News + Trends
Hi-Fi Spotify: lossless streaming should soon be possible
by Livia Gamper
Lossless Apple Music: does website code hint at new AirPods?
17.5.2021
Translation: Veronica Bielawski
Support: Livia Gamper
Apple’s new AirPods will supposedly be capable of lossless audio. The problem: Bluetooth's data throughput rate is too low for this. But the solution might already be built into iPhones.
Four terms in the source code of the Apple Music website – Apple’s music streaming service – point to something new – namely, that the upcoming generation of AirPods will support lossless audio.
Source: 9to5Mac.com
It would be a big step for Apple to move away from the compressed MP3 format to music as the artist intended. And music as audiophiles love it.
Here’s another guess: Apple will announce new AirPods on Tuesday, 18 May 2021. But that’s sheer speculation, based on nothing but a feeling of «could be». Apple’s official event website doesn’t mention anything about an event on 18 May 2021. And this theoretical Apple event would clash with a Google event. Probably not something Apple would be too keen on.
Apple Music: the best of Tidal and Spotify
Lossless audio is the next big threshold in audio streaming. In Switzerland, 5G offers data transfer speeds of up to 2 Gbps – enough for uncompressed audio data to be streamed to a mobile device. The implementation of corresponding codecs is up to the streaming services.
Apple is not the first streaming service to venture into the domain of lossless audio. Tidal has been in it for years, but still lags far behind Spotify.
For comparison, Apple says there are currently one billion iPhones active in the world. Since Apple Music is pre-installed on every iPhone, that’s 1,000,000,000 potential customers who don’t have to do anything except open an app.
With the adaptation of lossless audio, Apple Music becomes Tidal, but on Spotify’s level.
But Spotify isn’t lying low either – Spotify HiFi has been announced for the end of 2021.
Music: a matter of codecs
Whether you use Tidal, Spotify, Apple Music, or any other music streaming service, lossless audio is likely of no use to you. Most of the time, you simply don’t have the hardware for it, even if it's wired. Whether you can actually enjoy your lossless music depends on three factors:
- Music file: it is what it is. You get what the streaming service offers.
- Playback device: your smartphone must support lossless audio, both in terms of hardware and software.
- Headphones: if your headphones don’t do lossless audio, they’ll downscale the music. If you want headphones that support lossless audio, they’ll cost you a chunk of money, and they’re usually wired. But with enough money, you’re good to go.
Wired headphones pose less of a problem in this regard, but looking at any Swiss train station, the trend is clear: wireless. Cables are out, even if it results in a loss of audio quality. Most people won’t hear said loss of quality, by the way, as their headphones aren’t powerful enough. Or the bandwidth lossless audio requires for data transfer from the phone to the headphones isn’t even supported.
Currently, top-of-the-line headphones work with Bluetooth 5.x. Sony’s WH1000-XM4 as well as Apple’s AirPods Pro, for example. This Bluetooth standard offers a data throughput of 2 Mbps. That’s the equivalent of 250 kB/s. Lossless data can have up to 11.2 Mbps of data, i.e. 1,400 kB/s. Bluetooth headphones can’t handle that. Neither can the iPhone 12, by the way, because it only transmits via Bluetooth 5.0.
But to give you the best possible listening experience regardless, the industry has come up with a few ideas – both in terms of hardware and software. Namely, codecs. Codes are algorithms that compress your data. The idea is to transfer the data from your smartphone to your headphones over Bluetooth as losslessly as possible.
Apple uses the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) standard. AAC is both a codec and a file extension, just to make things a bit more confusing. According to Apple, AAC files provides better sound quality than MP3, but are not widely used as MP3 is still the top dog. So the question is: has Apple tinkered with its AAC codec in any way that allows for a lossless or less lossy version of the codec? Or could the successor to AAC be coming? Sony delivers impressive audio quality with the LDAC codec, which requires a data transfer of 900 kbps, i.e. 0.11 MB/s. The big competitor aptX HD, also a codec, uses up to 576 kbps, but also delivers good to very good quality.
But none of these codecs are lossless.
Apple’s not a company that releases features without offering its buyers the corresponding hardware. So, should a new set of AirPods arrive at the upcoming Apple event – date unknown – it stands to reason that they’d support lossless audio. Assuming Apple rolls out lossless for Bluetooth and smartphones.
With all this speculation on the Internet about new AirPods, codecs and events, too many questions remain unanswered. The fact is that «lossless» is mentioned in the code of a website. But the rest lies somewhere between a reading of tea leaves and the limits of technology. Because the one question on which everything hinges remains: how can Apple go over Bluetooth’s limit of 2 Mbps?
A bold guess: Wi-Fi AirPods instead of Bluetooth
The 2 Mbps limit is a fact. There’s no way around it, since Bluetooth is not just software – hardware-wise, it also requires transmitters and receivers. If you don’t have the hardware to go with the, the as-of-yet-inexistent Bluetooth 6 is useless. Hence, a bold guess based on technology that is already on the market.
Following Apple’s logic of «we don’t make anything that our customers can’t use», there has to be something built into smartphones and the upcoming AirPods that allows the data throughput of a lossless codec. Since Apple usually only asks you to buy one new piece of hardware and peripherals to go with it, it leads to an admittedly shaky conclusion: that the technology for lossless audio is already built into the iPhone 12.
If Bluetooth is ruled out, then only the WLAN adapter is left. The Wi-Fi 6 standard installed in the iPhone allows 9.6 Gbps, i.e. 9600 kbps or the equivalent of 1200 MB/s. This can already be seen beyond Apple. There are actually wireless headphones that can stream lossless audio, but they use 2.4 GHz WLAN, not Bluetooth, and require some sort of docking station:
This comes with its own difficulties that could possibly be solved through software alone. For example, you can’t use your iPhone’s hotspot and Wi-Fi simultaneously as it stands. When you turn on the hotspot, Wi-Fi turns off and your iPhone switches to mobile data.
The Wi-Fi AirPods would need both the iPhone ↔ Wi-Fi AirPods connection and the iPhone ↔ WLAN connection. After all, you may want to listen to your music at home, too, not just on the go. But the home is less of a problem, as Sonos proves with its Wi-Fi speakers. But the connection there is iPhone ↔ Router ↔ Speaker. The router then additionally talks to the Internet, which proves that there are devices out there that can simultaneously connect to the Internet and multiple devices.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
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