Apple Lossless Audio Challenges Streaming Rivals

When every major music-streaming provider offers the same catalog of songs from almost all of recorded music’s history, how can they compete? 

Bloomberg reports One way is on price, such as Spotify Technology SA’s free, ad-supported tier; another is to bundle other products, like Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime. But a more technology-based approach is to make the music itself sound better, and Apple Inc. is venturing into this territory with its lossless, high-resolution, and spatial audio.

What is lossless audio?

To understand the concept of lossless, it’s easiest to first grasp its counterpart, the MP3 file. When a song is copied from a CD to computer, it’s usually encoded by default in MP3 or the comparable AAC. In doing so, the software performing the copy is analyzing the sound and determining which bits of it the human ear is unlikely to be able to hear — very high and low frequencies, for instance, or two similar sounds occurring simultaneously. Such audio files will discard what a person won’t hear or won’t notice missing. This creates files that take up less space on a hard drive and download or stream more quickly. Lossless technology doesn’t throw any of that data away — whether you can hear it or not, the audio is sonically identical to its source, whether that’s a CD or a studio master recording.

Can you hear the difference?

That’s a topic of debate in audiophile communities. Academics and enthusiasts alike have shown that in terms of pure sonic information, lossless files contain more sound and thus are objectively superior to an MP3. But other factors include whether a person is young enough to have avoided hearing loss caused by the aging process, or avoided exposure to loud noises over a lifetime. Additionally, there’s a reason most smartphones ship with a pair of free headphones, while companies like Sennheiser, Bose and AKG sell pairs of high-end alternatives that can cost as much as the phones themselves — they’re better at reproducing the nuances of a good audio recording. As such, it’s possible a person with great hearing but cheap earbuds won’t notice the benefit of lossless, while an individual with time-worn ears but fabulous headphones may.

Lossless, high-res and spatial audio all come with physical limitations. Not all headphones support spatial audio, and that’s in addition to most wireless headphones not supporting lossless, either, due to their reliance on Bluetooth. It may not be coincidence Apple sells its own brand of headphones — AirPods Pro and Beats — which support some of these features, although not all, nor that Amazon promotes its Echo products on the same page it outlines the benefits of its HD music streaming catalog.