Which audio setting Apple Music uses the most data?

Apple Music is just one of many services offering the best streaming quality you can get on the market. You need a DAC or AV receiver that can transmit the full bandwidth of these tiers without loss to take advantage of them, but you don’t have to pay extra on top of your monthly subscription fee to get these tiers. That said, you probably don’t really need lossless quality or high-resolution lossless audio when you’re splitting your attention between a good song and your next personal best on a 5K run. Plus, even if your wireless plan doesn’t cap your data, you might end up with a cell tower that can’t give you the speeds you need to stream at lossless rates. Or maybe you download tens of gigabytes of music for local playback.

So how much data can high-resolution lossless streaming use? Well, with a sampling rate of 192 kHz (that’s 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 one continuous beep at full volume. If we’re talking about real music, Apple says a song of the same length should weigh around 145 megabytes on average – one gigabyte would cover seven songs at that rate.

Apple Music offers three quality levels in addition to lossless high resolution: 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 more bit limited, reduce file size in part by destroying the data. As for whether it’s really worth it to upgrade 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, go to Settings app, then tap ApplicationsSO Musicand then Audio quality. On Android, desktop and web clients, go to the settings menu in Apple Music, select Reading (not required on Android), then Audio quality. You can switch between the quality levels of downloaded tracks and streamed tracks – mobile devices can better distinguish streaming over Wi-Fi and cellular. If you’re wondering how much data these other tiers use, Apple says to expect a typical three-minute song on Lossless to use 35 MB, one on High Quality for 6 MB, and one on High Efficiency to sip 1.5 MB. The softer a song is, the less data is used.