For the music lovers, cinephiles, or elite gamers out there who want only the best sound quality, let’s break down the difference between lossless audio vs Dolby Atmos so you know what’s what.

All audio files need to be compressed and digitized so you can enjoy your music, games, movies, and TV shows from any device through a streaming service or via Bluetooth. Some formats discard more data than others in this process, making the files small enough to be easily uploaded, stored, and transferred by sacrificing certain elements and the quality of the original audio. Lossless audio streaming, however, provides high-resolution, CD-quality audio by not discarding any of the actual audio data. Most lossless streams can actually go beyond CD quality, reaching an even higher level of performance with up to 24-bit quality and sample rates up to 192kHz, meaning you get a listening experience as close to being in the club or concert hall as possible.

Due to its larger file size, it isn’t possible to get the full experience of lossless audio via Bluetooth. This is because of Bluetooth’s codec and bandwidth — any lossless audio played through it needs to be downsampled and compressed in order to be transmitted to your Bluetooth headphones or speaker. Although some Bluetooth players support formats that scale to lossless such as MQA, and Qualcomm’s aptX lossless codec does claim to be capable of delivering lossless audio via Bluetooth, many devices do not yet support it.

There are still plenty of other ways to join the lossless crowd with players such as Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, Deezer, and Qobuz hosting a catalog of tunes in lossless audio.

Never miss a beat as every song delivers a complete sound experience with fully realized audio and sound design. Whether it’s live music or a studio recording, lossless delivers every note originally intended for your listening pleasure.

Then there’s spatial audio. Spatial audio forgoes the traditional mono and stereo method of using one or two channels to deliver sound from just left and right channels by adding another layer of data to deliver sound all around you, creating a 3D sound environment that mimics the location or setting of the original piece.

Dolby Atmos delivers a spatial sound experience and builds a multidimensional sound space around you, including above and below, whether you’re on the go or sitting back with some popcorn in your home theater.

Unlike lossless, you can get high-quality audio over Bluetooth by using devices that support Dolby Atmos such as headphones, laptops, internal and external speakers, smart speakers, or soundbars. Dolby Atmos has been widely adopted by the entertainment industry and can be enjoyed in TV shows, movies, music, games, and live sports. And the good news is that you can find this content on the streaming platforms you probably already use like Apple TV+, Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video. Just double-check with your service provider to make sure that your subscription supports Dolby Atmos and that the content you are watching is in Dolby by looking for the logo. Then, wherever you are, you can fire sound all around and place yourself in the heart of it all with Dolby Atmos.

Lossless is a great way to get the highest quality audio at home, from a home theater, internal speaker, or external audio system. While you can listen on the go over Bluetooth, with lossless audio, you will lose some quality. In that case, consider Dolby Atmos, because that can be enjoyed at home or on the go.

What is lossless audio and is it worth it?

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