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Apple customers with the onset of the new year would be welcomed by a new feature added to their Apple Music. As per the latest reports, iPhone maker Apple is working on bringing a high-resolution audio format to its Apple Music as soon as the new year begins. The new upcoming feature as per reports is said to feature a 96kHz, 24-bit sampling rate for Apple Music subscribers that would mean that users must use the Lighting port instead of the regular 3.5mm audio jack if they want to maintain the audio quality.
Just last year, Apple made some changes in its MFi (Made for iOS devices) program by improvising its specifications for manufacturers that stated the usage of Lightning connector as a port for audio devices as the audio jacks have been used till date. Though the compant is yet to make an official statement, but if what the report states is true then the Lightning headphones would be capable of receiving lossless stereo 48KHz digital audio output from Apple devices and sending mono 48KHz digital audio input in response.
If Japanese blog Macotakara is to be believed, there were several insiders who are familiar with the plan of Apple to come with so called Hi-Res audio feature in Apple Music the next year, some of who were also present at the Portable Audio Festival. Currently, Apple Music streams audio at up to 256Kbps.
The Apple buyers are quite excited about the upcoming feature, but there still are some issues which might make the user should not overlook. Making high-quality music files is problematic as they take up more space than a normal MP3 file, which is of lower quality and, as such, smaller in size. Also, the frequency which Apple has chosen for the new feature i.e., 96kHz would result in the creation of a very big file making it less than ideal for people who use a 16GB iPhone. Another issue that might mar down the user experience is music streaming as not every user's internet connection won't be that fast which is usually required for seamless streaming and playback of large files.
Though there are not much headphones in the market that support Lightning connector, but earlier this year Philips did come with one of its own product called the Fidelo NC1L with battery-free active noise cancellation that was able to connect to iPhone using a Lightning cable.
With this new advancement, latest reports had also claimed that Apple is also working on a new Lightning connector which would support Lightning-equipped headphones. The port of which was said to retain the same size, would also come with a DAC (digital-to-analogue converter) for backwards compatibility with wired headphones and that the user would have to use a 3.5mm jack-to-Lightning adapter for that purpose.
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