After being heavily rumored last week, the high-quality version of Apple Music has now come into fruition. Announced yesterday and set to arrive in June this will bring forth lossless audio & spatial audio via Dolby Atmos at no extra cost.
Apple says it will have 75 million lossless audio songs within its catalog and shoots for 20 million songs by the end of the year. This feature will also be exclusive for those who pays for Apple Music subscription and this will only apply to music streaming not music purchases via iTunes.
So for those of you who want to know the numbers, their lossless audio starts at CD quality of 16-bit at 44.1 kHz & goes up to 24-bit at 192 kHz on Apple devices. You will be able to enjoy a high-resolution lossless experience but you’ll need a DAC to access it. When it does arrive, you can access it within the Settings by going to Music > Audio Quality. And for Dolby Atmos, you also dive into Settings and then go to Music > Audio & set the feature ‘Always On’.
In regards to spatial audio + Dolby Atmos, it will make for an immersive listening experience as it will work on both Beats headphones & the latest AirPods. Unfortunately, none of these new features will work on the more recent $549 AirPods Max, the $299 HomePod, or the $99 HomePod mini.
So this addition will give the likes of Amazon, Spotify, & Tidal in offering HD-quality music. However, Apple adds spatial audio + Dolby Atmos to the mix as well – all w/o charging extra for it either.
