Lossless DOESN'T matter! Apple Music $0 Update. 

Ohhh you edited your comment… sneaky! =P

Yes, Cd quality is where its at. Super high-res lossless is so much unnecessary info. Geez. Its awesome that it exists, but its not something absolutely necessary.

@@TechHyped What was the previous reply though?

Well, before we start: I don't hate lossless and don't think CD quality is negligible! And I'd definitely say GO FOR IT to anyone who wants to have top shelf quality... NOW... Let's go about this like Freddy would... In parts: 1) Apple announced Lossless pretty dang quick after Spotify, which by Apple's track record doesn't really seem like it was something forced by the competition moving on that direction alone, and if it was, most likely came from Tidal's waves, Amazon and the rise of demand for higher quality streaming for audio since that's been a trend on video for a good while already. To that point, there are 2 things here: 1) if neither had announced it, they'd just be 2 of the options out there not having something like this as an option available 2) Spotify was also compelled to do something because of other services taking away more and more people who wanted something like this. Eventually that would become a trend just like 4k video streaming did, and its definitely better to be there before it becomes a problem rather than to have to win BACK too many of your - by then - long lost audience, hence why Spotify (and Apple) announced their service. And as for "people have less than perfect hearing, with airpods on iPhone" being a huge slice of the pie that doesn't benefit from this Lossless business, the hearing thing applies to everybody, as well as Bluetooth headphones (all of them as of right now, at least) in general both on iPhones and Android. LDAC isn't lossless and it's the *best* possible bluetooth codec to date, for example (and I flipping love it lol). 2) Yes, a segment of the audience does care. Those who still have CDs *AND* use wired headphones and speakers to enjoy their music... 100% agreed there... But let's take a step back here and look at that word: "audiophile"... There are many who take issue with the word and its meaning, but 1st, these people are very VERY vocal (online, obviously) and 2nd, they're a very very VERY little in number vs the whole of the actual subscribers of most of these services. And I mean this 10000000%, because I'm equating AUDIOPHILES to people who'd be referred to through memes of "audio snobs" or "audio sommeliers". And yeah, there are lots amongst them who can tell the difference between certain file qualities pretty instantly, as well as others that seriously can't if you *really* put them to the test. The rest of what some would call "audiophiles" are people who really really enjoy music, and it's OBVIOUS through better and better gear when you're listening to something that is way too lossy against something that isn't. Still, there are plenty of tests that get even these people very confused and/or not able to point to the better quality stuff beyond a certain point.... And this isn't the end-all-be-all example, but this video is a pretty good overview: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YgEjI5PZa78.html And remember as well that these people who love music and are not "sommeliers", usually listen to relax and have fun, and beyond a certain point, diminishing returns will make extra quality literally negligible... Why bump your library or streams to deal with 400% bigger files than CD quality for what, 0,1% increments in quality? That's sort of the question, right? 3) Yes... I'm oversimplifying a bunch of stuff and the whole argument is to the broader audience and users of these services, not audiophiles who still have and use either CDs and LPs on their setups... I mean, given the options, why the heck would someone with access to gear that can take advantage of better stuff, NOT want to use that, right?! But even for those people, even for the audio sommeliers, for hardcore audiophiles, there's a threshold of diminishing returns, which is just a fact. Sure by alllllll means, if you want to and don't care about ssd space, grab those 150-300-500mb files for every single song you want on your library, but I sure as hell have a feeling you would be able to really tell them apart from 30mb ones 1 out of every 4 times - not taking into account different genres and artists which, in some cases, my friend, nobody can tell a difference..... (try telling apart 320 lossy from lossless listening to punk rock or hard rock for example... Geez) Bur you get my point... And, anyway, again: I am squarely in that "CD with wired headphones through dacs and amps" camp, and I'm 100% gonna be using the hell out of all the lossless I can get my hands on (not high res tho)... I just honestly think stuff like Dolby Atmos has the potential for a more "drastic" impact for the majority of people.

@@TechHyped I got through 20% of this argument and had to give up. Sorry. Just too long and disjointed. Take care!

@@TechHyped I really enjoyed your reply and it was really convincing and very well formatted. Thanks.

With good gear you already pull as much quality out of anything you play anyway. The difference is negligible and most people with incredible gear won’t be able to really tell the difference. Put someone with awesome amps, dacs, super revealing headphones and give them cd quality s, 320kbps and high res lossless stuff to listen to, and as long as all 3 are the same mastering/recording, just in different qualities, that person won’t tell a difference in most cases, and if he/she does, it will be negligible. For $0 extra bucks, by ALL MEANS use it if you want to, but anything above CD quality is most likely just torching your streams and storage space for nothing. And you kind of missed the point that Atmos is more impactful, apparently… ;)

@@TechHyped i kinda disagree On the lower end stuff or even some middle end, it’s hard to hear the difference However on the higher end gear and revealing headphones people definitely can tell which one is superior Listen to some professionals, who really are experienced in the audio gear There is a reason why hordes of people go with Tidal Masters or Amazon Music HD, and now it’s no additional cost on Apple Music which is huge to that audience

@@TechHyped and the better quality isn’t about including information above 20khz or below 20hz that most people don’t hear, audiophiles too But it’s about the resolution, the same way as a video quality I would imagine it as upgrading 720p or 1080p to 4K with more fps You see some difference on eg a phone screen, But on a higher end TV which also costs much more than a phone, it becomes much more prominent. On such setup every person will tell a difference between 1080p and 4K or even 8k It’s the same with audio On higher end gear (which the same as TV, costs multiple thousands unfortunately) the sound will appear more refined and the instruments vocals etc are more defined, have more details and playing lower quality audio will be more noticeable

Responding to both points at once to speed things up: Its “almost” the same, but its not exactly the same as upping the resolution of a 1080p movie to 4k. Picking from that example, that IS literally adding more information, and the same parallel I traced with audio. Its adding more pixels to the image? But we can scale screens to bigger and bigger sizes, and with each extra inch, more pixels are needed to deliver the same level of sharpness to the image. The same “idea” happens with audio, and more “resolution” as you put it, comes from 2 things (oversimplifying, obviously): 1 - the capabilities of the equipment to play out the nuances of every frequency from the bottom HZ to the highest KHZ. If your equipment is terrible, it might have trouble resolving multiple sounds from different but close frequencies playing together or too close to each other. This will be true if the file itself is a 6mb or a 60mb song. 2 - adding more information to the file IS necessarily adding more and more of those little nuances and frequencies from the bottom to the top, but since most if not all of “middle ones” will *probably* always be there, adding more info (making the file bigger) will “have to be” adding stuff to the ends, up and down. That’s because the order in which this happens isn’t “from the lower kbps file to the higher kbps file”. Technically speaking, you don’t add info to the file making it bigger, you shave off information to make it smaller, and that’s why the first things to get cut off are the extremes on both ends, since there is too high a chance the majority of people won’t hear or pay attention to them (since 99% of people aren’t professional audio engineers). The more compressed the file (or if the quality of the compression is trash… I’ll agree that this can also happen), the more of those very close but similar frequencies in the middle will be shaved off too… that’s when you’re loosing too much of the quality and life isn’t happy anymore. And as for the quality of the gear, my friend, I’ve seen, first hand, people using $80k setups that could not tell a difference between a CD and a slightly worse file or a “high quality” stream. But the difference between having a $80k setup to listen to cds and flacs and upgrading from a 1080p to a 4k tv is worlds apart. The TV has a much bigger potential for impact to the experience because of how much adding pixels can help everything scale. You can add as many frequencies as you want, the diminishing returns for the middle frequencies is harsh as all hell, and you literally can’t hear above or below a certain threshold, which limits how much audio can scale on that same frame of reference of the TVs. But hey, this is the sort of discussion we need to have more of! 🤘🏻😎

@@TechHyped they're gone and going back to their cave's because they them self can't reliably tell apart haha

Sure, not exactly an apples to apples (lol) comparison in terms of frequency range of human hearing vs what lossless "means" here, and yes there are differences between all of those segments, but the jump in amount of info/file size from 24bit/48khz (lossless) to 24bit/192khz (high-res lossless) is ginormous when compared to how much "better" your perception is probably going to be. And that last point you made about the setup, I TOTALLY agree, which is why in the realm of Apple Music, I'm sticking to my guns here until something else changes, because the vaaaaaaaaast majority of Apple Music users are using it on their iPhones, and most likely listening through bluetooth... And since bluetooth *cant* do lossless either way, for most of these people: 1 - yeah, Dolby Atmos is likely to have a much bigger impact 2 - and nope, lossless "doesn't matter". I sincerely hope people get that the point of the video was to fuel this sort of healthy debate tho ;)

Between 24bit offloaded files and “Lossless 1” on Apple Music, its the same overall quality with the added bonus of atmos, so, “win x win” I guess! Tidal is a different story. I have serious peeves with MQA, but I like the overall experience of the app. The one I was least used to was Apple Music, to be honest… And I think most people were.

you arent hearing more with 24bits, thats like hearing a pindrop while standing at the site of a NASA space launch

you need a good dac/amp to hear the diffrents.

If you have trash-sounding equipment you’d have a more substantial upgrade from updating all of that WAY before you hear a difference between CD quality and Lossless.

Would you rather have a punchier low-end, or a more chilled-out and balanced experience? If low-end is your thing, BL03.

That's astronomically different. I understand your point and you're not 100% wrong, but if you put 100 people in a room to watch a video in 24fps (movie standard) and then switch to 60 and then to 144 (for example), 100% will see the difference from 24 to 60, and at least 99% from 60 to 144, really. Do the same thing with audio going from 320kbps lossy to 24/48 CD quality to High-Res (as long as the mastering is the same across the examples, obviously), and 98% won't hear a difference in the 1st jump, and from those 2 who did, most of the time neither will tell a difference in the second jump either. 100% honest here: I tried to pull enough information about why that whole 24-30fps discussion even exists to add to this video as a comparison, but the video was already too long (and that was before I cut out at least another 3-5 minutes of me babbling... lol). Anyway, our eyes see color changes, brightness changes and movement changes differently and apparently at different FPS rates, which is why depending on what you're testing, it can "cap" the results to something lower than what we can really see. I've read somewhere that we see: - Differences in color at around 30fps - Differences in brightness at around 60fps - Differences in movement at around 100fps No clue if those are the actual numbers, but that's still vastly different from our capacity to hear audio frequencies AND our capacity to understand or pick up on slight differences between one service or song or system that can show off minimal variations on those frequencies.

Well, that's a bummer... But maybe later tho?