Apple Music VP says most listeners can't hear lossless — so why does it matter for serious audio?

What Apple's VP actually said — and what he didn't

On April 23, 2026, Billboard published an interview with Oliver Schusser, Apple Music's Vice President, that's been making the rounds in audio circles ever since. The headline claim: most listeners can't tell the difference between lossless and standard quality audio on a standard iPhone with standard headphones. Schusser used this argument to explain why Apple continues to prioritise Spatial Audio as its flagship sound feature rather than leaning into the audiophile credibility of its lossless and Hi-Res Lossless tiers.

Now, reactions to this have ranged from "well, obviously" through to "this is a betrayal of everything high-res audio stands for." Both responses miss the more interesting conversation. So let's have it properly.

First, the technical landscape. Apple Music currently offers three quality tiers: CD quality at 16-bit/44.1 kHz, Lossless up to 24-bit/48 kHz, and Hi-Res Lossless up to 24-bit/192 kHz. Those are genuinely meaningful distinctions — at least in principle. The catch that Schusser is dancing around, without quite saying it plainly, is a structural one: lossless audio on Apple Music does not work over Bluetooth. Not over AirPods. Not over Beats. Not over any Bluetooth headphones, full stop. Apple's AAC Bluetooth codec, while excellent by Bluetooth standards, is still a lossy codec. Every AirPods user listening to Apple Music — which is to say the overwhelming majority of Apple's subscriber base — is getting compressed audio regardless of which tier their subscription includes.

That's not a dirty secret. Apple is fairly upfront about it in the fine print. But it does mean that when Schusser says most fans can't hear the difference, he's technically correct in a way that says more about the delivery chain than it does about human hearing.

Is he wrong, though? The psychoacoustics of lossless

Here's where I want to push back a little on the smugness I've seen from some corners of the audiophile community. Schusser's statement, frustrating as it is for those of us who care deeply about source quality, is grounded in real psychoacoustic research. Double-blind tests on the audibility of high-resolution audio versus CD-quality redbook have produced decidedly mixed results across decades of study. The jump from heavily compressed streaming (think 128 kbps AAC or similar) to CD quality is dramatic and easily audible. The jump from CD quality to 24/96 or 24/192? Much harder to demonstrate under controlled conditions, and heavily dependent on the playback chain, the recording, the listener's training, and the acoustic environment.

This is not a new argument. It's been the central tension in high-res audio since the format wars of the early 2000s. What's different now is the context: a platform with hundreds of millions of subscribers, the vast majority of whom are listening on wireless earbuds while commuting, at the gym, or cooking dinner. For that use case, in that acoustic environment, with that hardware, Schusser is almost certainly right.

But here's the thing — he's talking about his average user. He's not talking about you. If you're reading Sound Technology, you're almost certainly not his average user.

If you want to understand the underlying mechanics of why bit depth and sample rate matter — and when they don't — our Bit Depth & Sample Rate explainer is worth revisiting. The short version: the theoretical benefits of higher bit depth are most relevant at low listening levels, and higher sample rates only matter if your DAC and downstream hardware can meaningfully resolve them.

The Spatial Audio pivot: genuine innovation or a marketing sleight of hand?

Schusser frames Spatial Audio as "a new standard people can actually notice." That framing is revealing. He's essentially conceding that lossless, as a consumer proposition, is a feature people can be told they have rather than one they can reliably experience. Spatial Audio, by contrast, is immediately, obviously different — even on AirPods, even in a noisy environment. The width, the height cues, the sense of envelopment. You don't need to be trained to hear it.

There's a legitimate argument here. Apple's Spatial Audio, built on Dolby Atmos object-based metadata, with Apple's own dynamic head-tracking layer added on top, does deliver a genuinely different listening experience. Whether that experience is better is, of course, deeply subjective — and for certain genres and recordings, many serious listeners find it worse. Jazz, classical, acoustic music mixed with a conventional stereo image often sounds artificial when upmixed to Atmos. But for cinematic pop, film scores, and content mixed natively in Atmos, the results can be genuinely impressive.

The commercial logic is also hard to argue with. Apple sells hardware. AirPods, iPhone, Apple TV, HomePod. Spatial Audio with head tracking is a feature that requires Apple hardware to work properly — or at least to work the way Apple demos it. Lossless audio, on the other hand, actively requires you to bypass Apple's wireless ecosystem and plug in directly. It's almost anti-hardware from Apple's perspective.

So yes, there's a marketing dimension to this pivot. But dismissing Spatial Audio entirely because it serves Apple's hardware strategy would be throwing out something genuinely interesting. The format has real merit in the right context. Apple just wants you to experience it through their gear.

What this means if you actually care about sound quality in Australia

Let's get practical, because that's where this conversation needs to land for Sound Technology readers.

If you're a serious listener in Australia — running a proper two-channel setup, a dedicated headphone rig, or a well-dialled home cinema — Apple Music's lossless tiers are genuinely worth having, but only if you're feeding them into hardware that can resolve the difference. That means a wired connection or a network streamer that supports Apple Music natively via AirPlay 2, keeping in mind that AirPlay 2 streams at CD quality (Apple Lossless, 16/44.1) rather than the full Hi-Res Lossless tier. To get 24/192 out of Apple Music, you currently need to use the desktop app on a Mac or the iPhone app with a wired USB-C DAC.

That's a meaningful workflow limitation, and it's worth knowing about before you configure your system around Hi-Res Lossless expectations. A capable external DAC connected directly to your iPhone or Mac is still the most reliable path to Apple Music's highest quality tier. If you're shopping for something portable and serious, the Chord Electronics Mojo 2 (check price) remains one of the best options at its price point, and it handles high-res PCM beautifully.

For desktop and home listening, the question of whether you can actually hear the difference between Apple Music's lossless tier and a competing service's equivalent comes down almost entirely to your DAC and streamer quality, your speakers or headphones, and your room. A modest DAC into mediocre speakers in an untreated room is not going to reveal the gains of 24/192 over 16/44.1. That's not a criticism — it's just physics and economics. If you're serious about resolving what high-res audio can actually offer, the chain needs to be calibrated for it end to end.

The headphone listener's perspective

Headphone listeners are in some ways better positioned to actually hear lossless differences, because you're eliminating room acoustics from the equation entirely. If you're running something like the Sennheiser HD 660S2 (check price) from a quality desktop DAC/amp combination, connected wired to a Mac running Apple Music, the Hi-Res Lossless tier is the right choice and the system has a genuine chance of rewarding it.

But even here, the improvements are incremental rather than revelatory, and they depend heavily on the recording. A well-mastered 16/44.1 file will consistently outperform a poorly mastered 24/192 file. The format is a ceiling, not a guarantee.

What Spatial Audio with head tracking offers headphone listeners is categorically different — it's a spatial processing layer that changes the presentation, not just the resolution. Whether you want that for critical listening is a matter of taste. Many serious listeners disable it and listen to the stereo master. But for casual, immersive listening, especially with Apple's own hardware, it's a compelling feature. Schusser is right that people notice it. He's just conflating "people notice it" with "it is audiophilically superior," which is a different claim entirely.

The broader industry context: are we in a lossless dead end?

Apple isn't alone in this position. The streaming industry has largely discovered that lossless audio, as a selling point, doesn't drive subscriber growth the way the format's proponents hoped. Tidal built its entire brand identity around lossless — and then got acquired, restructured, and spent years in commercial difficulty. Amazon Music Unlimited quietly upgraded its entire catalogue to HD and Ultra HD and saw no particular subscriber surge as a result. Qobuz, which remains the most audiophile-forward of the major services and offers Hi-Res streaming at genuinely high quality, is still a niche player in the Australian market.

The uncomfortable truth that Oliver Schusser is circling around is that lossless audio, in the current streaming landscape, is a feature for a small minority of engaged listeners rather than a platform-defining proposition. That's a disappointing conclusion if you've spent years advocating for better source quality — and I have — but it's hard to refute with the data.

Where this leaves the high-end audio market is interesting, though. The equipment that can actually resolve what lossless offers — serious DACs, well-configured streaming amplifiers, high-quality loudspeakers — continues to sell well in Australia. People are investing in their listening environments. The interest in streaming amplifiers and all-in-one systems that can pull from Apple Music, Tidal, Qobuz and Spotify has never been higher. And those systems, when well implemented, do reveal differences that matter.

The question is whether the platform economics of streaming will continue to support investment in the upper quality tiers if the majority of users can't access them wirelessly and can't hear them on standard consumer hardware. Apple's pivot to Spatial Audio suggests the company has made its bet. Lossless is a spec-sheet credential. Spatial Audio is the experience they're selling.

My take: take the spec, build the chain

Here's where I land on this. Schusser is right about the average listener and right that Spatial Audio is more broadly perceptible than the lossless upgrade. He's wrong to imply — or allow the implication to stand — that lossless is therefore not worth pursuing. For serious listeners with the right hardware, the difference is real and worth having.

Apple Music's lossless tier is still excellent value as part of the broader subscription. There is no additional cost over the standard tier. If you have the hardware to access it properly, use it. If you're primarily wireless and on AirPods, Schusser is telling you something true: the format isn't reaching you, and Spatial Audio is the more meaningful differentiator in your actual use case.

What this conversation should motivate, for anyone who finds themselves wanting to actually hear what lossless can do, is a closer look at the playback chain. A decent external DAC is the most affordable upgrade many listeners can make. Getting off Bluetooth for critical listening sessions matters. Room acoustics matter more than most people expect — more than the difference between 16/44.1 and 24/192, honestly. And building a system around sources that you can hear, not just own, is always the right place to start.

If you're thinking about building or upgrading toward a system that can actually resolve these differences, our guide to the best DACs and network streamers is a good starting point, as is understanding the fundamentals of what a Digital-to-Analogue Converter actually does in your chain. The source matters. But only if everything downstream is worthy of it.