How To Correct Your Hearing With Apple Music And ARIA ONE

What This Does

This guide shows how to route Apple Music through ARIA ONE on Mac or Windows. Apple Music plays into a virtual audio device, ARIA ONE reads that signal, applies your hearing correction, and sends the result to your headphones or speakers.

Apple Music has no audio output setting of its own, so the routing happens in your operating system rather than in the app. Once that is set, the rest is switching off a few Apple Music effects that would otherwise sit on top of your correction.

Before You Start

You need Apple Music and ARIA ONE installed on a Mac or Windows computer, plus an Altitude Audio account. If you do not have one yet, ARIA ONE can create it the first time you open the app.

Open ARIA ONE and sign in. On first launch, choose Cloud Mode so your profiles and presets stay in sync across devices.

Use the INSTANT Onboarding Pathway

On first launch, ARIA ONE opens onboarding automatically. To get listening quickly, choose the Instant pathway and continue. Available pathways include:

• Instant — no test. ARIA ONE loads an age-matched hearing profile so you can finish onboarding and start listening immediately.
• Quick Results — the full hearing test without setup and calibration. Around ten minutes.
• Full Accuracy — the complete test with setup and calibration. Fifteen to twenty minutes, and the best result.

Use Instant to finish onboarding now with an age-matched profile. When you have more time, come back to SETUP and take the full test so ARIA ONE can replace it with a profile built from your own results. At the end, choose Simple View for music listening.

Set Up The Audio Routing In ARIA ONE

ARIA ONE needs to sit between Apple Music and your physical output. Apple Music plays into a virtual audio device, ARIA ONE reads from that device, applies correction, and sends the result to your headphones or speakers.

If you have not installed a virtual audio device yet, start here: what is a virtual audio device and which one should I install? That page covers the setup on Mac and Windows.

Then open Audio Settings from the gear in ARIA ONE. Set INPUT to the virtual audio device and OUTPUT to your headphones or speakers. Set the sample rate here to match the virtual audio device; 44.1 or 48 kHz is a safe choice.

Point Apple Music At ARIA ONE

Apple Music has no output setting on Mac or Windows. It plays through whatever output the operating system gives it, so you set the routing in the operating system.

On a Mac, open System Settings, go to Sound, and choose the virtual audio device under Output. Apple Music follows that device, and so does the rest of the system audio.

On Windows, you can route just Apple Music. Start a song playing, then open Settings, go to System, then Sound, then Volume mixer. Find Apple Music in the list of apps and set its Output device to the virtual audio device. Only Apple Music goes through ARIA ONE; the rest of Windows stays on its normal output.

Apple Music Settings To Check

Apple Music applies several effects before the signal reaches ARIA ONE. Open Apple Music Settings, go to Playback, and check these.

Dolby Atmos. Set it to Off. On headphones, Atmos is a full spatial re-render of the track, not a tone control, and it changes the sound before your correction sees it. Left on Automatic, some albums get it and some do not, so nothing sounds consistent.

Sound Enhancer. Turn it off. It widens and brightens the sound, which makes it hard to judge what the correction is doing.

Sound Check. Turn it off. ARIA ONE works best when Apple Music is not adjusting tracks before output, so 0 dB into ARIA ONE is actually 0 dB. ARIA ONE handles track-to-track level changes itself, and Adaptive Drive can find the right drive for each song.

Equalizer. Apple Music has an equalizer that lives outside the Playback settings, so it is easy to miss. On a Mac, it is a separate Equalizer window under the Window menu. On Windows, click the three-dot menu at the top of the sidebar and choose Equalizer. Make sure it is off. If you want extra tonal shaping, use the Corrective EQ module in ARIA ONE after the hearing correction stage instead.

Audio quality. Turn on Lossless and set streaming quality as high as your plan allows. The correction can only work with what is in the stream.

Sample Rate Is Handled For You

Apple Music on desktop does not change your audio device’s sample rate to match each track. It plays at whatever rate the output device is already set to and converts on the way out. That works well for a routed chain and means there is nothing to manage in Apple Music.

Keep two things matched: the rate on the virtual audio device and the rate in ARIA ONE’s Audio Settings. 44.1 or 48 kHz is a stable choice for both.

Check That It Is Working

Play a track in Apple Music. The input meter along the bottom of ARIA ONE should move with the music. If it does, Apple Music is reaching ARIA ONE and the routing is correct.

Toggle the correction off and on to hear the difference. In Simple View, open Sound and tap PERSONAL AUDIO / ORIGINAL AUDIO. In Advanced View, use Bypass in the top bar. Listen for clarity, detail, and changes in the sound image.

If the meter does not move, the routing is not complete. Confirm ARIA ONE’s INPUT is the virtual audio device, and that your Mac’s system output or Apple Music’s entry in the Windows Volume mixer is pointed at that same device.

AirPlay Bypasses The Chain

AirPlay lets Apple Music send playback to a HomePod, an Apple TV, or another AirPlay speaker. The music then goes straight from your computer’s network connection to that device, not through your audio output, so ARIA ONE never receives it. Handoff to a phone does the same thing.

Click the AirPlay icon in the Apple Music window and confirm playback is set to this computer. If ARIA ONE’s input meter is still and the music is playing, check this first.

If You Want Corrected Audio On An AirPlay Speaker

On a Mac, there is a way to do it. Instead of letting Apple Music send to the speaker, you let ARIA ONE send to it. Connect your Mac to the AirPlay speaker first, from Control Center or from the Sound settings, so the speaker shows up as an output device on the Mac. Then set the Mac’s system output to the virtual audio device as usual, and in ARIA ONE’s Audio Settings set OUTPUT to the AirPlay speaker instead of your headphones. Apple Music plays into the virtual device, ARIA ONE corrects it, and the corrected audio goes out over AirPlay.

This lasts only as long as the AirPlay session does. If the connection drops, the Mac goes to sleep, or the speaker is turned off, the speaker disappears as an output and ARIA ONE falls back to another device. When that happens, reconnect to the speaker and set ARIA ONE’s OUTPUT to it again.

Using It Day To Day

Once the routing is set, daily use is simple: open ARIA ONE, open Apple Music, and listen. ARIA ONE can read your computer’s Now Playing data, so Adaptive Drive can respond as tracks change and keep the input to the correction stage in a sensible range.

If you switch between headphones and speakers, save a preset for each in ARIA ONE. The correction that works for one usually is not right for the other.

When you have time, rerun SETUP and take the full hearing test. ARIA ONE replaces the Instant profile with one built from your own measurements.

What About Your Phone

This routing works on Mac and Windows only. iPhone and Android do not let one app capture another app’s audio, so Apple Music cannot be routed through ARIA ONE on a phone.

On mobile, ARIA ONE can still play music files you own with your correction applied using its built-in player. Your hearing profile stays synced across devices.

Common Problems

Known-Good Details

Apple changes menu names and placement on its own schedule. Everything in this list was accurate when this page was last updated. If a setting has moved, look for it by name; the routing logic above is unchanged.

• Apple Music playback settings — Apple Music Settings, under Playback, on both Mac and Windows. Contains Dolby Atmos, Sound Enhancer, Sound Check, Lossless audio, and streaming quality.
• Dolby Atmos options — Automatic, Always On, and Off. Set to Off for this setup. On Windows, Atmos also requires the Dolby Access app; its absence does not matter here.
• Equalizer — on Mac, a separate Equalizer window opened from the Window menu. On Windows, the three-dot Sidebar Actions menu, then Equalizer. On both platforms it is independent of the Playback settings.
• Apple Music sample rate — Apple Music on desktop does not switch the device rate per track on either platform. It plays at the device’s current rate.
• Mac sound output — System Settings, Sound, Output.
• Windows per-app output — Settings, System, Sound, Volume mixer. Each playing app can be given its own Output device.
• AirPlay — the AirPlay icon in the Apple Music window shows the current playback device. Leave this set to the computer; if you want an AirPlay speaker, connect the Mac to it from Control Center or Sound settings and choose it as ARIA ONE’s OUTPUT instead.
• ARIA ONE Audio Settings — the gear in the top bar. INPUT, OUTPUT, and sample rate are all set here.

Summary

Apple Music routes through ARIA ONE at the operating system level: set your Mac’s sound output, or Apple Music’s entry in the Windows Volume mixer, to the virtual audio device, and ARIA ONE reads from that device, applies your hearing profile, and sends the result to your headphones or speakers. Switch off Dolby Atmos, Sound Enhancer, Sound Check, and the Equalizer, turn on Lossless, keep the virtual audio device and ARIA ONE on the same sample rate, and make sure AirPlay is not sending playback to another device.