Less than 24 hours ago, Apple announced a new high-quality Apple Music with lossless Dolby Atmos sound even with the high-definition option. What role do your speakers and headphones play in this new service?
Apple Music will offer us, starting in June, the ability to listen to lossless music, so-called “lossless sound”, a format that requires more bandwidth, more storage, but offers us higher quality in return. We’ll even have a “High Resolution” option, which will be a format that respects the music as it was recorded in the studio, without any compression. It will also improve your listening experience with more immersive Dolby Atmos sound. We can listen to this music on our iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac, but how does it get to our ears? What role will AirPods, HomePod and HomePod Mini play?
HomePod и HomePod mini
The sound quality of Apple speakers is beyond doubt, yes, each in its own category. Apple ditched the HomePod a few weeks ago without announcing a replacement, and HomePod mini is the top seller thanks to its excellent value for money. Many owners of these devices have been looking forward to the release of quality music on Apple Music. so our HomePods will sound even better than they do todaybut the reality is that we will be half.
И HomePod, и HomePod mini Dolby Atmos compatible… If we already enjoyed great sound in our room, especially when we connected two HomePods together and created a stereo pair, now the sound will be much better with Dolby Atmos sound. But music with a loss of quality is another matter, because HomePod and HomePod mini will not be able to play it.
Apple has confirmed that its speakers will not be compatible with Apple Music Lossless, that is, we will have to continue listening to compressed music as before. Motives? We do not currently know them. It’s hard to imagine that the “big” HomePod can’t play this music in hardware, and if it were a software issue it could be solved with an update. Maybe HomePod processor is too old for HiFi music? Ok, but at least I could play it as a CD, something is something. The point is, Apple’s answer was clear and concise: they are incompatible.
AirPods, AirPods Pro и AirPods Max
Apple headphones are the same as with HomePods. All AirPods and some Beats headphones will support Dolby Atmos. and spatial sound, the only requirement is the presence of an H1 or W1 processor already built into the latest generation headphones. But when we talk about lossless audio, they don’t count as well.
This was what we expected from AirPods and AirPods Pro, as Bluetooth cannot transfer lossless audio, but AirPods Max can be used with a cable, as many hoped. Apple tosses us a jug of cold water again, confirming that this is technically impossible, due to the limitations of the headphone Lightning connector.
New service without hardware for him
Thus, a curious situation arises when Apple has launched a service “that changes music forever,” and Apple users will not be able to fully enjoy it.… We will be able to enjoy Dolby Atmos audio, but we will not be able to enjoy lossless audio with the new ALAC codec in any Apple speaker or headphones. This is really, to put it mildly, rather confusing.
The fact that this happens does not degrade our HomePods or AirPods. If you were happy with them, you will continue to be as happy or even more happy with Dolby Atmos, which you did not have before and now have, and also for the same price. It’s funny that yesterday you thought your AirPods Max were the worst, but today suddenly woke up thinking that they were trash… But it’s still strange that headphones over 600 Euros are not capable of playing the best Apple Music, or at least the second best music.
How are we going to listen to music in high definition?
Apple announced its new service, it told us which devices are compatible and which are not … but it didn’t tell us how we will listen to music without loss of quality. We’ll have 20 million songs at launch, 75 million by the end of the year … but how do you listen to them?… Without the jack in the iPad and iPhone, and without the AirPods and HomePod, the game feels like they taught us candy we can’t eat. We’ll have to wait for Apple to provide us with more information, after all, it hasn’t even launched yet.
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