Apple has announced a new feature for its music streaming application, Apple Music. Apparently, users will now be able to choose the sound quality through an additional monthly charge. That means high-quality performance and high loss-free quality sound will be enabled. In other words, this is what Apple will be introducing as lossless. In fact, we won’t even have to wait long, as the official announcements will be made tomorrow.
According to relevant reports, the quality will be slightly better than that of the first level CD, at 24-bit / 48Hz, while the higher quality that will be supported will reach 24-bit / 192 kHz. Of course, the increased sound quality is proportional to the space that the songs will occupy. This means the space that a high-quality three-minute song needs, in relation to the lossless tier, is much smaller. Moreover, an average track takes up 6 mb of space (in high quality), while for a corresponding song in quality, without any losses, a times six space (36 mb) will be occupied and in hi-res without the 145 mb losses.
Of course, this is not something new. It is already offered by Apple’s competitors, Amazon Music HD, Tidal, and Deezer. Spotify could not be missing from the equation. They even announced a similar feature which will be launched later this year.
To be honest, Apple has fallen quite far behind in the competition and we have high expectations. As we all know, this is not the first time this has happened, but we believe that the result will be rewarding. Perhaps this is due to the new operations in collaboration with Dolby. Particularly, there was talk of “Dolby Audio” and “Dolby Atmos” that will probably take advantage of the AirPods’ Spatial Audio feature.
These new developments are of great interest, but the final experience may not differ from those already offered. Stay tuned!