Listen Up: A Brief Explainer of Lossless Audio (And Do You Need It?)

Apple Music, Tidal, and Deezer offer hi-fidelity, lossless tiers, and Spotify is rumored to be finally launching theirs this year.

Lossless sounds good right off the bat, doesn’t it? Who would want loss? And any company dealing with selling music or equipment for listening to music will trot this bit of jargon out proudly like a child’s drawing on a refrigerator.

But what does it mean? They act like it’s a premium feature, and if you look at the music streaming services, you’ll see they certainly price it like a premium feature.

The short of it is that yes, lossless is a higher quality of audio. Whether you need it or will even notice it is less clear.

lossy and lossless

The opposite of lossless would be… loss-having? No, it’s lossy. Audio is broken up broadly into two categories: lossy and lossless.

Lossy compression reduces file size by removing some data from the audio file. It can’t be added back later; it’s just gone. Examples of common lossy audio file formats include MP3, AAC, and WMA.

This type of compression comes in handy when storing files, as each one takes up less space than if it were kept in a lossless format. Also, in the age of streaming music, it uses less internet bandwidth.

People who’re storing their audio files on a disk drive that isn’t particularly large will find lossy formats preferable, as will those streaming music over a slow internet connection.

Lossless compression reduces file size a bit by not permanently removing any data from the audio file. It gets quite technical when delving into how it does this, but no audio data is lost. The file sizes are larger, though, since they can’t be compressed as much as lossy formats. Common lossless audio formats include FLAC, ALAC, WAV, and AIFF.

Anytime you’re shopping for headphones or music streaming services, manufacturers love to brag that their equipment or their subscription tier supports lossless audio, just as Apple did earlier this year with a software update to its AirPods Max.

Lossy audio uses less data by trimming out bits of each song’s data that are less noticeable to the ear. Less noticeable doesn’t mean unnoticeable, though. If you have excellent headphones or speakers and want to take advantage of them fully, you’re going to want lossless audio.

If you don’t have particularly powerful headphones or speakers and you’re just using a basic pair to listen to music, lossless audio will be lost on you. It also costs more to stream, as the streaming companies typically reserve it for their most expensive subscription plans, and most people may enjoy music but not consider themselves audiophiles.

Lossless audio is worth it if you’ve already shelled out for high-quality equipment. Popping a pair of discount earbuds into your ears for a mid-morning run probably won’t make it worth it, though. Figure out your use case and how much you care, and let that dictate your decision, rather than simply going for lossless because it’s hyped and touted.