LOSSLESS AUDIO Explained! AAC | Lossless | Hi-Res Lossless | Apple Music | DAC

june 2021 apple was like behold i am apple bow down and worship me 20 million songs in our apple music catalog now support lossless audio with plans to have our entire catalog in lossless by the end of 2021 and literally the same day amazon was like fall to your knees grovel and beg for mercy i am amazon music unlimited is now amazon music hd with 75 million songs and lossless look upon my bandwidth and despair and then title was like movies [Music] salutations er buddy my name is elin osborne and this is my youtube channel where i talk about movies audio and music so what's the deal with lossless audio first let's get some technical things out of the way shall we back in 2001 when the first generation ipod was released to the public and since apple is apple they were like we know mp3 is a thing now but we're gonna go with aac or advanced audio coding which is actually a good choice back then because aac generally offers higher sound quality than mp3 when using the same amount of disk space but even aac is still a lossy format meaning some audio information has been lost due to compression which is even more disappointing than this guy's character arc the quality of an aac file is measured based on bit rate the target bit rates of aac over the years were 128 192 and 256 kilobits per second and that's where apple decided to cap it 256 kilobits that was high enough to where the audience was pleased with the sound and pleased with its convenience being able to have it on the go on your ipod or iphone or your robot death dog but now comes the infamous term cd quality now you're dealing with bits and sample rates not bit rates uh oh yeah i'll save going into detail about bits and sample rates for another video because that's its own beast entirely but technically cd quality is 1411 kilobits per second so almost six times the bitrate of aac but the more common numbers associated with cd quality are 16 bit at a sample rate of 44.1 kilohertz that's when alac comes into play or apple lossless audio codec that's apple's proprietary lossless codec that can support audio up to 32 bits and a sample rate up to 384khz but apple's launch of losses audio on apple music only starts at cd quality 16-bit at 44.1 kilohertz remember apple stated that lossless audio up to 24 bit at 48 kilohertz will be supported on the mac iphone ipad and apple tv and possibly the robot dog with a future firmware update but it has to be wired yep at least for now listening on wired headphones is the only way to get true lossless audio on any apple device what i mean what is this little house on the prairie i mean come on it's 20 21. again we have robot dogs but we can't get lossless audio on airpods anyway airpods airpods pro and airpods max don't support lossless because they are still running off bluetooth an apple aac bluetooth codec for now doesn't support lossless audio and yes that includes having airpods max physically plugged into your device what but i am positive that apple has been feverishly working their witchcraft and black magic on a new and improved version of bluetooth that will eventually support lossless audio but that's not all that happened with the launch of lossless audio apple also announced that a very few select albums and songs will be available in high res lossless audio for the audiophiles out there which albums and songs you ask just kidding or am i alright so high-res lost this audio that's 24-bit audio with a sample rate up to 192 kilohertz but again there's a caveat of course on an iphone or an ipad those little lightning to 3.5 millimeter adapters you plug your headphones into only support audio up to 24 bit 48 kilohertz so to truly get high-res audio you'll need a dongle dac what did you just call me dax stands for digital to analog converter and the digital to analog converter inside that lightning adapter is just okay so with high-res audio becoming so widely accessible now there are so many dongle decks out there to choose from so that you can enjoy the highest possible quality available yes it's just something else you'll have to buy but worth it in the end if you're into that sort of thing so now you might be asking yourself well okay then how do i listen to lossless audio mr big shot first let's focus on iphone and ipad 1. before you do anything in the apple music app be sure you have updated your ios or ipad os to version 14.6 or higher two make sure you have a wired connection to your device like plugging your old reliable wired headphones from three years ago into that lightning adapter three now go to your settings app scroll down to music tap audio quality turn on lossless audio tap wi-fi streaming and choose lossless which you can see in the little grey text that will now support a lack up to 24 bit 48 kilohertz note at this point just as a reminder unless you have a separate dac that is much better than the so-so dac inside your iphone or ipad choosing high-resolution lossless is pointless but if you do have a dongle deck from thx or rocket fish or quest style more power to you get that high res up in them cans know what i'm saying now let's move on to the map one again the first thing is to make sure your os is up to date in this case it will be mac os 11.4 big cert two make sure you have a wired connection to your mac three open the apple music app in the menu bar choose music preferences click on the playback tab under audio quality select or deselect lossless to turn it on or off and like ios you can further specify settings to both streaming or downloading losses i don't know congratulate yourself and have a beer how about the apple tv 4k you ask one make sure your tv os is version 14.6 or later 2. connect to an av receiver via hdmi three have another beer four go to the settings app then select music select audio quality then select or deselect lossless at least when this video was made you might notice that hi-res lossless is not an option on apple tv 4k i'm sure that will be coming soon enough since pretty much all av receivers can already handle high-res audio no dongle dac required so hopefully now you know about aac cd quality alac and that the term dongle dac isn't what you think it means so now when you listen to songs how do they sound better the end oh sure okay okay first off let's talk about active listening that's when you're soaking in the sound waves doing nothing else but letting the layers of instruments from tools 10 000 days just wash over you and corrupt your subconscious then you'll notice a difference but honestly even then it's not going to have the same effect as eat pray love did to your aunt caroline who ended up leaving her husband and kids for a life of world travel vegan food and an advocate for whatever the these crystals are the difference will come in short bursts though making you realize whoa that kick drum has more punch to it now those guitars sound more present in the mix that bass line definitely has more body to it now lossless quality has essentially reintroduced that information that was lost when it was compressed and another thing you might notice is a greater sense of depth compressed audio to me has this quintessential sound that i will now try to describe for you if you're familiar with animation you know 2d has an x and a y axis your vertical and your horizontal planes 3d animation adds a depth axis or z axis so to wrap my head around it personally i don't think of compression as squashing a waveform from the top and bottom i think of it as squashing the z-axis to almost nothing so lossy or compressed audio like aac i view in 2d the picture is there it just sounds a little flat and lossless audio i view as 3d bringing back that depth that body that punch now the other aspect to consider is passive listening that's when you're doing something else while listening to music like working at the office or doing chores around the house or getting rid of a body in the middle of the night that's where there's like a tricky gray area when comparing lossy to lossless since your brain's not actively trying to pick out certain details in a song the average consumer might not even notice a difference really but then again when you're at work emailing that told greg again about that progress report he was supposed to turn in three days ago some elements within a song still might jump out at you when you're listening to lossless well that drum kit never sounded like that before so it might be a pleasant surprise even when listening passively bottom line is i am very excited about this jump to lossless audio it is a step in the right direction that should have happened a long time ago since apple has literally been in possession of the high quality masters of their entire catalog since the ipod was released in 2001 yeah spotify is also slated to support lots of audio any day now but as of this recording they have not released an official statement about it i can tell the difference and the difference is pleasing to my ears and my brain and my i have found myself going back and listening to albums like i used to in the 90s start to finish you know that's something i missed as of late to enjoy the album experience not just listen to a playlist on shuffle there's a lot of thought that goes into what's included in an album so i feel like i'm respecting the artist more by listening to one album at a time and now in the same quality as when i popped a cd into my iowa stereo speaker system back in the day you should try it i highly recommend it and there you have it when's the last time you listened to an album start to finish do you listen to everything in lossless now do you even care about lossless let me know in the comments below remember to be kind to each other out there don't just watch tv and movies experience them and of course always be listening [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Ealan Osborne

Views: 226,005

Keywords: apple music lossless, apple music, apple music hifi, lossless audio, apple lossless, what is lossless audio, airpods max, apple lossless music, lossless audio apple music, lossless music, lossless audio explained, airpods pro, apple music lossless review, apple music lossless audio, lossless setup, apple lossless audio setup, explanation, music, hifi, headphones, producer, composer, dolby atmos, home theater, surround sound, loudspeaker, aac, alac, apple lossless audio

Id: O_j-jjnXQiM

Length: 12min 14sec (734 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021