Are You Getting Hi-Res Audio?

Now that pretty much all of the major music streaming services have jumped into the lossless or, in some cases, high resolution audio file streaming ring, there's a number of questions that have been coming up in comments to previous videos talking about Spotify planning to offer a lossless version of their service. Apple recently said that they were going to include a fairly substantial catalog of lossless audio tracks for no charge, if you're an Apple Music subscriber. As I've said in those previous videos, this is a great thing for music lovers. It's a great thing for audio files, people that care about the quality of their music.

Now, the problem comes is, how are you going to make sure that you're getting that lossless or that high-res audio to whatever your device or your system or your headphones or whatever? Why is that even a question? Well, if you take my fairly ancient iPhone 6s here, it has a headphone jack. Headphone jacks, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint, have been disappearing over the last number of years from cell phones from smartphones. Why does that matter? Well, even though it's a smartphone or cell phone, you'd think maybe that the quality of the dock or the digital audio converter or the output stage, the headphone amplifier, you may think that, in many cases, they wouldn't be very good quality. But the reality is that modern digital to analog converters and micro-sized audio op-amps and audio stages actually were and can still be very, very good. But the problem is, is that, how do you know now if you don't actually have a jack that you can plug a cable, plug a wire into? What's actually coming out of your phone, for instance?

Now, we've already heard rumor, and I haven't seen this absolutely unequivocally confirmed yet and I'm not an Apple accessory or device expert by any means, but the latest AirPods and the Apple Home speakers apparently will not be able to carry this lossless audio signal. They don't have the capability. Now, to me, that's very strange, but it also points to something; it points to some level of compression in the link that they're sending from the phone or the tablet or whatever to those devices. This is where you have to be very careful.

Bluetooth, for instance. Many people love their little Bluetooth speaker or Bluetooth headphones, and they'll send from their phone. They'll play music or from their tablet over Bluetooth. Well, can Bluetooth carry high resolution audio? Can Bluetooth carry lossless CD quality audio? The question is maybe, and this is again where the "How do you know what you're getting?" comes in here. Depending on the version and the type of Bluetooth format that's being used, both by the sending device, like the phone or the tablet, and the receiving device, like your Bluetooth speaker or your Bluetooth headphones, they have to be set up for a type of Bluetooth that will allow full bandwidth, uncompressed audio, and many devices don't. So this is something that if you're really concerned about getting maximum fidelity out of your Bluetooth speaker or Bluetooth headphones, you better be sure if you're going to purchase something new, to look into what it actually is capable of rendering.

Now, another problem is unlike some companies, streaming companies like Tidal, which will allow third-party companies like Axiom Audio to integrate and incorporate Tidal directly into our products, or things like Spotify Connect that allow you to go directly to the Spotify app and send audio directly to a enabled wireless loudspeaker. As long as the company who's made the wireless loudspeaker has a dock capable of decoding lossless CD quality or higher, high-res audio, you can get up on the other end. The problem is, is that there are some companies that are either won't allow that sort of level of integration at all … Apple Music is one of them … or very difficult, let's just put it that way, unless you're one of the biggest electronics companies out there, for the little guys like us to actually incorporate their systems, their APIs as they're called, directly into our products.

Why is that a thing? Well, okay, so if you're an Apple-approved device and you can receive airplay, signals over airplay, the question is, is the current airplay two going to allow CD quality or better audio to reach that end device? Is there an airplay three on the horizon to allow that more seamlessly? These are all questions to ask and they're important questions because, as much as companies will be advertising this big thing that now, all of a sudden, out of the blue, seems to be a buzzword and I think it's because Amazon got out there with Amazon Music HD first, then Spotify followed, and then Apple Music followed.

I think because of that and because of the buzzword, a lot of people are going, "Oh yeah, lossless. I want the lossless. I want high-res," but you got to remember, you need to make sure that you're actually getting it to your ears, whether it's via headphones, a speaker, on a full blown audio system. Really, unfortunately at this point, the only thing that you can do is talk to the manufacturers of your equipment, talk to the people at your streaming services, maybe go on some audio forums and look at the discussions because there are so many different formats and obviously there are so many methods of getting the signal from that streaming service to your ears, that there's going to be differences in all of them.

So that's just one thing that I want to caution everybody about. Lossless is great. I've been talking about this for years. It's fantastic to see it coming somewhat becoming in the mainstream, but just watch out and make sure that you're actually hearing that lossless or high-res signal. I really believe that many people, not going to say all of them, I'm sure there's people that have done detailed tests and can't tell between a 320k MP3 file and a CD quality file. They can't hear any difference and that's fine. If you don't hear a difference, you don't. But I think a lot of people who've done that comparison may not realize they actually didn't hear that full quality lossless or high resolution file when they were doing that comparison just because of streaming link or hardware limitations. So, again, if you care about that, do a little bit of a dig to look for information, to make sure that the entire chain through to your headphones or your speakers is capable of lossless or high-res audio.

Again, thank you very much, everyone for your comments and questions. This question came from someone who watched my Apple Music video from a week or two ago. As always, appreciate it, and please keep them coming because it's a great way for us to come up with new topics, discussing things that you're interested in. Thanks again.