touch top marks as a music
player. Meanwhile, HomePod is
a feat of engineering and the
best–sounding speaker of its
size. AirPods Pros are up there
with the best buds of their kind,
and pack technology to tune the
sound especially for your ear–
shape. The new MacBook Pros
have opposing speakers to reduce
distortion and vibration, tech you
tend see on high–end subwoofers.
But to make the most of these
higher–quality speakers you
need higher–quality tracks. Apple
got onboard with higher-detail
music impressively early with
iTunes Plus, then stuttered to a
near–halt. iTunes is behind Tidal
and Amazon when it comes to hi–
res audio. There is the “Mastered
for iTunes” system, but this
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is to give musicians a technical
template for ensuring their music
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the compression and conversion
process that happens when iTunes’
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thing, and makes the tracks you
hear sound closer to how they were
intended than they would be
otherwise, but it’s still delivering
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detail had to be dumped. But we
don’t need that anymore.Large storage in phones means
we’re reaching the end of the era of
miniaturizing music, in which we
accepted lower quality in exchange
for convenience. That convenience
became the norm, and music
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ever. But now people are getting
back into vinyl — they’re reversing
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warmth and even imperfections.
Hi–res music includes more
small details that get lost when
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guitar string, a crack in a voice,
a drumstick raking on a cymbal.
It makes music more personal,
and what is music if not that?
Apple has all the hardware to
turn Apple Music into the world’s
best service for music lovers, but
it’s still missing the key
ingredient. I hope 2020 is when
the band comes together.T
IME WAS, APPLE didn’t need
to worry about high quality
music bought via iTunes. MP
and equivalent AAC encoding
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iPods and early iPhones. What
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feast for your ears if they’re just
going to be smooshed into a paste
by the headphones?
Plus, when storage size was
more limited than now, the
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better — we wanted to carry lots
of songs and were happy to trade
some quality in exchange for that.
But recently Apple has started
getting more serious about sound
reproduction. All of its mobile
devices come with seriously
impressive DACs — our pals at
What Hi-Fi magazine give the iPodMATT BOLTON thinks it’s high time Apple
offered truly high–res music to go with its
increasing speaker ambitions
THE SHIFT
>>> Matt is the editor of Future’s flagship technology magazine T3 and has been charting changes at Apple since his student days.
He’s skeptical of tech industry hyperbole, but still gets warm and fuzzy on hearing “one more thing”.Image rights: Apple.
AirPods Pro tune the sound just for your ear,
so shouldn’t the tracks match that effort?The HomePod (and other AirPlay speakers)
can play lossless tracks wirelessly... but
not via Siri.maclife.com APR 2020 11