Which Apple Music Audio Setting Uses The Most Data?

Apple Music is just one of several services that offer the best streaming quality you can get in the marketplace. You do need a DAC or AV receiver that can pass along the full bandwidth of those lossless tiers to enjoy them, but you don't have to pay any extra on top of your monthly subscription fee to get those tiers. That said, you probably don't actually need Lossless or Hi-Res Lossless quality audio when you're splitting your attention between a great song and your next personal best on a 5K run. Also, even if you aren't data-capped by your wireless plan, you might be stuck with a cell tower that can't give you the speeds you need to stream at lossless rates. That or you might be downloading dozens of gigabytes of music for local playback.

So, just how much data can Hi-Res Lossless streaming use up? Well, with a sample rate of 192 kHz (or 192,000 times per second) and each sample containing 24 bits of information, for a stereo track, you're talking about a theoretical maximum of 9.2 Mbps (megabits per second). That's about 200 megabytes for three minutes of what would essentially be a continuous beep at full volume. If we're talking about real music, Apple says a song of the same length should come in at about 145 megabytes on average — a gigabyte would cover seven songs at that rate.

Apple Music offers three quality tiers in addition to Hi-Res Lossless: Lossless (24-bit/48 kHz or a maximum of 2.3 Mbps), High Quality (256 kbps), or High Efficiency (64 kbps). The latter two options use lossy compression formats, which, in addition to being further bit-constrained, shrink the size of the file in part by destroying data. As to whether it's actually worth anything jumping from Lossless to Hi-Res, the honest answer is probably not.

You can change your streaming quality assignments in Apple Music. On iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro, head to the Settings app, then tap Apps, then Music, and then Audio Quality. On Android, desktop, and web clients, head to the settings menu within Apple Music, select Playback (not required on Android), and then Audio Quality. You can toggle quality levels for downloaded tracks and streamed tracks — mobile devices can further delineate between streaming on Wi-Fi and on cellular. If you're wondering about how much data those other tiers use, Apple says to expect a typical three-minute song on Lossless to use up 35MB, one on High Quality to take 6MB, and one on High Efficiency to sip 1.5MB. The softer a song is, the less data is used.