Lossless audio
Once again, Apple made something new, and innovative out of ordinary stuff, although in fact it is not correct, but it doesn't matter in the current context. To give it a short review, I would say, that it is really important and will create a rather large impact, affecting streaming in general.
Lossless audio at the moment (lossless) and Dolby Atmos audio is only available on Apple devices, users of all other platforms will have to wait for a some time, until it reaches at least Android.
As for Lossless, then this is, what everyone will notice, even using poor AirPods, which at the moment are not able to receive high-quality audio via Bluetooth, therefore, during transmission, losses will still be, but this sound may seem cleaner and more pleasant, but, perhaps, it will not sound so loud. The real application will be in conjunction with devices, that use Apple AirPlay or when using an optional USB DAC, of which there are many today.
Do you need Dolby Atmos at all and what is it – it is better to look for the answer to this question in other places. This audio is supported by Tidal, but i'm not a fan of these marketing gimmicks, therefore, in the screenshot you can see, that it is off. Dolby Atmos sounds like a vaper at all, and the vape and all the jokes about it died out back in 2017 year. Will there be Dolby Atmos in Android – No one knows, most probably not, except on some Samsung devices. But it's safe to say, that this is unnecessary technology, so you shouldn't be upset, but it is worth rejoicing at the arrival of Lossless quality on portables, and even without raising prices (for now).
Further in this post there will be incomprehensible gibberish, which you can skip, because the main thing has already been said. But if interested, then read on.
I've been waiting for this since 2010 year, when I used an iPod. Then I wondered “Why Apple Sells Music in AAC, if they already have the required codec?”. I still don't know the answer to this question, but it doesn't matter now, after all 7 June 2021 of the year lossless sound saw Apple Music streaming service.
So what does it mean “Lossless? What, there used to be losses?” – surely those will think, who never went into details and bought AirPods Pro as soon as they came out, although I still had working AirPods of the first revision and, in principle, was glad that, that everything is so fashionable and original (cosplay on a typical inhabitant of the capital, who moved from an urban-type settlement two years ago).
Earlier, starting with nano iPods, when flash memory was expensive, and the audio was exclusively offline, music in the iTunes Store was delivered in AAC format with bitrate 256 kilobits per second. A song of three minutes in this format took about 8 megabyte in memory, and the audio quality was already in the background. Many tracks in the brand store marked with iTunes Remaster meant, that this track was mixed like this, so that the human ear cannot detect loss, that occurred during the transcoding from master audio to compressed audio. How much have we lost? Audiophiles will answer, that you have lost everything, including the meaning of life, but an ordinary mortal will not understand again, what kind of losses are we talking about.
Let's go back to the past. No, at the wrong time, when the music was only on vinyl and on cassettes, this period does not interest us now, since it refers to analog audio. We will get into the period, when music moved to digital, and this is the beginning of the 1980s, when the first music album was released in Audio CD format, and, as the name suggests, it came in the form CD. A CD is a kind of USB flash drive. 700 megabyte. It also stores information in binary form., when reading, the laser head, upon successful reflection from the surface of the CD disc, returns 1 or 0, and such ones and zeros in such a disk can be written as much 700 million. But how to understand, what are these ones and zeros and why should it “sound”? And everything is simple, this is no longer analog audio, which is written in the form of magnetic distortion, and the most common digital coding of a sound wave. I.e, someone took, put an analog microphone to the tape recorder, into which the audio cassette is inserted, pressed Play and then, what comes to the microphone filmed 44100 once a second and encoded so many seconds, how long is the whole recording. Every second of sound in the real world has been divided into 44100 even cells and for each of them the sound loudness indicator was taken and encoded in 16 bit (This graph shows 4-bit encoding, at 16 bit coding, the maximum vertex of the graph will be in 1111 1111 1111 1111 – in binary, that is 2 in 16 degree = 65536 in decimal). Please note, that this number is very different from the number 15.
I may be inaccurate in some aspects, however I hope, that the essence will be conveyed. If anything, you can read about pulse code modulation at wiki.
Coding depth is responsible for dynamic range. In the real world, the sound of an airplane taking off can easily deafen and even harm the hearing organs., but the digitized sound of an airplane taking off cannot do this, although it will create an unpleasant listening experience, if recorded with overload of the recording level, but if the sensitivity of the microphones has been reduced, then the sound on the recording will be more or less monophonic, but it will still be possible to distinguish between soft and loud sounds, because there is everything 65535 steps for measuring the loudness level (16 bit), which is enough, to measure the volume from -120 decibel (the quietest sound) prior to 0 decibel (real volume, without additional amplification).
We decided on the depth. Back to the sampling rate. For audio discs, it is 44100 Hertz. Why is such a number? We know from physics lessons, that a person hears sound in the range of 20 Hz (in this case Hertz – this is the amount of hesitation) prior to 20 000 Hertz. In fact, hearing deteriorates with age, therefore 20kHz hardly anyone will hear, perhaps with a fairly strong gain, but there are still no sounds (necessary) so let's skip this fact. In total, we have two channels (right and left, stereo), each channel should contain the most accurate signal in the range from 20Hz to 20kHz.
As follows fromKotelnikov's theorems, for, to unambiguously restore the original signal, the sampling rate must be more than twice the highest frequency in the signal spectrum. – Viki
From here they took 44100. Is there some more 48000, 96000 and 19200 hz (it also happens 352000, or even more). Let's stop at the maximum in 192000. With this removal, one second of audio will be split into 192 000 equal parts and this will allow you to even more accurately remove and then reproduce the analog signal.
And So, back to audio discs. They are the main ones today. Audio in this format was recorded on an audio disc, tracks were separated from each other by a small gap, so the player knows, where to put the head, to play the tenth track, eg, but there might not have been a gap, all the same, the information about the tracks is contained at the very beginning of the disc, it is from there that the player reads information about, how many tracks and where each one starts. Sometimes a secret track was hidden in the very first gap on audio discs., which only some players could play, if you hold down rewind, they could play zero track. Some discs did not contain music., and, eg, computer mini game. All this can be attributed to Easter eggs., this is done to this day.
So, if you pull out any three-minute track from this disc, it can be saved to a container in WAV format. This is the same lossless audio (well, loss when recording from analog does not count, naturally), which Apple offers today in its music service, along with Spotify (announced, will be available in 2021 year), Tidal (already available, not officially in Russia), Deezer (already available), Qobuz (already available, but not in Russia), Amazon HD (already available, but not in Russia), SberZvuk (unclear, what is there, but there is something).
Lossless
This three-minute WAV audio would take about 40 megabyte on disk. It's not that much these days, however if something can be compressed, then why not do it? This is where lossless compression formats come in., such as FLAC, APE, ALAC and so on.
Let's stop at the ALAC – Apple Lossless Audio Codec. This is far from a new format., it has existed since the era of iPods. Assume, 4th generation iPod Nano can read it, like any iPhone, iPad. It is in this format that all music in Apple Music will be transmitted, besides, they promise, that it can be bought in this format, what pleases. This codec was previously completely proprietary., no third party converter could create a version in this format, except iTunes. But today it is no longer the case, there are many converters, capable of compressing audio into this format or uncompressing WAV from it. ALAC playback is supported by many players today, even Chinese like Fiio X5 or sensational Sony Walkman. Most Android devices are capable of playing this kind of audio with ease..
Here is the Apple Lossless Audio.FLAC – Free Lossless Audio Codec. As the name suggests, it's a free codec, therefore it is reproduced by most devices. Same, like Apple Lossless, it compresses the original WAV file like so, that when decoding it (If converting FLAC to WAV back) nothing will be lost.
Here is the same FLAC audio.They are absolutely identical when played., however, everyone has their own algorithm, which allowed to compress this file with 74 megabyte up to ~ 50 megabyte
Reducing the size is necessary to, to optimize storage and delivery of audio to devices. In the best tradition of Apple, of course, copy protection of downloaded audio has been implemented, that's why it comes to the device in such an unknown format. I suppose, that it is encrypted ALAC, which is decrypted first, having received the key from the Apple server, and then decoded to WAV, to ultimately reproduce it. However, all this will be done transparently., using only the resources of the device processor and RAM.
HiRes Audio
But what will happen, if you increase the depth to 24 bit? Introduced themselves 24 units? Decimal notation would be 16 777 216. Wow what's the difference? In whole 256 times more, than in 16 bit coding. This is what is called High-Resolution Audio., in other words, the same HiRes. In 24-bit encoding, the sound of an airplane taking off will be even quieter at first, and then it will reach its peak volume, and then it will be possible to evaluate, what a transition from a quiet sound to a loud one and again to a quiet one up to the complete disappearance of the barely audible whistle of engines. However, for audio discs
Apple Music is good for, which also offers audio up to 192kHz and 24 bit, the competitor here is only Qobuz, which costs several times more and is not available in some countries, while Apple Music offers the same for almost nothing (for the price of a standard subscription). True, so far I have not been able to find any files., which would be available in this format. You can also add Tidal to the competition., it is able to offer the same 192KHz, but in its format – MQA, which is still completely new and meaningless and which all audiophiles have not liked, since you will need a software player with MQA support and a DAC to listen to it, able to fully reveal that, what will the application give. Otherwise, it will be audio with minimal loss in ultrasound, etc.. In general, sounds blurry, so Apple looks like a good solution, besides the fact, that the web version of the player is terrible and is unlikely to receive support from Lossless, but we will be watching, how will it turn out. Competition is always good for consumers.
