Apple, the Cupertino based tech giant, has been offering products that have been the most influential or key to the specific segment, from the iPhone to the Mac; they have acted as a sort of base for certain products.
Now, on Monday, Apple has announced its plans to launch lossless, Hi-Res audio support on its music streaming platform Apple music next month, with a shocking bit of information that mentions that the high-quality service will be made available to all the company subscribers for their current subscription rate.
Whilst this might not seem odd to someone from outside the Apple ecosystem, for those who are part of it or have used Apple products in the past, they know that Apple has a specific charge for a certain feature or product and, this decision seems to be a major shift from what the company usually does.
What this means is that if you pay Rs 99 a month or Rs 999 for a year on Apple Music, you will get the new lossless audio feature for the same rate, without any additional cost.
What Else Has Apple Announced
Apart from the upcoming support for high-quality audio on Apple Music, the company also announced the arrival of Spatial Audio support through Dolby Atmos on its music streaming service.
As of now, the feature is available on Apple’s wearables, namely the AirPods Max, which are the company’s flagship headphones and its AirPods Pro truly wireless earphones that add a surround sound effect to the track that is playing.
The system makes use of an in-built mechanism to track the user’s head movements in a bid to emulate a theatre-like feel with multi-directional sound effects.
For those of you wishing to know the specifics, after updating to the latest version of Apple Music, users will be able to listen to music at 16-bit at 44.1kHz, which is the standard quality on offer. If one owns an iPhone or iPad, they will be able to play 24-bit audio at 48kHz, which needs a compatible headset.
There is a third music tier now, which will allow users to listen to music at 24-bit audio at 192kHz but to make use of this, you will need specialised audio equipment, including their own DAC, to listen to them.
Do note that there are a couple of setbacks, such as the instance where to use the new lossless audio feature with Apple’s 75 million high-quality songs; you will need either a Beats headset, AirPods Pro or the AirPods Max running on the company’s H1 or W1 chip. If you do not use wireless earphones, you can listen to spatial audio-based music using the in-built speaker on your Apple product.
