AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, Apple says
imore.com
imore.com
This seems like a bit of a non-story, though it does highlight the value there would have been in giving the AirPods Max a high quality wired audio option.
Like, I know this isn't trivial, but I could send a FLAC file between computers right now, and this is hardly a recent thing. Couldn't they conceivably use some HLS-esque thing on top of bluetooth to accomplish this?
Granted, I suspect the issue might be bandwidth being too low to make this realistic.
It still isn't proper Hi-Res and won't be enough for Apple's Hi-Res Lossless, but it's a lot better than standard BT audio.
[0]https://www.soundguys.com/ldac-ultimate-bluetooth-guide-2002...
heh, audiophool market is so incredibly stupid. Wooden knobs, extra special power cables, and now audio recordings for Bats. All you gain as a human are aliasing artifacts.
not difficult to encode, inaudible to humans
>entire spectrum
oh boy, so why does Hi-Res stop at 192KHz? clearly its not the entire spectrum. We should be encoding at least to couple MHz, right? more better!
Wooden knobs are fun. People like things that are fun. Chill out.
"Dynamics are better and overall naturalness is improved. Here is a test for all you Silver Rock owners. Try removing the bakelite knobs and listen. You will be shocked by this! The signature knobs will have an even greater effect…really amazing! The point here is the micro vibrations created by the volume pots and knobs find their way into the delicate signal path and cause degradation (Bad vibrations equal bad sound). With the signature knobs micro vibrations from the C37 concept of wood, bronze and the lacquer itself compensate for the volume pots and provide (Good Vibrations) our ear/brain combination like to hear…way better sound!!"
"Now to be fair, I couldn't find the actual website for the above as the link now provides an error message"
https://web.archive.org/web/20000511085018/http://www.askjee...
When someone is selling snakeoil, that's not fun. That's just shitty.
> Dynamics are better and overall naturalness is improved. Here is a test for all you Silver Rock owners. Try removing the bakelite knobs and listen. You will be shocked by this! The signature knobs will have an even greater effect…really amazing! The point here is the micro vibrations created by the volume pots and knobs find their way into the delicate signal path and cause degradation (Bad vibrations equal bad sound). With the signature knobs micro vibrations from the C37 concept of wood, bronze and the lacquer itself compensate for the volume pots and provide (Good Vibrations) our ear/brain combination like to hear…way better sound!!
Just about all of this is bollocks.
Here's where Boing Boing got the link, https://web.archive.org/web/20051124101630/http://www.ilikej...
And here's the original site: https://web.archive.org/web/20051214132650/http://www.refere...
I fully understand you are very upset about this 15 year old unsubstantiated post about expensive knobs, but it will relieve you to know that you could easily take 10 seconds and Google "wooden audiophile mods" and see hundreds of kits for stereos, headphones and DACs for $20-50 depending on what you're modding.
https://old.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/5lzar8/what_do_...
"wooden knobs are fun"
- "actually one time, 15 years ago, someone tried to sell wooden knobs for $500, therefore wooden knobs are not fun"
You must be great at parties.
EDIT:
Added a "don't" to the first sentence.
It should be noted though, that gaming headsets have different priorities. They usually sport bulky design enabling bigger batteries, and low audio latency is a must, so whatever codec is in use it must work fast.
It’s not like anything above 320 kbps mp3 will be detectable.
Switch it to a fireworks show and watch the quality suffer.
320kbps MP3 just means the codec allocates 320kb to store each second of compressed signal. Obviously some signals compress better than others and need much lower than that for an acceptable quality (audiobooks are often distributed at 64kbps).
And as I said, the airpods are medium quality earbuds. Not bad, not great. You will NOT hear any loss of audio quality if you play 320 kbps mp3 through them.
I'm sure most people could not hear any quality loss on 128 kbps mp3 (I don't these days), or even 64. But above 320 there is just no way.
The practical difference in the listening experience is, as you infer, negligible, to almost everyone. Classical music, or other such audio with large dynamic ranges, suffer the most. And while those frequencies above 12-16kHz are often the most obviously hit, the entire range suffers in other ways, phase, low end smearing, transient loss. And while first generation lossless to lossy conversion really is an excellent trade off, lossy to lossy very quickly produces audibly worse sound, even 320 to 320 conversion. But you knew that.
Arguably there should just be a lightning-to-lightning connection option, but where there's a dongle, there's a way.
Ideally is corded mic and corded ethernet. Failing that, corded headset and wifi from a phone is runner up.
It's a 3.5mm deal-breaker.
I've tested the stock dongle with high end and generic $1 dongles, and most, even audiophiles cannot tell the difference. Surprisingly the iPad Air 3 seems to have the best sound coming out of the audio jack, far outpacing any of the dongles and predecessors.
Ultimately if someone is enjoying something, who cares if it’s a placebo or not! I think the world would benefit from more placebos (especially in pharma), as their effects are real!
Psychologically some people will worry they aren’t hearing music in the ‘best quality’ if it isn’t lossless, and ‘no perceptible difference’ isn’t enough to remove that doubt.
The rest of us can relax.
Of course, ymmv since audio is entirely subjective. If you enjoy listening to lossy music, you shouldn't let anyone take that away from you.
This time it's 3.1mm (slim connector).
But they also haven't made an attempt to solve the disastrous Bluetooth telephony situation (for context: there are exactly 0 practical ways of using a Bluetooth microphone without sounding like you're calling from the last millennium).
Maybe with LE Audio ...
I recall BT (LE maybe?) you only have relatively small periodic windows to transmit data.
That said I think lossless is a gimmick :D
I doubt it. I'm honestly just as confused as you are, though: lossless audio streaming was possible since Bluetooth 4.0 (and before, with powerful enough encoding). Sony has been doing it for years over their LDAC codec, and Apple's AAC codec could probably do most of the heavy lifting with some minor updates.
> That said I think lossless is a gimmick :D
All sound is really just conjecture that our ears and mind make, so you're definitely welcome to your own opinion there. For me though, the difference between 48k and 96k is pretty distinct, with the 16bit/32bit difference being barely noticeable. Of course, you don't need to listen to "high rez" versions of songs to enjoy them though. My daily drivers for out-of-the-house listening are a pair of Galaxy Buds.
LDAC isn't lossless afaict, and the size difference between lossy and lossless codecs is generally an order of magnitude.
Of course it could also just be lack of a decoder in the headset :D
re: sound quality
I agree it's subjective, but 192KHz (not kbit) seems absurd