Apple lossless official announcement

[_thelaughingman]

We'll probably never know. Apple and Amazon both group their content streaming services into a larger overall business, so (to my knowledge) one can't know how profitable they are. I suspect very profitable, but I don't have any facts. Only a revenue number.

That you are correct. Apple has never divulged it's software products individually except it deems them and lumps them as "services" which is a massive revenue generator.

 

[_thelaughingman]

As I am not in the Apple ecosystem (other than my iPad which I don't use for music) - does anyone know if there is a way to get bit-perfect casting or DAC playout with Apple Music on Android? Neither USB Audio Player Pro nor BubbleUPNP support Apple Music as far as I can tell. This would definitely be a deal breaker for me.

Wait till Apple rolls out an updated app on android that will accomodate playback of lossless/hi res via dac. (hoping that's what they are testing currently in beta)

 

[blueone]

Sure, but it’s not Apple’s primary business by any stretch. Spotify, on the other hand, lives or dies by streaming profits, which they’ve been unable to generate so far (they’ve lost $2.8 billion over the past 10 years). You have to wonder how much longer that can go on.

Apple is so huge and so profitable it is difficult to put into perspective. Apple's net profit is roughly equal to the revenue of General Motors. Apple Music rides on the huge investment of Apple's cloud infrastructure, which is amortized over so many services. I'm not familiar with what Spotify does, but almost certainly they use someone else's cloud computing services, which is expensive. Amazon is like Apple.

 

[garageband]

The Airpods Max is just as detailed as my Hifiman Sundara while at the same time being Wireless, ANC headphones.

I feel like audiophiles who discredit the Max aren’t looking at the big picture. An open back audiophile headphone is useless the moment there are others living with you or when you are outside your home. The fact that Apple managed to reach the performance of a mid-fi audiophile headphone in a ANC headphone is something to be celebrated.

The sound quality and engineering gap between the AirPods Max and the rest of the audiophile world is monstrous. Just ask Sennheiser how hard it is to create a good sounding ANC headphone.

 

[_thelaughingman]

Apple is so huge and so profitable it is difficult to put into perspective. Apple's net profit is roughly equal to the revenue of General Motors. Apple Music rides on the huge investment of Apple's cloud infrastructure, which is amortized over so many services. I'm not familiar with what Spotify does, but almost certainly they use someone else's cloud computing services, which is expensive. Amazon is like Apple.

I think spotify utilizes some AWS infrastructure if i remember reading it correctly somewhere.

 

[_thelaughingman]

Apple has been working overtime on their audio products. They hired Scott Croyle who oversaw the Beats design prior to Apple purchasing beats, this could mean that Apple may put out a new Beats headphone that could be "audiophile" territory or just a new pill box that would succeed Homepod with hi-res playback.

 

[blueone]

I think spotify utilizes some AWS infrastructure if i remember reading it correctly somewhere.

So does Apple, paying Amazon $1.5B/year in a recent report, but I don't know if Apple Music is on AWS or on Apple servers (Apple also has huge data centers, but they don't disclose what is done where). $1.5B is just a sliver of Apple's total cloud spending. Even if Apple Music is on AWS, I'd make a big wager that Apple gets a better deal than Spotify.

 

[dmac6419]

Apple is so huge and so profitable it is difficult to put into perspective. Apple's net profit is roughly equal to the revenue of General Motors. Apple Music rides on the huge investment of Apple's cloud infrastructure, which is amortized over so many services. I'm not familiar with what Spotify does, but almost certainly they use someone else's cloud computing services, which is expensive. Amazon is like Apple.

Amazon Music Will Be A Game Changer
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413608-amazon-music-will-be-game-changer

 

[_thelaughingman]

So does Apple, paying Amazon $1.5B/year in a recent report, but I don't know if Apple Music is on AWS or on Apple servers (Apple also has huge data centers, but they don't disclose what is done where). $1.5B is just a sliver of Apple's total cloud spending. Even if Apple Music is on AWS, I'd make a big wager that Apple gets a better deal than Spotify.

I'll dig into this in the next quater's earnings report to find out. I bet Apple leverages AWS for iCloud more than anything due to the vast amount of data flowing through icloud and the scalability of AWS. Just a conjecture by me.

 

[Bob-23]

There are alternatives for those who prefer other fruit: recently stumbled (again) over 'Radio Paradise' - they, now, stream lossless (FLAC), too, sound is (slightly) processed in such a manner so that soundstage is enlarged! (It'd be interesting how exactely they do it.)

It's not the music I usually listen to, but I'd say, for lovers of Rock and Pop (also old titles ) it's a quite good mixture. They have three channels, and provide detailed info to the respective record/musicians.

https://radioparadise.com/player/info

 

[Tks]

The Airpods Max is just as detailed as my Hifiman Sundara while at the same time being Wireless, ANC headphones.

I feel like audiophiles who discredit the Max aren’t looking at the big picture. An open back audiophile headphone is useless the moment there are others living with you or when you are outside your home. The fact that Apple managed to reach the performance of a mid-fi audiophile headphone in a ANC headphone is something to be celebrated.

The sound quality and engineering gap between the AirPods Max and the rest of the audiophile world is monstrous. Just ask Sennheiser how hard it is to create a good sounding ANC headphone.

Sennheiser's best headphones were the 600 line, everything else is just passable (and the higher end is just plagued with odd frequency response that doesn't make any semblance of sense without EQ'ing). Their IEM's aren't too bad though I should say, they're just too expensive.

But they strike me in the same way Nokia or Blackberry struck me. Resting on laurels, and now they've lost much headway because of it.

 

[Zensō]

The Airpods Max is just as detailed as my Hifiman Sundara while at the same time being Wireless, ANC headphones.

I feel like audiophiles who discredit the Max aren’t looking at the big picture. An open back audiophile headphone is useless the moment there are others living with you or when you are outside your home. The fact that Apple managed to reach the performance of a mid-fi audiophile headphone in a ANC headphone is something to be celebrated.

The sound quality and engineering gap between the AirPods Max and the rest of the audiophile world is monstrous. Just ask Sennheiser how hard it is to create a good sounding ANC headphone.

This has been my experience as well. I’m sure someone will say I’m deaf, but when comparing the AirPods Max with Headphone Accommodations tweaked to my preference, to my Sennheiser HD660S EQ’d to the Harman curve through my RME ADI-2 DAC, the differences are not significant.

 

[norcalscott]

I guess we need to wait to examine.
But I would conjucture that with spotify hifi, amazin hd, deezer hifi, qobuz and now apple music, Google will have to revisit audio transport over usb in their next version of android.
Android 12 which will be presented this month maybe ?

This is LONG overdue and would address so many issues with audio in Android.

 

[norcalscott]

Wait till Apple rolls out an updated app on android that will accomodate playback of lossless/hi res via dac. (hoping that's what they are testing currently in beta)

Color me a skeptic but I'll believe it when I see Apple doing anything above and beyond for Android. They are probably beta testing this on Android since their usage numbers are so low compared to iOS. I hope I am wrong, though.

 

[tmtomh]

I read their careful wording as there are at least 2 tiers.

There might be, but I don't think there's any clear indication of that in their press release. It is possible, I suppose, that they would have one tier that's redbook plus 24/28 plus Atmos, and then a second higher tier that adds on some 24/96 and 24/192 tracks. But that seems like an awfully strange way to set up tiers.

In addition, the Apple Music home page has already been updated with all the newly added lossless, Atmos etc services, and all the subscription options and prices are listed there. The notion that they would be adding a special, 2nd tier that only adds 96k and 192k sample rate files, but that they would not say so, and that there would be no price listing for such a tier on their otherwise-updated web site, and that their press release would mention 192k as an option under the heading of "Lossless" which they are shouting from the rooftops comes at no extra cost, but 192k really would be an extra cost, but they are not providing a footnote to say that, even though their press release and web page have a combined total of 12 footnotes with other explanatory details, seems far fetched.

So my opinion - which certainly could turn out to be wrong! - is that the "up to 24/48 and for audiophiles up to 24/192" was more about simplifying the language in the press release (and not giving the wrong impression that anything close to the full 75M tracks will be available beyond 48k), than signaling a 2nd tier. But as @Jimbob54 notes, time will tell.

 

[Sal1950]

No mention of MQA. Imagine that.

Thank God

 

[Zensō]

 

[Soniclife]

There might be, but I don't think there's any clear indication of that in their press release. It is possible, I suppose, that they would have one tier that's redbook plus 24/28 plus Atmos, and then a second higher tier that adds on some 24/96 ad 24/192 tracks. But that seems like an awfully strange way to set up tiers.

In addition, the Apple Music home page has already been updated with all the newly added lossless, Atmos etc services, and all the subscription options and prices are listed there. The notion that they would be adding a special, 2nd tier that only adds 96k and 192k sample rate files, and that they would not say that, and that there would be no price listing for such a tier on their otherwise-updated web site, and that their press release would mention 192k as an option under the leading of "Lossless" which they are shouting from the rooftops comes at no extra cost, but 192k really would be an extra cost, but they are not providing a footnote to say that, even though their press release and web page have a combined total of 12 footnotes with other explanatory details, seems far fetched.

So my opinion - which certainly could turn out to be wrong! - is that the "up to 24/48 and for audiophiles up to 24/192" was more about simplifying the language in the press release (and not giving the wrong impression that anything close to the full 75M tracks will be available beyond 48k), than signaling a 2nd tier. But as @Jimbob54 notes, time will tell.

What is lossless audio?


Lossless audio compression reduces the original file size of a song while preserving all of the data perfectly. Apple Music is making its entire catalog of more than 75 million songs available in lossless audio at different resolutions.1 In Apple Music, “Lossless” refers to lossless audio up to 48kHz, and “Hi-Res Lossless” refers to lossless audio from 48kHz to 192kHz. Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless files are very large and use much more bandwidth and storage space than standard AAC files.

They say you get "Play tracks in Dolby Atmos and hear over 75 million songs in lossless audio, ad‑free1", but above they differentiate between lossless and hires lossless, as I read that they are not actually offering hires currently.

 

[Andysu]

I don't care anymore about lossless as there won't be any relevant service thats not offering it, it's the standard, making this point obsolete when selecting an streaming service. That's how I understood @FrantzM anyways, and I definitely agree with that. AppUX on the other hand is a different topic...

lossless audio with home theatre dolby truehd dtshdma is a SCAM they use near field mixing today no theatrical far field original mixes unless you happen to own Laserdsic. Nearly all 4k movies are watered down with dynamic range that are only good for bose speakers. I more less turned my back on 4k now as it is lossless audio Scam.

 

[_thelaughingman]

iOS 14.6 RC now shows option to select the quality of music for streaming within Apple Music