94 MACWORLD AUGUST 2021
FEATURE APPLE MUSIC LOSSLESS AND SPATIAL AUDIOother headphones by opening Settings →
Music → Audio and changing the Dolby
Atmos setting to Always On ( 2 ).
Supported listening devices: If you
have any of the following headphones,
Spatial Audio will automatically be
engaged when a track with Dolby Atmos is
played. It will also automatically play from
the internal speakers on the latest
iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and you can
force it on for other listening devices
through the method above. You must have
your Apple TV hooked up to an audio
device with Dolby Atmos support (or use
AirPods [fave.co/2RafA0C]).
AirPods
AirPods Pro
AirPods Max
BeatsX
Beats Solo3 Wireless
Beats Studio3
Powerbeats 3 Wireless
Beats Flex
Powerbeats Pro
Beats Solo Pro
Spatial Audio is limited to Apple
devices, however, as Apple Music on
Android will not support the format, even
when using AirPods.
APPLE DIGITAL MASTERS
If you see the “Apple Digital Master” label
on an album or track, you should know
that it’s just a rebranding of the old
“Mastered for iTunes” feature. It has
nothing to do with the output format of the
track. It’s just a way for Apple to promote
tracks that have been encoded directly
from the 24-bit studio masters. Apple
explains it like this (fave.co/3oYBKPN):By starting with the best possible
masters we are able to offer our Apple
Music and iTunes customers the
highest possible quality audio. Our
latest encoder can take advantage of
every bit of the high-resolution masters
that engineers are creating especially
for us. The results, both for streaming
and download, are virtually
indistinguishable from the original 24
bit studio masters.You don’t need to have any special
hardware at all to take advantage of Apple
Digital Masters—it’s all about Apple
creating its files starting from a really
high-quality source.iTUNES DOWNLOADS
Apple Music subscribers can
redownload music in lossless-only
format from the Apple Music catalog by
deleting the original track and
redownloading it. Previous iTunes
purchases cannot be upgraded and new
songs purchased from the iTunes Music
Store are limited to AAC encoding. ■