To some extent, I suspect the whole shift to high-resolution audio with Apple Music is really a marketing ploy intended to keep its subscribers happy. It needs to positively demonstrate that it is keeping abreast of developing technology.
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While Apple’s refusal to adopt better quality audio codecs for streaming over Bluetooth has made any switch to lossless less than worthwhile up until now, it’s clear that Apple can now see itself getting left behind unless it starts upping its game.
That just leaves Spotify and Apple Music stuck in the – relatively – low-resolution lane.
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That the streaming market is moving towards lossless music is beyond question, especially now that the high-resolution Amazon Music HD is available free to all Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers. They are good solutions but undeniably they are a clunky way of getting around Apple’s restricted audio offering. There are quite a few of these devices on the market and some even support MQA files. Recently, I looked at a few models from Helm Audio, THX and Astell&Kern. There is another way that HD music can be accommodated on an iPhone and that’s by using an external DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter) that plugs into an iPhone’s Lightning port.
audio codecs the company uses with its iOS devices. TIDAL is particularly attractive for streaming because many of its tracks are available in the MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) format which is high-resolution but offers the benefit of a smaller file size that only unfolds the higher resolution when used with an appropriately equipped device.Īpple Music streaming service has some issues with its high resolution music service because of the. Serious music lovers and hi-fi enthusiasts probably wouldn’t touch Apple Music as there are already some excellent alternative streaming services for audiophiles, including TIDAL, Qobuz and Deezer. I suspect the reason Apple has announced it’s now supporting high-resolution music streaming is mainly down to the way the market is moving.
Personally, the only time I’d demand high-resolution music would be when I knew I was going to be sitting down to listen to my high-end audio system at home, via good quality headphones or a great pair of speakers. Ordinarily, there’s far too much extraneous noise to make the benefits of listening to HD music audible. Most people listening to music on an iPhone will probably be on a commute to work or working out at the gym. The music files are massive and even with the advent of 5G technology they positively gobble up a user’s data allowance. One further reason why HD music is overkill on mobile platforms like iPhones is bandwidth. This effectively means that Apple’s entire current audio ecosystem is intrinsically hobbled as no matter how high the resolution of the music being streamed, Apple’s AAC over Bluetooth and AirPlay 2 streaming technologies will always down-sample lossless hi-res music files to the maximum resolution that they are capable of transmitting.
Now, I’m not saying that Apple deliberately pushed its customers towards adopting wireless earphones over wired, but it must have been a factor, especially considering how much Apple paid for Beats in what is an incredibly crowded market.
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That’s undoubtedly all true but the disappearance of the headphone jack from iPhones also coincided with Apple’s purchase of the Beats by Dr Dre headphone brand and the marketing of a new generation of Apple AirPod Pro earbuds with active noise-canceling built-in. The decision to do away with the trusty old headphone jack primarily was made so that iPhones could be more water-resistant, space saved also facilitating slimmer phones which could then more easily adopt new technology. That’s particularly the case given that Apple has now dumped the old analog headphone jack, forcing iPhone owners to use Bluetooth wireless headphones instead. In truth, it’s debatable whether people listening to music on their smartphones while on the move are going to particularly benefit from exceptionally high-resolution music streaming.
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