Thinking About Hi-Res, Lossless, and Spatial Audio (Premium)

Apple’s push into hi-res, lossless, and spatial audio has already upended the market, with Amazon lowering its prices to match and Spotify in an uncertain place. And while this transition to higher-quality streaming is something we’ve been anticipating for years, knowing which way to turn can be difficult.

Amazon was the first mainstream music service provider to offer hi-res audio via its Amazon Music HD tier, which is capable of three levels of streaming: Standard Definition (SD, up to 320 kbps), High Definition (HD, up to 850 kbps, with a bitrate of 16-bit/44.1 kHz), and Ultra HD (up to 3730 kbps, with a bitrate of up to 24-bit/192 kHz). Amazon offers 75+ million songs in its catalog; all of them are available in HD and over 7 million of them are available in Ultra HD.

In February, Spotify revealed that it will release a hi-res audio tier this year. Today, Spotify, like the non-hi-res Amazon Music tiers, tops out at 320 kbps, and it has 70+ million songs in its catalog. But the promise is for both “CD-quality” and “lossless” quality, which are two different things: Amazon Music’s HD streams are “CD-quality,” and Ultra HD is “lossless.” So it’s not clear exactly what hi-res streaming will look like on Spotify. Given that it’s the leader in this market, however, it’s reasonable to expect it to be similar to the Amazon offerings.

Yesterday, after months of rumors, Apple announced that it will soon bring lossless and spatial audio to its Apple Music service, which also has 75+ million songs in its catalog. Those, too, are two different things. On the lossless end, Apple Music will offer streaming at its current 256 kbps (“SD”) quality, plus Lossless (CD quality, 16-bits/44.1 kHz) and Hi-Resolution Lossless (up to 24-bits/192 kHz) quality levels, so those match up nicely with Amazon’s offerings. But the differentiator here is Apple’s Music coming spatial audio capabilities, which will use Dolby Atmos to provide a more immersive audio experience with surround sound that includes height and depth audio placements.

If this all seems clear, it’s not. In fact, this gets complicated quickly.

Most obviously, the higher-end lossless and spatial audio capabilities require specific hardware, which can range from phones and other devices to headphones, speakers, and other audio equipment. The most obvious example is Apple Music’s spatial audio, which will require AirPods or Beats headphones with an Apple H1 or W1 chip or the built-in speakers in “the latest versions” of the iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

But the HD and lossless quality levels at Amazon (and, soon, Spotify) have similar requirements.

To get HD audio from Amazon Music, you need a device that supports HD quality. And that gets really convoluted. Looking just at Android devices, for example, Amazon notes that “most Android devices released since 2014 support HD/Ultra HD playback (up to 48kHz).” That’s great, but Amazon Music HD ...