What’s new in Apple Audio is for your ears?

The week started with news on Apple Music, the music service flow From songs from an Apple. The company announced that, starting in June, the service will gain two new features: Unmatched Audio and Space Audio. The news arrives at no additional cost to subscribers and will be a part of all Apple Music plans. The announcement sparked some controversy, like everything that includes the name Apple.

Before explaining the reason for this controversy, I need to explain what is a non-missing voice.

Lossless is a technical term that literally means “without loss.” In order to be able to send a file Song On Internet, The streaming services use lossy compression methods, such as MP3 or AAC. In short, these compression formats (theoretically) remove inaudible frequencies from songs to reduce file size.

Although the purpose of this compression is to reduce the file size which harms sound quality as little as possible, there is some loss in audio detail, which the vast majority of people are not able to perceive.

For the smallest fraction of audiophiles who noticed – or say they noticed – this difference, streaming services offered lossless audio options, and Apple was the latest company to join the fun.

However, in order to take advantage of this lossless stream, specialized equipment that is capable of converting the digital bits into analog signals for headphone amplifiers is necessary, which must also be of high quality.

Back to the controversy: No Apple headset is capable of doing that today. Not even dear ones AirPods Max Able to reproduce lossless sound to the point where the difference is noticeable. This is because the protocol Bluetooth They use their own compression method, based on the AAC codec, which is lossy.

The question is, should you think about this?

The answer is no.

If you are not a bartender, able to perceive (or pretend you can perceive) the “blackberry notes and woody note” of a song, the only thing you will be able to do while listening to lossless music is spend more bandwidth from the Internet and store it Iphone.

But that wasn’t just what Apple announced, it had another novelty much more interesting to humans like us.

Spatial sound

Another new feature announced by Apple for Music was Space Sound. The feature is now available on AirPods Pro and AirPods Max, but so far only for video content (including strings and Movies From TV +).

It works as follows: Motion sensors in headphones track the rotation of the user’s head and adapt the direction of sounds to simulate a 3D environment.

As for Apple Music, Apple announced that it is working with several artists and producers to bring in a special mix of songs made in Dolby Atmos, ensuring a more immersive experience when listening to songs.

The feature will be available on “thousands of tracks” at launch right away, ranging from artists like Ariana Grande, Maroon 5, Casey Musgraves, The Weeknd, among others.

Access to the feature will depend on whether the user is running iOS 14.6, which should be released in the coming weeks, as well as an Apple Music subscription of course (personal, family, or Apple One plan).

In terms of hardware, any Apple headphones or Beats with the W1 or H1 chip (say, almost all of them) will be able to take advantage of the feature, but I suspect the effect will be more interesting on AirPods Pro and AirPods Max, which specialize in audio devices. Spatial.

In my view, a loss has only been added as a feature to keep up with the competition, as other services have already provided the option. What will make the difference even for most users is spatial audio.