After recent rumours pointing towards Apple bringing HiFi streaming to Apple Music in the near future, 9to5Google‘s in-depth APK analysis of Beta version 3.6.0 of Apple Music on Android has revealed references to a similar feature for the Android variant as well.
The Apple Music app for Android currently offers two streaming options: high quality, and high efficiency (for reduced data usage). According to the data-mined APK, high-fidelity audio streaming and downloading will add two new quality options, ‘Lossless’ and ‘High-Res Lossless’.
One of the references to HiFi audio found in the APK states:
Lossless audio files preserve every detail of the original file. Turning this on will consume significantly more data.
The ‘Lossless’ and ‘High-Res Lossless’ streaming and downloading quality options will both use Apple’s proprietary ALAC codec for music instead of the sub-optimal AAC codec the two older quality options use.
The ‘High-Res Lossless’ option will offer sampling rates of (up to) 192kHz, whereas the ‘Lossless’ option will be capped at sampling rates of 48kHz.
Both new options will use significantly more data and substantially more storage space for downloaded songs, and the app will adequately warn users of both.
While the iOS 14.6 beta also contains mentions of ‘Dolby Atmos’ and ‘Dolby Audio’, there is no sign of any form of Dolby Integration on Apple Music’s Android counterpart.
While fragments of inactive code found within a new version of an app do not guarantee that the features they allude to will eventually end up going live, HiFi streaming being hinted at for both iOS and Android does lend some weight to the possibility.
