Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Apple Music’s lossless and spatial audio comes to select Android phones

Simon Cohen
By

On July 21, Apple released a new version of the Apple Music app for Android, bringing it up to date with the latest iOS features, specifically Apple’s support for both lossless audio and spatial audio via Dolby Atmos Music.

But being able to access these new features will depend on the capabilities of your specific Android device. While lossless audio appears to be universally supported on Android phones, the same cannot be said of spatial audio.

Recommended Videos

In order for spatial audio to work within the Apple Music app, your Android handset needs to support Dolby Atmos, and not all of them do. In fact, when I went to try out spatial audio on my Google Pixel 5, I discovered that even though I could see Apple Music’s curated spatial audio playlists, none of the included tracks are available in their Dolby Atmos Music versions. Playing them simply results in standard two-channel stereo playback.

Related

This was confirmed once I jumped into the app’s settings menu. An option to enable lossless audio showed up — along with the usual warnings about the large size of lossless tracks and how that might affect your data consumption on both Wi-Fi and cellular connections —  but there were no spatial audio options.

On an iOS device or a Dolby Atmos-compatible Android phone, you should be able to choose whether spatial audio is managed automatically (when the app detects that you’re using Apple or Beats headphones or earbuds) or set to always-on or always-off.

The good news for Android owners is that Dolby Atmos support is very common, especially among Samsung handsets. When you add LG, Sony, Motorola, and Huawei, it means that a majority of Android users will probably be able to experience spatial audio from Apple Music on their phones.

If your phone does support Dolby Atmos, you’ll be able to listen using any set of wired or wireless headphones. For lossless audio, you’ll need a wired set of earbuds or cans, and possibly an external digital-to-analog converter (DAC), depending on your phone’s built-in DAC and the resolution of lossless audio you’re seeking.

In general, lossless audio at CD quality (16-bit, 44.1kHz) should work on any phone with a headphone jack. Going higher than that (24-bit/48kHz or 24-bit/96kHz) is where you may need that external DAC.

For more info on how to get the most out of these new Apple Music features, see our helpful “What you need to listen to lossless audio and Dolby Atmos on Apple Music” explainer.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Simon Cohen
Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen covers a variety of consumer technologies, but has a special interest in audio and video products, like spatial…
Apple has upgraded the AirPods Pro with lossless audio, sort of
Apple AirPods Pro with USB-C.

Amid the slew of new Apple products launched today, only the tiniest mention was made of the fact that Apple has also given the AirPods Pro Gen 2 wireless earbuds a not-so-minor refresh. Along with the expected addition of USB-C, making the AirPods Pro the first Apple headphones to ditch the Lightning connector, Apple has also given the iconic white noise-canceling earbuds the ability to do lossless audio wirelessly -- something that has never been seen on the AirPods family before, and is even a rarity among non-Apple wireless audio devices.

There is, however, a catch. The "groundbreaking wireless audio protocol" that allows for lossless audio at 20-bit/48 kHz (a better-than-CD-quality resolution) is powered by the AirPods Pro's H2 chip, but for now, it only works when paired with the upcoming Apple Vision Pro headset. At the moment, Qualcomm's aptX Lossless Bluetooth codec (when used with compatible wireless headphones and smartphones) is the only technology that supports lossless audio wirelessly, and even that technology is limited to 16-bit/48kHz.

Read more
Just wait until you hear lossless Dolby Atmos Music
Sonos Era 300.

I recently spent some time auditioning the Sonos Era 300, both as a standalone speaker and in its stereo-pair and full home theater configurations. The Era 300 is the first wireless speaker built specifically to make the playback of spatial audio formats — like Dolby Atmos Music — sound their best.

And there's no question about it -- the Era 300 rocks.

Read more
Tidal CEO says hi-res lossless is coming, raising doubts about MQA
best buy offers free tidal with select products

While participating in an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Reddit on April 11, Tidal CEO Jesse Dorogusker, said that the music streaming service would soon add the option to listen to hi-res lossless audio in the FLAC format. The new format will be exclusive to the service's HiFi Plus subscriber base. Dorogusker did not provide specific timing for the change.

"Breaking news for my reddit peeps:" Dorogusker wrote during the session, "we will be introducing hi-res FLAC for our HiFi Plus subscribers soon. It's lossless and an open standard. It's a big file, but we'll give you controls to dial this up and down based on what's going on."

Read more