It was only earlier this month 9to5Mac found evidence to suggest Apple is preparing to launch a lossless offering within Music, and now its sister site has uncovered more information about the potential upgrade. Conducting an APK teardown of the latest version of the Apple Music app for Android, 9to5Google found code snippets referencing two different tiers of high-fidelity audio: “Lossless” and “High-res Lossless.” The former will reportedly see songs encoded in Apple’s ALAC codec at up to 48kHz, while the latter further bumps up the quality to 192kHz.
There’s apparently no mention of Dolby Atmos or Dolby Audio in the code of Apple Music 3.6 for Android. Apple made a reference to both in iOS 14.6 beta 1 before subsequently removing any mention of a high-fidelity service in beta 2. Should high-quality streaming arrive with iOS 14.6, there’s a good chance the company will have a HiFi tier out before Spotify does later this year.
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