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 is not supported on Chromecast at all. So those looking to cast music from the Amazon Music app to their Google/Nest or other favorite speakers are out of luck. (You can’t stream lossless audio over Bluetooth either, though “HD” audio works.)

I have a lot of Sonos equipment, and while the sound quality is amazing, it’s not lossless amazing: Sonos can stream at what I’ll call CD-quality (up to 24-bits), meaning it supports the HD tier on Amazon, but not the lossless Ultra HD tier. I assume the situation will be similar for Apple Music users: It will support “Lossless” (really CD quality) but not High-Resolution Lossless. There is only one Sonos speaker that supports Dolby Atmos, but I don’t see Apple Music’s spatial audio capabilities coming to Sonos at all.

From a pricing perspective, everything just changed. Apple’s no-additional-cost entry into the HD/lossless streaming market may be a boon to some consumers, and we’ve already seen one major change: Amazon no longer charges customers an additional $5 per month for HD and lossless audio. But Spotify, which can’t subsidize its service with hardware and other sales as can Amazon and Apple, is in a tough spot. As will be its customers unless it can somehow figure out a way to offer HD/lossless at no additional cost too.

And what about YouTube Music? This is the service I currently use, and while some Google Play Music fans still complain about the new app’s UI, I like it, and I especially like how you can access YouTube-based videos (as songs) and playlists (as playlists of songs) from this service. (And that you get the ad-free YouTube Premium with your YouTube Music subscription.) But Google has never said a word about HD or lossless audio. Google I/O starts today, so I suppose this is a time for that conversation. Or maybe at a future Nest speaker event.

And let’s get real here, most people won’t be able to tell the difference between SD, HD, and lossless music playback anyway, and for a variety of reasons that include their hearing and the equipment they use. This is less critical since the services that currently or will soon offer HD/lossless tiers aren’t charging extra for that, but it may still be worth testing your hearing to find out whether using up extra bandwidth (or, for downloads, storage space) is worth it.

When Amazon first offered HD and lossless audio, I tried Amazon Music with Sonos and never heard any real difference. That’s not a bad test since you can trial the service for free. But you can also visit the ABX High Fidelity Test website to see if you can tell the difference between Spotify’s SD tier today (256 kbps on the web, though it hits 320 kbps in the app) and lossless audio. I tried this with my PC speakers, which are decent, but a pair of high-quality headphones be the better choice. Either way, you probably won’t be able to tell the difference.

That said, most people will probably still want the best possible audio quality since they’re not paying extra for it. And many are probably aware that streaming music apps offer settings for determining the maximum quality uses for downloads, Wi-Fi streams, and cellular data streams. Understanding these settings will be much more important for those that can access HD and lossless music. For example, while using the best possible quality over Wi-Fi probably makes sense for most in the U.S and elsewhere in the west, limiting the bandwidth you use over cellular is likely prudent for most in the U.S., at least, where “unlimited” data is an oxymoron.

It’s still early days unless you were an early Amazon Music HD adopter, and of course, it’s still unclear what Spotify will do with pricing. And what Google will do, and when, to address HD and lossless audio. And don’t get me started on Sonos: The last thing any existing customer wants to is to upgrade their setups with coming new (expensive) hardware that will probably support lossless audio that we’ll never really hear properly anyway.

Put simply, most of us are going to be living in a hybrid audio world for a long time to come.