With AirPods Max, they do support Hi-Resolution Lossless – but only when used as wired headphones. If you are listening on AirPods or AirPods Pro, forget it: there’s just no way that you’re going to hear any difference. ![]() The best Apple devices can achieve natively is 48kHz. Indeed, Apple specifically says that you can’t listen to Hi-Resolution Lossless (24 bit at 192kHz) on Apple products at all without an external DAC connected to wired headphones. Apple appears to be fudging this issue somewhat, but when it comes to the full quality – what Apple calls Hi-Resolution Lossless – then the company acknowledges that it’s impossible. (Oh, and don’t use mobile data to do it: lossless files are big!) Are you listening via Bluetooth?īluetooth doesn’t have enough bandwidth for true lossless audio. To reach that bar, you need to do more trials.īut don’t start the test without reading on. To compensate for this, the metaphorical bar for determining that you can tell the difference for an individual track (in contrast to telling the difference overall) is set very high – five times higher. When you then test five tracks, the change of that error happening for at least one track is 25% (5% x 5 tracks = 25%). In this case, that means that for each track there would be a 5% chance of thinking you could hear a difference when you in fact couldn’t. The statistical cut-off typically used to decide whether something is ‘real’ – in this case, your ability to tell the difference between lossy and lossless music – is set so there is a 5% likelihood of thinking there is a difference when there isn’t. The reason that you need to do more trials to work out which tracks you can tell the difference on is because of the multiple comparisons problem. Although 5 trials is sufficient to estimate whether you can tell the difference between lossy and lossless, to work out which tracks you can tell the difference on will require 20 trials per sample. The accuracy of the test will increase markedly as the number of trials increases. You will be administered multiple trials for each of the five tracks used in the original Tidal test. You have to decide whether sample X matches sample A or sample B. You will be presented with two reference samples (A and B), and a target sample (X). If you really want a statistically robust result, it’s recommended to test with 20 songs, and to listen to each set five times, which will take 15-30 minutes. You should, however, expect to spend some time doing it. ![]() A much better format is what’s known as an ABX test, like this one. If you only have to listen to a small number of A/B samples, you can easily get a result that is overly optimistic by chance. Will you be able to hear the difference? The answer is going to come down to a number of factors… How good are your ears?įor most people, the answer is “no.” But some people can, and if you want to know whether you’re one of them, there are a bunch of blind listening tests you can take to find out. Indeed, I know more than one who rip their music to ALAC or FLAC, because they want the best possible digital source, but use AAC 256 as their usual format for music listening on portable devices. ![]() Data which is unique but does not impact the way we hear the music is discardedĪudiophiles can and do take issue with both claims, but most of them would agree that if you’re going to use a lossy format, then AAC 256Kbps is a very good choice.AAC aims to compress the music in two ways, both of which are intended to be imperceptible to listeners: AAC is an extremely high-quality format, and is easily better than higher bit-rate mp3 recordings. Apple Music streams in AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) format at 256Kbps. If you want to know just how bad things used to be in the early days, check out some 96Kbps mp3 recordings!īut the situation today is very different. In the early days of digital music, the difference between lossless music and low-res mp3 recordings was dramatic, and anyone with halfway functional ears could easily hear the difference. But Apple Music Lossless Audio is a whole other ballgame … With Spatial Audio, when listening on compatible equipment, everyone should be able to hear the difference. Update: Apple has now advised that AirPods Max cannot be used for Lossless Audio even in wired mode!Īfter multiple clues, Apple has now officially announced Apple Music Lossless Audio for all 75 million songs in the library by the end of the year, at no extra cost to subscribers – along with Spatial Audio.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |