Apple Music: What Is Lossless Audio And How To Use It On Your iPhone?

Apple Music got a major upgrade in 2021 when it introduced lossless audio, which presents a music file or song in its purest version. Thanks to this feature, IOS users can now listen to the original form of music on their devices. Lossless audio represents a media file that collects all parts of an analogue wave in its groove. This means the listener will be able to enjoy the audio, exactly how the producers wanted it to be heard.

The majority of audio compression methods result in a certain amount of data being lost from the source file. Nowadays, the majority of the music we listen to is greatly compressed to reduce the usage of mobile data during streaming. The audio quality can be considerably worsened by this compression.

If you want to hear music at its finest quality, Apple Music’s Lossless audio can be the best answer. Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) is a unique, seamless audio compression technology that has been built in-house. The complete library of Apple Music has now been encoded in ALAC, with resolutions ranging from 16-bit/44.1 kHz (CD quality) to 24-bit/192 kHz (high resolution).

iPhone users are suggested to use a Wi-Fi network to download lossless audio from Apple Music as these files will consume more data than the normal ones. This feature is supported in Apple AirPods, AirPods Pro and AirPods Max. Beats wireless headphones also offer the highest quality, courtesy of the Apple AAC Bluetooth Codec. To enjoy ultra-low latency, iPhone users need to pair AirPods Pro with Apple Vision Pro.

iPhone users have the option to choose different audio quality settings for cellular data, Wi-Fi and downloads.

Here is the step-by-step guide on how to enable lossless audio on iPhones:

1. Go to the “Settings” app and then click on “Music”.
2. 2. From “Audio Quality”, tap the option– “Lossless Audio” to activate or deactivate it.
3. Now you can choose audio quality for streaming and downloading files from Apple Music.
4. Select a maximum resolution of 24-bit/48 kHz to enjoy lossless music.
5. For Hi-Res Lossless, choose a maximum resolution of 24-bit/192 kHz.
6. If any song has already been downloaded in the normal quality, the user needs to delete it before re-downloading the same file in a lossless version from Apple Music.