Lossless music:
which to pick?

The full narration of the video.

Same song: the basic setting is around eight megabytes. The top Hi-Res Lossless setting is over a hundred. Can your ears hear ten times the size? Recorded sound is huge, so it always gets packed down. There are two ways. One is like a vacuum storage bag: suck out the air, open it, and it puffs back exactly as it was. That's lossless. Apple's is called ALAC; elsewhere it's often FLAC.

The other is like tossing stuff when you move: a whisper drowned out by a noisy restaurant, you'd never hear it anyway. So out it goes. The file shrinks to about a fifth. That's lossy. Apple's is called AAC. The kbps on the menu is how much data each second uses. A CD uses 1,411. Apple's AAC uses 256. A 2009 study in Canada: trained ears could still hear a difference at 192. Above that, it gets hard to tell.

Next, kHz. Sound is air shaking. Recording means measuring, many times a second, how far it has shaken. 44.1 kHz means 44,100 measurements a second. The highest note it can capture is already above the twenty thousand our ears top out at. And we hear less as we age. What 192 kHz adds, you mostly can't hear.

Bit depth is how fine the ruler is. Sixteen bits gives over sixty-five thousand steps. From a silent bedroom at night to a drill at your ear, it all fits. Twenty-four bits is finer, and useful in the studio. But at your ear, the extra steps are quieter than the noise in your room. In 2007, American audio fans ran 554 blind tests. High-res against CD: people were right less than half the time, about a coin flip.

Some studies say trained listeners can tell a tiny bit; the evidence is still debated. The biggest trap in your gear is Bluetooth. Apple says it plainly: Bluetooth connections aren't lossless. Headphones like AirPods squeeze the song back into AAC on the way.

So with ordinary Bluetooth headphones, lossless never reaches your ears. Plug in a cable. Or use a phone and headphones that both support lossless Bluetooth. Above 48 kHz, an iPhone needs a little external box to turn the data back into sound. The app needs lossless switched on. Chinese apps usually want a membership. So how to choose? With Bluetooth headphones, the AAC setting is enough. With a cable, pick CD-quality lossless. 16-bit, 44.1 kHz, and you've hit the limit.

Bigger numbers cost data and storage, and your ears mostly can't catch the rest. Don't believe it? Try this: have a friend switch between two settings at random while you guess ten times, eyes closed. How many did you get right? Come back and tell us.