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Both in and outside the home theater space, there's a contingent of audiophiles chasing purity wherever possible. It makes sense, in the abstract. If your audio is lossless, you know you're getting the best fidelity possible on your hardware, and no one wants to think they're missing out when they've spent several hundred (or several thousand) dollars on a speaker system. Here's an unfortunate truth, however: you're probably not hearing lossless on your TV, even though it's increasingly prevalent on streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify. The good news, in a manner of speaking, is that the tech doesn't matter as much as you might think. Lossless audio technology Trivia challenge From FLAC to Apple Lossless — find out how much you really know about crystal-clear audio. What does FLAC stand for in audio technology? Which company developed the Apple Lossless Audio Codec, also known as ALAC? What is the typical file size reduction achieved by FLAC compared to uncompressed WAV audio? Which music streaming service was the first major platform to offer lossless audio streaming to subscribers? Which lossless audio format is most commonly used on Blu-ray discs for high-definition surround sound? What minimum bit depth is generally considered necessary for a recording to be classified as 'hi-res audio'? Which lossless codec is used by the MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) format, sometimes controversially referred to as 'lossless'? At what bitrate does lossless CD-quality audio (16-bit/44.1kHz stereo) stream, approximately? Your Score Thanks for playing! Why you're probably not hearing lossless on your home theater system The hurdles in the way For a start, there may be one or more hardware barriers in the way. Lossless requires a tremendous amount of bandwidth (more on that in a minute), to the point that it simply won't work if speakers are connected via HDMI ARC or optical. You need eARC, or else some form of high-speed wireless, most likely Wi-Fi. Bluetooth is a no-go. While there are codecs that enable high-quality Bluetooth output, that's still compressed data. The situation is potentially far more complicated. If you're expecting lossless from an external device like a media streamer, that has to be connected via HDMI 2.1 or later, the same standard eARC rides on. Anything you've got hooked up via HDMI 2.0 just won't have the throughput, no matter if the device itself is state-of-the-art. When it comes to movies and TV shows, there are two major lossless formats: Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, often associated with Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. Strictly speaking, they're independent of spatial audio. There's nothing stopping you from listening to a TrueHD mix in conventional 5.1-channel surround. What you really need to be worried about is whether your system can process lossless at all. Chances are, any hardware that can handle Atmos or DTS:X over HDMI 2.1/eARC will be compatible -- but you still need to check. You may in some circumstances need to turn to passthrough, which packages raw data so that devices further down the chain can decode it properly. The biggest hurdle is actually content. You may be able to get lossless music from services like Apple Music -- but when it comes to streaming movies and shows, most if not all platforms skip lossless. That's true even if you pay for the most expensive tiers of Netflix, Disney+, or HBO Max. You're just getting an upgrade to Dolby Atmos or DTS:X alongside 4K HDR video. The only way to get lossless audio for movies and shows is on Blu-ray. This is because of the heavy bandwidth demands on streaming. As things are, a 4K HDR feed requires about 25 to 50Mbps. Dolby TrueHD typically consumes about 2 to 8Mbps, but can spike to 18Mbps. The combination risks overwhelming some internet connections, leading to buffering delays, assuming quality isn't automatically degraded to keep things flowing. Why lossless doesn't count for much Thwarted by human hearing When the stars align, lossless audio is fantastic. If you're used to highly compressed stereo on a weak soundbar, it can reveal nuances you never knew existed. In the case of movies, that might include subtle background effects, the range of an orchestral soundtrack, or just previously muffled dialogue. The issue is that compression has improved by leaps and bounds. With higher bitrates, compressed audio is essentially indistinguishable from lossless within the limits of human hearing. In fact, just 320kbps can be enough to sound pristine to the casual listener, and there are diminishing returns for anything more, even when paired with top-end speakers. It's telling that DTS has a middleground offering called DTS-HD High Resolution -- Master Audio is unlikely to sound noticeably clearer, whether on a $10,000 system or a $1,000 one. When it comes to a home theater, then, your priorities should be things like spatial audio support and frequency response across the full EQ. Lossless is almost more of a seal of quality, and you don't necessarily need that to have a good time.