What you need to know
- Apple released Spatial and lossless Audio at WWDC 2021 Monday.
- In a new interview, exec Eddy Cue says he believes it is the future of music.
Apple executive Eddy Cue says he believes that Spatial Audio is the future of music and that soon every song will be available in Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos following its release to Apple Music on Monday.
Speaking to Billboard Cue stated:
I think we're going to see certainly every new song that comes out very quickly here in Dolby Atmos, and you're going to see people going to their back catalogues.
Describing the process he stated that Spatial Audio wasn't as simple as taking a stereo file and running it through some software. rather, he says it requires a sound engineer to take the track and make decisions about the audio, a process that takes time but is worth it.
Cue also explained how bringing Spatial Audio to cars is a possibility, but that it requires modified hardware rather than just an update to Carplay.
Addressing the importance of lossless audio over Spatial, Cue touched on how for most people the difference in lossless audio and a compressed file is very small, stating that 98 or 99 out of 100 people might not be able to tell the difference. Confirming Apple's stance that Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos are the important bit for them he stated:
Now, we're supporting lossless and we think there's a set of customers. It's a small set of customers, but they want it and we'll certainly give it to them, and they'll have it as part of this. The good news is they'll have lossless and they'll have Dolby Atmos and Spatial. It really does work very well for that [set of customers], but it's not going to be lossless [leading the way].
Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos as well as lossless audio are out now on Apple Music.
