Eddie Cue is quite right: it’s a small set of customers, alright. Most people can’t hear beyond the limits of 20Hz-20KHz, and even if you can, without the right audio chain there’s just no way you’d hear those differences anyway. Personally, I liked to know that it’s an option, but when I’m on the go, lossless isn’t as much a priority as having access to whatever I want to listen to at a relatively high standard. Lossless is for at home with the amplifier and head cans, a nice Scotch, and the time to actually sit and listen and appreciate.
Apple Music is mobile mass market with not much understanding of audio nerds. As you said, lossless is for the home. My Audeze or Naim is at home where I can enjoy lossless. But what is the point to provide lossless and expect to airplay it to the stereo equipment? John Darko talked about it. Funny read https://darko.audio/2021/05/apple-music-confirms-lossless-streaming-for-9-99-month/. By the way Bunnahabhain is over the top.
Anyone who’s ever heard of these silver discs calls “CD”s has heard of lossless.
Only Napster, music piracy in conjunction with slow internet, metered cellular data and expensive flash memory brought us the “blessings” of lossy audio compression algorithms.
So, no, lossless isn’t “niche”, it was and should always be the normal case, lossy compression should be the exception.
CDs are not lossless. They are limited to 16 bits and 44.1 kHz while lossless is at least 24 bits and 96 kHz. Every record theses days is recorded well above CD quality.
CDs are lossless. They do not use a compression technology that throws away data like MP3 or AAC. That is the meaning of "lossless". Do not confuse that with the sampling and bit rates, which certainly do make a difference to the overall sound profile.
As for what Eddy Cue said, yes Spatial Audio will probably make a bigger difference to most listeners than lossless. Most people get their music from their phones now and since lossless Bluetooth isn't a thing, Spatial Audio/Dolby Atmos makes more sense because it can be implemented with what most listeners already have.
That being said, I'm in the minority of users who does have the ability to easily show the difference between lossy AAC and lossless and especially HiRes audio. I have a dedicated 2 channel listening room, a smaller 5.1 home theater listening room and a larger 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos home theater. I spent some of today listening to the Atmos tracks in the Atmos theater and it sounded nice....not unlike the similar content on Tidal (which I also subscribe to mainly since I use the Roon player). I've been waiting for Apple to go lossless for a LONG time, and we got the added bonus of HiRes lossless which I wasn't expecting.
The problem for me now is that Roon has made it really easy to pipe my lossless and HiRes music to wherever I am in the house at the best possible quality. Apple Music and Airplay can't do that right now which makes using it for day to day listening a lot harder. Airplay can do straight 16 bit/44.1 CD quality lossless right now (it's been part of the standard since Airplay 1 was invented two decades ago). But I usually try to listen to HiRes audio these days if I can and that's going to be hard to feed my DACs which already connected to Roon.
If cd's are lossless then why have 24bit 96k? - surely 16bit 441.1k is enough.
Anyone who’s ever heard of these silver discs calls “CD”s has heard of lossless.
Only Napster, music piracy in conjunction with slow internet, metered cellular data and expensive flash memory brought us the “blessings” of lossy audio compression algorithms.
So, no, lossless isn’t “niche”, it was and should always be the normal case, lossy compression should be the exception.
CDs are not lossless. They are limited to 16 bits and 44.1 kHz while lossless is at least 24 bits and 96 kHz. Every record theses days is recorded well above CD quality.
CDs are lossless. They do not use a compression technology that throws away data like MP3 or AAC. That is the meaning of "lossless". Do not confuse that with the sampling and bit rates, which certainly do make a difference to the overall sound profile.
As for what Eddy Cue said, yes Spatial Audio will probably make a bigger difference to most listeners than lossless. Most people get their music from their phones now and since lossless Bluetooth isn't a thing, Spatial Audio/Dolby Atmos makes more sense because it can be implemented with what most listeners already have.
That being said, I'm in the minority of users who does have the ability to easily show the difference between lossy AAC and lossless and especially HiRes audio. I have a dedicated 2 channel listening room, a smaller 5.1 home theater listening room and a larger 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos home theater. I spent some of today listening to the Atmos tracks in the Atmos theater and it sounded nice....not unlike the similar content on Tidal (which I also subscribe to mainly since I use the Roon player). I've been waiting for Apple to go lossless for a LONG time, and we got the added bonus of HiRes lossless which I wasn't expecting.
The problem for me now is that Roon has made it really easy to pipe my lossless and HiRes music to wherever I am in the house at the best possible quality. Apple Music and Airplay can't do that right now which makes using it for day to day listening a lot harder. Airplay can do straight 16 bit/44.1 CD quality lossless right now (it's been part of the standard since Airplay 1 was invented two decades ago). But I usually try to listen to HiRes audio these days if I can and that's going to be hard to feed my DACs which already connected to Roon.
You have more listening rooms in your house than I have bedrooms. Yours is a very special case where you probably have the ideal setup to hear differences between a good AAC and a good 16/44.1 lossless, not to mention the higher res recordings. We'll just refer to you as the less than 1 percent. The way most people, the other 99%, consume music nowadays, is by doing other stuff at the same time. So yes you are quite right that most of us will benefit more from spatial audio than good old lossless.
mike_galloway said: If cd's are lossless then why have 24bit 96k? - surely 16bit 441.1k is enough.
thedba said: You have more listening rooms in your house than I have bedrooms.
Yours is a very special case where you probably have the ideal setup to hear differences between a good AAC and a good 16/44.1 lossless, not to mention the higher res recordings. We'll just refer to you as the less than 1 percent. The way most people, the other 99%, consume music nowadays, is by doing other stuff at the same time. So yes you are quite right that most of us will benefit more from spatial audio than good old lossless.
Marco Arment had a good discussion of all this on a fairly recent ATP episode. People with good ears who know what they are listening for, can tell the difference between some of the lower encoding levels, but at higher bitrates, you can't tell between lossless and ACC. The main reason people *think* they can, is that often these lossless files are remastered, so it isn't an apples to apples comparison (it isn't the encoding, it's the source!).
CDs are enough in terms of listening. But, kind of like working with images, if you're going to be editing, adding effects, etc. then higher-level source material will make a difference in the final product.
99% of people these days have a much, much worse listening setup than the majority of kids when I was younger had in their dorm rooms. Forget regular vs audiophile, we're talking abysmal vs regular vs audiophile, with most falling in that first category.
And, while I haven't listened to 'spatial audio' I think it's going to be a gimmick for about everything except maybe FaceTime voice positioning when conferencing with unfamiliar people. It will probably be like most of those 'enhancement' types of things like simulated surround, or 3D audio, or (insert thing here) where you turn it on and briefly go, oh cool, and then minutes or hours later, go back to how you had it set before.
Comments
Yours is a very special case where you probably have the ideal setup to hear differences between a good AAC and a good 16/44.1 lossless, not to mention the higher res recordings. We'll just refer to you as the less than 1 percent.
The way most people, the other 99%, consume music nowadays, is by doing other stuff at the same time. So yes you are quite right that most of us will benefit more from spatial audio than good old lossless.
CDs are enough in terms of listening. But, kind of like working with images, if you're going to be editing, adding effects, etc. then higher-level source material will make a difference in the final product.
99% of people these days have a much, much worse listening setup than the majority of kids when I was younger had in their dorm rooms. Forget regular vs audiophile, we're talking abysmal vs regular vs audiophile, with most falling in that first category.
And, while I haven't listened to 'spatial audio' I think it's going to be a gimmick for about everything except maybe FaceTime voice positioning when conferencing with unfamiliar people. It will probably be like most of those 'enhancement' types of things like simulated surround, or 3D audio, or (insert thing here) where you turn it on and briefly go, oh cool, and then minutes or hours later, go back to how you had it set before.