Apple’s Spatial Audio & Lossless Review

On May 17th Apple announced that Spatial Audio would be unleashed on to the world via Apple Music. And on June 9th, they did just that. But it wasn’t only Spatial Audio that we got – it was a range of lossless formats too!
Finally, one of my gripes had gotten addressed!

Audiophiles everywhere could now drop Tidal and their terrible MQA encoding. There was much rejoicing in the streets. A true HQ audio experience could be had by everyone. Surely now the world would see just how bad streaming audio quality has been before.

I’ll admit, I like to think I’m slightly more audiophile than the average Joe, but not audiophile enough to buy cable risers to stop the carpet static from interfering with the signals. Or even the $10,000 audio network cable… To my ears, Apple Music’s AAC encoding sounds rather good already, and miles beyond the typical quality of Spotify’s MP3.

With this in mind, it’s safe to say I’d be diving right in. But with one small (ok, maybe large) caveat – I don’t do pop. I don’t do RnB, hip hop or classical. I like metal. The heavy stuff, you know. And all the advertising for Spatial Audio has been around the Top 40. How boring! In the interest of all those like me, I’ll be basing my review based on my listening tastes. Although I did a brief-one-song foray into an advertised pop song… But I’ll cover that at the end.

The one thing to note before you begin – if you’re not using headphones blessed by the Apple logo, you must go into settings and force Spatial Audio to Always On. This unlocks it for every headphone brand, but the one thing they don’t tell you is that it then has to be a wired connection. I suppose this is 100% Apple after all… They want you to use Apple stuff, and when you do, you get the most seamless experience. If you choose anything different, well then, it’s your fault and you have to jump through more hoops to get it to work.

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To enable this, you’ll have to dig into the settings app. What you’re presented with will be a raft of options to fine tune your listening experience. Kudos to Apple to thinking beyond their one-size-fits-all typical approach.

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The one thing I did find is that the included lightning to 3.5m dongle Apple ships with new phones is actually surprisingly good. It’s capable of outputting 24-bit/48.8khz. Sure, it’s not exactly the amazing 24-bit/192khz that Apple Lossless goes up to, but it’s not that bad either for being included in the box.

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With Spatial Audio enabled, and my Sony WXM3’s plugged into via the Apple dongle, I was off. For an entire day, I jumped around the promoted playlists (all on the alternative side of life of course). And what’s the overall verdict?

Well the TL; DR is basically this – if you don’t listen to anything but Taylor Swift and the Top 40, you’ll probably be quite surprised. A lot of care and effort has been taken with these songs and some sound really good, while others just sound way better than AAC compressed. If you listen to anything other than that – and that includes stuff like The Eagles, Rolling Stones or The Doors well then, it’s very hit and miss. And it misses way more often than it hits.

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Starting off with the good songs – Riders of the Storm by The Doors sounds like you’re in the studio with them. Round Here and Mr Jones by Counting Crows is also particularly good but not mind blowing. Prince’s When Doves Cry was surprising excellent. And… That’s honestly about it.

Blink 182’s What’s My Age Again sounds as if someone is playing it through UE Boom on the floor behind you. Papa Roach’s Last Resort has all the bass removed for some reason. Live’s All Over You is probably the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Yes, that even includes the times when streaming audio gets garbled.

The rest of the songs… They’re good. They’re perfectly fine. They’re ok.
Probably a little better sounding than AAC and as good as lossless (to my ears at least).

I have yet to play anything on my Audio Engine A5+ studio monitors. But I imagine it would be the same experience. The good songs will be done well while the rest are left on the heap of “well technically they’re Spatial Audio enabled.”

Ok, and fair enough I suppose. Apple know who most of its customers are. Everyday people put on the radio and like whatever is fed to them. But I can’t help but feel that Apple missed out here. Those that would care about lossless and Spatial Audio are those that probably have a vinyl player, curate their collection, take great care in their listening experience and would typically avoid the top 40 or pop music all together.

On that note, I’m not entirely sure which demographic Apple is targeting here with this Spatial Audio. It’s a great nice to have, and it’s another reason to become an Apple Music customer. After all, compared to the competition, the sound quality is still leaps and bounds above the rest. I have full confidence Apple will continue working to make their entire catalogue of some 60 odd million songs compatible with Spatial Audio. I also trust that as the technology gets better, the songs that sound really bad will improve.

But until that happens, my suggestion, as a non-serious audiophile, is to skip the Spatial Audio for now. Put on lossless and leave it at that. You can rest easy knowing you’re getting better than CD quality. At least when using a cable that is!