Lossless Audio vs. Hi-Res Audio: What’s the Difference? Part 4
Difference Between Lossless and Hi-Res Audio
As we explained earlier, lossless audio is an audio sample without any downstream compression on top of it. Such samples are in raw form.
So lossless audio does not mean higher quality audio. Any audio, hi-res or not, can be lossless.
Hi-Res Audio, on the other hand, is better quality audio with higher bit depth and high sample rate. High-Resolution Audio can be lossless or lossy.
Hi-Res Audio Format
With the rise of Hi-Res Audio, streaming services have started to introduce some proprietary audio formats. Some of the more popular formats include FLAC, AIFF, WAV, and ALAC. All of these formats support High-Resolution Audio with lossy or lossless compression.
For example, Apple uses ALAC for high resolution streaming on Apple Music. ALAC is a lossless format, which means that its compression does not degrade sound quality. It is also very space efficient. Compared to WAV without applying compression, ALAC takes up half the storage space.
Related: The Most Common Audio Formats: Which One Should You Use?
Like Apple, Tidal uses its own audio format, MQA. MQA has lossless compression and offers almost the same sound quality and storage space advantages as ALAC.
