolby Atmos tracks on all AirPods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip (AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, BeatsX, Beats Solo3 Wireless, Beats Studio3, Powerbeats3 Wireless, Beats Flex, Powerbeats Pro and Beats Solo Pro), as well as on the built-in speakers in the latest versions of iPhone, iPad and Mac. So far, Apple has mentioned the iPhone 7 or newer, the iPad Pro 12.9 inch (3rd generation or newer), iPad Pro 11 inch, iPad (6th generation or newer), iPad Air (3rd generation or newer), iPad mini (5th generation) and the MacBook Pro (from 2018).