Khadas Introduces Magnetic Snap-On Ultraslim Hi-Res Headphone Amplifier

Khadas is about to launch an interesting new Ultraslim headphone amplifier with high-resolution audio support for smartphones. The design will be compatible with Apple’s MagSafe (and all the copycat magnetic chargers that are about to arrive in the market), just clipping into to the back of an iPhone 12 or 13. The Khadas TEA features the high-performance ESS ES9281AC Pro DAC, as well as LDAC and aptX HD Bluetooth audio from a Qualcomm QCC5125 chip.

Reacting to the fact that streaming music services have started to offer lossless music streaming options, Qualcomm has now extended its aptX Adaptive set of technologies - supported by its latest Snapdragon Sound processors - to also include a CD-quality lossless option over Bluetooth. The new aptX Lossless technology expands options available for Bluetooth wireless audio, combining codec, wireless link and RF optimizations.

Subscribers to Amazon Music Unlimited can now upgrade to the highest quality streaming audio available, for free. Reacting to the fact that Apple Music announced it will offer lossless audio streaming as standard starting in June, Amazon also announced that Amazon Music HD Lossless Audio, previously available at an additional cost, is now standard for Unlimited Tier subscribers.

With Spotify promising to evolve its leading music streaming service from its lossy Ogg Vorbis codec to CD-Quality lossless in its new HiFi tier, other music streaming services who have embraced FLAC streaming earlier, are expanding its options to reward existing subscribers and hopefully gain new customers. Deezer expanded its Deezer HiFi tier as a Family package for just $19.99, enabling up to six users to enjoy CD-quality FLAC streaming (1411kbps). For those who never tried Deezer HiFi, there's also a 3-months free offer.

Swedish streaming giant Spotify promoted an online streamed event to announce a series of innovations, new strategies, global expansion and reveal loads of mind-blowing statistics. Among the announcements the company announced Spotify HiFi, a service which will allow for paying subscribers of the service to get CD-quality, lossless audio streaming to computers and Spotify Connect-enabled speakers. It's not high-resolution audio, but at least it is a better alternative to Ogg Vorbis.

Music streaming platform Deezer announced a new curated section, with curated playlists and albums just for high fidelity fans. The new HiFi Room on Deezer features hand-picked tracks to draw out the rich sounds streaming in lossless FLAC quality. The company says it currently offers more than 52 million files encoded on FLAC on the platform, and it made sense to offer a curated selection for its premium subscribers to easily find this content in one place, now offering more than 15 exclusive playlists, album recommendations and reissues (remasters).