On top of all this, select records are available as Apple Digital Masters, which Apple says deliver the “highest possible quality audio.”

Certain Apple Music albums even offer Hi-Res Lossless, which is an even richer audio resolution that gets you that much closer to studio quality. Lossless audio essentially avoids a lot of the data loss that happens when songs are compressed from their original source, giving you CD-quality sound from a digital file. The speakers on newer Mac models like the 24-inch iMac and 14-inch MacBook Pro also support Spatial Audio, but you won’t get quite the same immersive head-tracked experience.Įven if you’re not part of the AirPods army, Apple Music has another big advantage over Spotify: lossless and high-resolution audio. I found Spatial Audio to make a much bigger difference on the over-ear AirPods Max than on earbuds like the Beats Fit Pro, but the effect is still impressive regardless of what you’re wearing. Of course, you will need a supported pair of Apple headphones (such as the AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, AirPods 3 or Beats Fit Pro) to take advantage of this perk.

I quickly became obsessed with finding out which of my favorite albums were mixed in Dolby Atmos for immersive spatial listening, and had a blast listening to everything from chill indie to explosive hard rock from a new perspective. Not only did Spatial Audio track my head movements - keeping each instrument in a fixed place as if I were at a live concert - it also highlighted vocal harmonies and small background instrumentation I never noticed when listening on Spotify. I was calmly bobbing my head to Turnstile’s “Glow On” - an album I’ve listened to dozens of times - when the soaring anthemic chorus of the blistering punk song “Endless” suddenly hit me like a truck.

A few weeks back when testing out the AirPods Max, I decided to fire up Apple Music to see how the company’s immersive 360-degree Spatial Audio tech held up on the high-end headphones.

Spotify for artist desktop app