The music streaming service Apple Music improves the audio quality from June.

The tracks are offered lossless, uncompressed in CD quality or even better.

So far, Apple Music, like all other streaming services, has been dampening the music.

Apple uses the AAC format with a data rate of 256 Kbit / s.

Compression means that tones are omitted, for example those that are already covered by louder tones.

Corresponding algorithms do this with the advantage of good music quality with small file sizes.

Michael Spehr

Editor in the “Technology and Engine” section.

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    With the new Apple Music, two high-resolution formats are now available. On the one hand "Losless" with a data rate of 1600 Kbit / s. That is a little more than the bandwidth of an audio CD and is available for all 75 million music tracks. On the other hand, “High Resolution Losless” with 9666 Kbit / s for the highest demands. However, this requires special hardware and wired headphones. The app shows which bit rate has which track.

    Other pieces are optimized for surround formats such as spatial audio with Dolby Atmos.

    This works with almost all end devices, and the 3D effects can be experienced immediately.

    The function starts in June with a few thousand titles.

    “Stereo is behind us, spatial audio is the future,” they say.

    Dolby Atmos is played on all Airpods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip, and also with the built-in speakers of the latest models of the iPhone, iPad and Mac.

    Good sound means more memory requirements

    The higher the data rate, the more unadulterated the music reaches the reproducing device.

    However, the file sizes also grow.

    A three-minute song takes up six megabytes of memory on the iPhone.

    With Losless the file grows to 36 megabytes, with high-res format even to 145 megabytes.

    Anyone who has an extensive music library will quickly reach storage limits.

    Apple Music costs 10 euros a month as usual.

    There are also family subscriptions.

    The streaming service started in 2015 and is estimated to have more than 70 million subscribers around the world.

    The required app is also available for Android smartphones.

    Rival Spotify has an estimated 130 million subscribers.

    Others can also use high resolution

    Streaming music in lossless formats is by no means new.

    Tidal has had high-resolution streaming with data rates of 1400 kbps (CD quality) and 1850 kbps for years.

    Amazon Music HD offers its songs with an average bit rate of 850 kbps and in Ultra HD format with 3730 kbps.

    Spotify wants to start with lossless formats this year.

    A widespread objection to lossless formats is that a tonally significant difference between compressed and uncompressed music can hardly be heard or not at all.

    That's what Apple says too.

    In “Technik & Motor” we will soon be introducing the new Apple Music after extensive listening tests.