How to play Hi-Res music on iPhone

How to play Hello-Res music on iPhone

(Epitome credit: Tom's Guide)

Once you know how to play Howdy-Res music on iPhone, you lot can listen to the best quality audio on your smartphone — but it'due south not a straightforward process. The iPhone has a lot to offering music fans, especially when paired with AirPods or AirPods Pro, simply it lacks native support for Hi-Res Audio. Even the latest iPhone 12 can't play Hi-Res music out of the box.

That'south unfortunate, especially given that many Android phones offer this feature, but iPhone owners aren't entirely out of luck. Y'all'll need to purchase some additional hardware, including the right kind of headphones, but before long yous'll be listening to lossless tunes in all their glory. Here'south how to play Hi-Res music on iPhone.

Everything yous demand to know well-nigh the iPhone 13
The all-time over-ear headphones you can purchase

What is Hi-Res Sound?

Firstly, for the uninitiated, How-do-you-do-Res Audio is sound that'south mastered higher up the "CD quality" fleck rate and sampling frequency of 16-scrap/44.one kHz, with 24-fleck/96 kHz existence a common Hi-Res combination.

And what does this mean? Essentially it'southward music that'south less compressed than "lossy" formats, resulting in the audio files being much bigger but allowing for higher quality and finer sonic item.

This "lossless" music needs to come in a special file type, usually FLAC, which presents a key problem to iPhones: their default music apps only tin't play FLAC files locally. MP3, AAC are WAV all work fine, just FLAC? Not without making some changes.

Why tin't my iPhone play Hi-Res Audio?

There's a daisy-concatenation of problems that can stop you from enjoying Hi-Res music on your iPhone, even if individual problems appear to take easy solutions. Commencement, there's the software: Apple tree Music and iTunes can't play FLAC files. That'due south not a big deal in itself, as you can simply use a streaming service that supports Hi-Res Audio, like Deezer or Tidal.

But you tin can't heed over Bluetooth headphones, equally iPhones don't back up the Bluetooth aptX-Hard disk codec; this but allows for "near-lossless" as opposed to true lossless playback, simply it certainly comes a lot closer than the iPhone's preferred AAC codec. In any case, what you're hearing won't exist truthful Hi-Res Audio.

And if you try to use a pair of wired headphones using the three.5mm-to-Lightning adaptor, yous'll find this limits playback to a 48 kHz sample frequency. Again, that's not really Loftier-Res Audio.

How to play How-do-you-do-Res music on iPhone

The get-go step in knowing how to play Hi-Res music on iPhone, and then, is getting your headphones connected in such a way that you can play Hi-Res music at its full chip rate and sample frequency. One fashion of doing this is to but buy a pair of headphones with a Lightning connector, though many of these limit the sample rate too, and normally aren't forthcoming nearly doing then. It'due south much safer, if more than fiddly, to use a DAC (Digital to Analog Converter).

This, as well, is an imperfect solution as even highly portable DACs similar the AudioQuest DragonFly Cherry or Cyrus soundKey will require a USB-to-Lightning adaptor to connect to the iPhone — so y'all'll terminate up with two split up devices dangling from your phone in improver to a pair of wired headphones. However, once everything is connected, the external DAC bypasses the iPhone's own internal DAC and lets you enjoy Hi-Res Sound at the quality it was always meant for.

Here'due south how to setup a DAC on your iPhone:

1. Plug your headphones into the three.5mm jack on the DAC unit of measurement. This can be pretty much whatsoever pair, including usually-wireless headphones with a detachable three.5mm cable, though naturally you'll want a high-quality pair to enjoy the added detail of Hi-Res Sound. Cheque out our best headphones list for ideas.

2. Connect the DAC, via USB, to the USB-to-Lightning adaptor. Apple tree has an official USB3 adaptor, but some DACs employ USB-C instead, and so make sure your Lightning adaptor has the right port.

3. Plug the adaptor into your iPhone. The upshot will be a lot trickier to behave effectually than, say, a pair of wireless earbuds, but it will enable Hi-Res Audio playback on iPhones.

4. Play some Hi-Res music and relish.

In add-on to streaming apps like Deezer, Tidal and Qobuz, you tin also install music thespian apps that let you lot play locally-stored Hi-Res Sound on your iPhone. Vox is a popular choice; it's free and enables FLAC playback, and you tin can upgrade to a Premium tier for $4.99 a month if yous want unlimited Cloud storage for your songs.

More than: Check out the all-time noise-cancelling headphones

James is currently Hardware Editor at Rock Paper Shotgun, merely before that was Audio Editor at Tom's Guide, where he covered headphones, speakers, soundbars and anything else that intentionally makes noise. A PC enthusiast, he also wrote computing and gaming news for TG, usually relating to how hard it is to find graphics card stock.