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A few days after Apple confirmed that Apple Music subscribers are ready to get Lossless Audio music and Dolby Atmos add-ons, Apple Music users in India are now getting access to the advanced feature set. This indicates that Apple has turned on the switch and that the new set of options is now appearing for Apple iPhone and Apple iPad users in India, as part of their existing Apple Music subscriptions. At the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) keynote, Apple said Lossless Audio and Dolby Atmos options are now available globally. We had then reported that this was going to be a server-side update as Apple enabled this option for users in a phased manner. The Lossless Audio format and Dolby Atmos will be available on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV 4K, making Apple Music the first music streaming service in India to officially offer lossless audio.
You should keep an eye on Settings> Apple Music on your iPhone or iPad, for example, to see if the new options are actually available to you. If you do, you’ll see three new additions to the options list here. The first would be an option called Dolby Atmos. Tap this and you can choose between Automatic, Always On or Off. Just below that would be another new option called Audio Quality. First, you need to turn on Lossless Audio and make sure it’s set to green. Below, you’ll see three options: Cellular Streaming, Wi-Fi Streaming, and Downloads. You can choose from multiple streaming options for each of these, depending on the type of quality and data usage you agree with. For example, for Wi-Fi streaming, the options are High Quality (AAC 256kbps), Lossless (ALAC up to 24bit / 48kHz) and High Resolution Lossless (ALAC up to 24bit / 192kHz). The next option you’ll see is Download in Dolby Atmostoggle to on (green) in case you want to download Apple Music content for offline listening or don’t need to use cellular data or Wi-Fi every time.
Apple claims that a three-minute music track would be around 6MB when streamed or downloaded in high quality mode. And this is where you need to be careful not only about mobile data usage, but also storage space in your Apple iPhone or iPad, if you intend to download Lossless Audio files. The same length of the music track in Lossless would be around 36MB, while the high resolution Lossless standard would take up to 145MB for the same track. For my iPhone, I set cellular streaming (for when I am out and about or driving) to the high quality standard as the car audio system would not do the lossless audio files justice, while Wi-Fi streaming is set for the best High-Resolution Lossless experience (ALAC up to 24bit / 192kHz), wherever the highest quality option is available.
I experimented with Dolby Atmos with The Weekend’s After Hours using Apple AirPods Pro, with Spatial Audio enabled, and there’s a new Dolby Atmos indicator just below the album cover on the track playback screen. Right now, the AirPods wireless earbuds aren’t up to date to play Lossless Audio files, but Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos seem to add a definite, if I may sound rudimentary here, width and depth to the overall sound. For example, the wails of police car sirens in the background in the track Faith are reproduced with much more richness and animation with Dolby Atmos than without. As with most sonic things, the way you perceive the elements will be very subjective. But what is Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio? Simply put, it’s very similar to surround sound for home theater systems, where you place speakers at different points in the room to feel enveloped by the sound and the finer elements within it. Except there are no static speakers placed around you and you get the same element of experience from headphones and earbuds like the Apple AirPods Max and Apple AirPods Pro. The sound doesn’t come across as if you are being fed single feeds of non-intuitive sound to your ears left and right. The added benefit here is that the headphones track your head movement and connect to the location of your iPhone or iPad’s source device. You will notice that the sound moves gently in the direction of where your iPhone is, if you move your head noticeably.
Apple has already said that over 20 million tracks are available in lossless audio quality, and the entire catalog of 75 million tracks will be made available by the end of this year. In India, Apple Music subscriptions start at Rs 49 per month for the Student plan, Rs 99 per month for the individual Apple Music plan, and Rs 149 per month for the Apple Music Family plan. It was last month when Apple confirmed the upcoming update for Lossless Audio and Dolby Atmos for Apple Music, giving it an edge over music streaming rivals including Spotify which has yet to launch lossless audio formats and Amazon Music which has a level lossless for subscribers in some countries. Amazon has since discontinued the extra subscription fees for HD music and integrated them into larger Amazon Music subscriptions. Apple Music is the first music streaming platform to offer lossless audio, officially to Indian users. Apple will use the ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) for high-resolution tracks and users will be able to choose between three quality standards for lossless audio as well.
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