AirPods Max and AirPods Pro Don't Support Apple Music Lossless, Apple Confirms
t3.com
t3.com
According to wikipedia, Apple did file a patent in 2019 for high bandwidth low latency audio streaming over bluetooth (up to 8mbps)[0]. Looks like they've been working on this for a while.
Have you seen the gold plated overkill?
> found that a function called memcpy was the culprit, most memory players use memcpy and this is one of the reasons why memory play sounds worse ie digital sounding. Fortunately there is an optimised version of memcpy from http://www.agner.org/optimize/, using this version removes the hard edge produced by memcpy.
Just imagine if stuff was like this though and computing were more 'analogue' -- each of those 15 layers of JavaScript transpiling just degraded the quality of the end result slightly.
That said there absolutely is a case for high-bitrate, losslessly-compressed, DRM-free, watermark-free audio as the standard, and that is sampling and remixing. Slowing down a 320 kbps mp3 by just 50% sounds like shit.
It's possible to do this in a way that's not in any way distinguishable from a real 5.0 setup
Dolby provides a similar system, but with a generic room simulation, as do several others.
It is not biologically possible for us (unless one is an alien) to hear above 22kHz. 44.1kHz is enough to record in perfect fidelity [0]. For strictly listening purposes, 192kHz/24bit is wasteful, just extreme overkill because "bigger numbers = more good".
People can't even reliably detect a difference between 320kbps MP3s and source-quality FLAC/ALAC/WAV/PCM. On very good headphone and speaker setups. Good quality MP3/AAC is all one needs for airpods and the bluetooth protocol can easily handle those bitrates.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampli...
edit: changed record->playback. Here I'm just discussing playback; for audio production purposes 192kHz/24bit is desireable for several reasons. Once one ships that album/song though, it should be downmixed back to 44.1kHz/16bit.
I've got all music in 44.1kHz or 48kHz FLAC (only on the server, so I can transcode it to ogg opus for mobile playback reducing the space usage without lossy to lossy artifacts). Similar effects apply to many other such cases.
Audiophiles buy 10'000$ golden HDMI cables... which don't even support HDMI 2.0a. They buy gold-plated toslink cables (!)
I've simply written a small python utility to handle everything automatically.
The same for higher resolution samples, an audio pipeline using that available dynamic range can do cool stuff.
Both are pointless for 99% of music sold though.
I hope the availability of high resolution, or more importantly the spacial audio, will inspire some artists to really explore the space. I'm hoping for some stuff like the Flaming Lips' Zaireeka or Yoshimi album's 5.1 mix.
Aside, "Nyquist criterion" would be a sick band name.
What's suspicious about it? Do you take this to mean something other than lossless compression/encoding?
- not particularly a huge upgrade in audio quality, or
- an attempt to upsell me on some audio-related product
Bluetooth and Wifi already don't properly coexist - one device can transmit a bluetooth packet and another a wifi packet at the same time, and the likelihood is both packets will get clobbered and lost. Proper coexistence would involve a device saying "I want to reserve Frequency bands X, Y and Z for the next 1 millisecond", and then no other devices using those frequency bands for that time. That exists for wifi clients, but it doesn't interoperate with Bluetooth, thread or zigbee.
Have you ever been in a room with a DJ playing low quality music on a decent sound system? It's awful, grating. Now at least your everyday aspiring DJ has access to higher bitrate tunes and doesn't need to blast low quality junk out of the PA system.
For me the holy grail is USB-C powered earbuds with active noise cancelling.
That way I don't have to worry about battery running out either.
I often work for 10+ hours and 4 hours of battery on AirPods pro frustrates me when I have to regularly charge them during the day.
Then with USB-C could also get superior audio quality than Bluetooth.
I'm considering getting the Bose QC20 as a compromise. But still... they're also somewhat battery dependent.
They also have a pretty light clamping force compared to most over ear headphones I have or have used, so even with glasses they’re quite comfortable to wear all day.
And if the batteries do run out, they still work as headphones (sans ANC) with a cable.
The QC20 kinda seem like the worst of all worlds for me. Wired so you’ve got cables to catch on things, battery-dependant, in-ear…
But I'm specifically looking for earbuds with good ANC.
I've got puffy hair and when I take the QC35s off my flattened valley hairdo looks absolutely ridiculous :-)
AirPods pro have good ANC - almost as good as QC35 - but their battery life is too short.
And it's just for desk use; so I don't mind if they're wired.
Hope that helps explain my context! I sound like an absolute fusspot.
Well you're in luck because Huawei, Samsung and Razer make these things.
I've tried the Razer Hammerheads and the ANC is terrible. But will give the other two a go. Cheers.
Some earbuds are uncomfortable, I can't stand the standard iPhone ones, and the Samsung's' wire makes a lot of noise when touching something ever so slightly.
I have a pair of intra-articulars with foam tips (like the ones you buy for studying) and they're very, very comfortable. I can wear them for hours on end. The tips come in several sizes, so it's important to pick the right one.
The only issue is that they're not easy to put on: I have to squish the foam, put them on, then hold them in place a bit until the foam expands. In an office setting, if I have to do this often it gets old really quickly. Noise isolation is great, too, so I can't leave them on if I have to talk to someone.
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[0] I've tried "around ear" phones, but they don't go around enough, and end up pressing on the outer ear, which, with the glasses, gets painful.
Bought mine around 2010-2011, I remember it being a pretty big purchase as a student. Probably one of the best investments I've ever made, I still absolutely love using them.
I wasn't aware of these Shure earbuds, so I've been reading up on the 535s and they look pretty great.
Can you comment on the sound isolation? Please feel free to go full audiophile on me.
And is the passive noise cancelling reasonable?
Thanks :-)
Sound isolation is very good, but it depends on the tips being the right size for your ear canal. Some only swear by the silicone ones, others by the foams. Note that it's a lot like wearing earplugs, so you'll hear your steps if you have harder soles, etc.
Personally, I've always used the foams, I found them more comfortable and good enough for my needs. The silicone ones wouldn't hold well or were too uncomfortable.
However, when it was time to change them, I bought a set of Comply tips and isolation was much better. They're a bit longer, so you shouldn't buy too many at first before you check whether they bother you. They're also somewhat more rigid, so you have to hold them in a bit longer while they expand, so they're not very practical if you need to put take them out and put them back in often.
Thanks for the insightful reply.
I can wear Apple earphones or Bose QC35 headphones all day with zero discomfort.
Ears aside, the rest of my body is far less cooperative.
Fantastic audio quality, and I can plug my headphones practically every audio device manufactured in the past 100 years (except for the iPhone).
Bluetooth on the same computer is silent, and the ausio quality seems limited by the headphones (Sony WH-1000 with LDAC). I know some computers and phones have good analog audio quality, but the point is it's not universal, especially when using an "enterprise" computer which you can't choose.
Samsung makes these. ANC is certainly not Bose/Sony quality, but I've heard they're decent.
> ANC is certainly not Bose/Sony quality
I wish Bose would just make a USB-C powered version of their QC20. I don't understand why I have to rely on battery powered ANC when it's already a wired device.
I mean, surely all those audiophile testers were aware that they are listening to compressed music? Or is this a recent realisation?
At most what could be gained is one less ad/da conversion to go through.
The the question presents itself, why not buy wired analog headphones in the first place.
We have the tech to solve all these issues. But that wouldn't be as profitable.
It's plain as day why certain design decisions are made, and calling it a tradeoff might not be wrong, but it's clearly too kind to these practices.
Max bandwidth for regular Bluetooth is around 3 Mbit/s, to my knowledge. Bluetooth LE is lower at 2 Mbit/s.
https://www.novelbits.io/bluetooth-5-speed-maximum-throughpu...
In any event 300kbps is more than sufficient for transparent compression of audio and, if the source is lossless, then you shouldn't have recompression artifacts. Doing so in real-time does have costs (low latency compression uses both more CPU time and ends up with higher bitrates than when you allow more latency)
A funny thing I‘d do if I had more time and energy to dedicate to the topic of Bluetooth telephony (HSP and HFP are garbage for arbitrary reasons) would be opening a network and doing reasonable quality telephony over it to demonstrate it‘s possible.
I'll skip the whole debate about how good perceptual lossy encodings actually are these days and whether any person could reasonably expect to hear that measured difference, but just wanted to clarify that the sample rate of the headphones' built-in ADC shouldn't be conflated with the lossless codec.
I haven't seen anywhere whether AirPods can do 192kHz AAC over Bluetooth, which in my opinion would be more interesting. I assume not if all of the DSP stuff is done at 48kHz.
Bluetooth reminds me a lot of the F-35: Designed to do everything, does none of it particularly well, hard to build/maintain, and frankly would have been better off as three or four competing standards that did their "thing" well and nothing else.
Might be time to retire it, do a clean sheet audio-only standard, that is easy enough to implement/re-implement with actual tests for all the functionality.
Hard disagree. Bluetooth has an important disadvantage, in that its quality is bad. But it's also got an important advantage: it works, at all.
Basically anything made from early 00s onwards will be able to connect to a modern pair of Bluetooth headphones. Interop is the selling feature.
I wonder if there's any way for them to increase the bandwidth 10x or so. It would increase the use cases a ton.
I.e. I connect my Windows laptop to my Android phone directly through WiFI, in a very simple manner.
In theory, sure. But in practice? Not in my experience.
Yeah, it can probably connect, but will it stay connected and will it reconnect without repairing later? Often not.
LE is a cleanroom specification developed by Nokia and delivered wholesale to the Bluetooth SIG in 2010. It's much more limited in scope, limited in bandwidth and designed to fill a niche around low-power, low-bandwidth devices instead of F-35'ing with WiFi-type capabilities.
It'll get faster in time - each new revision brings with it a faster PHY without compromising on power consumption. It's up to about 2Mbits/sec now, as of 5.0. It's not quite up to where it needs to be to support streaming high-fidelity lossless audio, but it'll be there shortly. It's the right tool for the job - for once - we just need to let it mature a bit.
[edit] Double-checking how AirPods connect, but I'm almost confident it's analogous to LE Audio spec in 5.1
[1] https://www.bluetooth.com/blog/exploring-bluetooth-5-how-fas...
Maybe, just maybe, LE Audio will not actually suck for audio recording. Maybe.
There‘s a good chance I‘m wrong here, but my knowledge is that LE Audio builds on Bluetooth Core 5.2 and no devices have shipped yet.
The F-35 is not one airplane. It's three. The fact that these airplanes share technology and components is a good thing.
The claim that the F-35 is bad because it's a multi-role aircraft is unfounded. Multi role combat aircraft are the standard. Here's a partial list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multirole_combat_aircraft#Acti...
The claim that the F-35 is inferior to single role aircraft like the F-22 is also unfounded. None of us knows the specifics about the two airplanes but we do know that the F-35 has superior weapon systems, durability, communications, and spatial awareness.
There are planned upgrades to make the F-22 compatible with the max off boresight capability of the AIM-9X, with its future LOAL capabilities, and there are plans to coat it with more durable radar reflective "paint". The F-35 has all of those today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor#Up...
But the most important proof that the F-35 is a good airplane is that there are so many customers lining up to buy it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
You lost me there in an otherwise fine comment. The reason is at least as much that the big bully in the schoolyard wants you to buy his product and most don't dare not to. In many countries that did buy it there have been complaints from the other bidders on the contract that the contact was made specifically so no one else could win so they couldn't even bid properly (and lots of evidence says they are absolutely correct in stating this). This doesn't happen if the product was as good as you claim. Then it would have just won fairly. Personally I haven't heard of a single fair win but I don't follow it that close.
France makes its own combat airplanes, some of which like the Mirage 2000 and the Rafale are in operation.
Sweden chose to make the Gripen, the UK, Germany, Spain, and Italy chose to make the Eurofighter Typhoon, and Japan, well that's a weaker argument because their native fighter is based on an American jet fighter.
Edit: Having some knowledge about how the US operates in Europe I am not surprised. I have personally seen lots of examples of exercises in Europe where foreign nations participate and behave very well with the host. I have only ever seen the US navy and the US army just show up using radio frequencies they damn well feel like, unlike every other nation ever. Everyone else reserve frequencies beforehand. The US not so much, no matter what they might interfere with. The US is a bully that behaves like it damn well feels like.
In anecdotal data, I noticed that my Bluetooth headphones had latency so bad they were not usable for gaming (CS:GO, Valorant). Switching the codec to aptX reduced latency noticable but also dramatically reduced quality to somewhere similar to a phone call (flat, noisy).
So that's my assumption.
Playing audio on a Homepod used to have huge latency, we're talking about 2 seconds lag, and it still had the sales. Sure thing, they have improved this with Airplay 2 but nonetheless... I'm not sure how big of the concern latency is for the music streaming (not for the video, calls or games).
The headphones should have gigs of buffer and be able to manage lossless with a great UX to support this.
People are already used to buffer waits for streaming video and this is already a niche use case.
Assuming even mediocre speeds, an average album in ALAC is likely around 350 MB. That’s about 32 minutes at 1.4Mbps.
They could start listening around the 17 minute mark and remain uninterrupted.
I suspect most APM owners would happily load the music to the headphones in advance to perform this playback. This seems so obvious to me, that I suspect it is held back by licensing issues more than cost reasons.
The playing device would need to do a good job with the interface but this is not a big ask—-people have been buffering for media they want since RealAudio.
AirPods are headphones, not a music player. A device that you have to "load music" onto isn't a set of headphones anymore -- and the features you're describing would add significantly to the cost of an already expensive device.
I don't expect it, but I truly hope the next iPhone has a headphone jack. People want airpods whether or not their phones have headphone jacks, it was insecure to take it away in the first place. Have some faith in your products.
On the plus side, I often get to pick the music in my friends' cars.
The MagSafe charger kind of solves this, since it's at least easy to pick up with the charger attached, but MagSafe chargers are more expensive than Lightning cables, and the official one has a very short cord.
In my dream world, the iPhone would have two Lightning (or USB-C) ports, but I don't expect that to ever happen.
Are you suggesting that Apple removed the jack in order to sell AirPods? Seems a bit cynical and doesn't even make sense. I think they removed it for engineering and design reasons. If you need it back there's an official adapter that costs just a few dollars.
Admittedly this is all FUD.
I think the fact that they sell a simple and compact adapter which restores the functionality for less than ten dollars makes me think it cannot be to sell Bluetooth headsets.
Restoring previous functionality for "less than ten dollars" would certainly fit into a nefarious scheme for selling Bluetooth headsets - those who do not want bluetooth headsets are still forced to buy something: buying a less expensive item is still buying. Self-cannibalization is not an old trope.
But they even included them in the box for several years - they didn't charge extra for them. They wouldn't do that if they were trying to force people to buy Bluetooth.
Now years later and after most people moved to Bluetooth voluntarily they're not needed and would be wasteful to include.
Apple removed a headphone jack and provided a stopgap solution in the form of a dongle that was easy to lose and that provided a noticeably worse experience than a normal jack (the inability to charge and listen at the same time).
Once consumers started to come into the Bluetooth ecosystem, Apple raised the gates behind them and stopped providing that stopgap solution. This is pretty normal. For example, if you want to change your privacy policy, make an optional change at first, and then shift it to be opt-out, and then finally make it mandatory.
When you introduce a new policy or change to your products, use the optional nature of that change to shut down complaints. Even though they're not strictly required to, at least some people will migrate (after all, some people were buying Bluetooth headphones before the removal of the jack), and you can use that as evidence to support introducing further changes that make it harder and more annoying not to migrate. Eventually, the numbers will look good enough that you can stop pretending it's a choice at all.
And how does that work out in practice? Well, Apple now controls ~70% of the totally wireless headphone market, and AirPods are arguably one of their most important product categories.
> they're not needed and would be wasteful to include
This is a level of charity towards business press releases that I just don't really know how to connect with. I don't mean this as a gotcha question or anything, but do you believe Apple when they say the reason new iPhones are shipping without chargers is to help the environment? I thought we all took it as a given that all of the companies saying stuff like this were full of crap.
It does not restore the functionality. You cannot use the wired headphones via the adapter, and simultaneously charge the phone. The adapter was sold on the tagline of 'courage' by instilling the myth that 3.5mm jacks were verboten in the ecosystem. To suggest it was an altruistic act, is absurd. It was a calculated bet, like everything else they do, e.g. iPhones have yet to feature USB-C.
In my mind this isn't even a conspiracy theory, it's just what you'd expect from a competent company. If nobody in the decision-making process to remove the headphone jack asked how it would affect long-term AirPod sales, then that just seems like a pretty big oversight on their part, doesn't it?
Spotify bought podcasts so it tie them to a DRM-encumbered platform with ads, Facebook bought Oculus so it could monetize the data, consoles remove disk drives in part to drive digital purchases and cut down on game reselling, iMessage is iPhone exclusive because it makes it harder to switch to Android, and Apple cares about influencing long-term consumer trends in the headphone market. I don't necessarily agree that acknowledging this stuff counts as being cynical.
This is how basically every business works. Facebook didn't merge Occulus accounts with Facebook accounts the same year that they bought the company. Epic has been outright giving away games to chip at Steam's market share, but they're not planning to do that indefinitely. They have plans about what they want the PC market to look like in the future. Companies are capable of thinking long-term. Apple is definitely capable of thinking long-term, it's a business run by very smart people.
Do you believe that the iPhone has not driven Bluetooth adoption at all? I think that would be a pretty bold claim to make. Apple has positioned the lack of a headphone jack as a signature mark of a premium phone. Other phone manufacturers have jumped on board with that consumer perception, which has driven investment into making more Bluetooth compatible devices, which in turn makes AirPods more convenient and easier to use with a wider variety of devices. Because wireless audio technology is still evolving (unlike static wired standards), Apple now has an opportunity to make a set of devices that work best with their own products, encouraging more consumer lock-in to the Apple ecosystem. This also positions Apple to differentiate their headphones from competitors in ways that would be difficult to do with an analog connection (offering seamless paring, higher bitrates, etc...).
It's not like Apple doesn't have a history with this, they have openly (proudly) removed features in order to push industries in preferred directions. See CDs over floppies, USB/Thunderbolt over CDs, HTML5 over Flash, etc... That's not a conspiracy, that's literally Apple's stated reason for those changes. And of course Apple thinks about how changes in those industries and markets will affect the products they sell. They'd be foolish not to.
What is it that makes you think that wireless headphones are different then the last 3 or 4 times that Apple has done this? This just seems like very obvious business practice to me, almost every company tries to manipulate markets and demand to some degree.
There are probably some special cases where you may hear the difference, but it wouldn't be significant.
If you want to listen to music in highest possible quality, AirPods are for sure the wrong device. Probably also the AirPods Max.
You would use some very high end wired sound system or headphones, to get a very small difference for a lot of money :)
You absolutely can - the iPhone actually has a demo on it you can try moving your head around and the difference is extremely clear - it's not some audiophile thing.
If you read past the title to at least as far as the first sentence, it's a wider announcement.
> Apple has announced that it's adding 'Lossless' and 'Hi-Resolution Lossless' streaming options to Apple Music in June 2021 for no extra charge, as well as offering Dolby Atmos 'Spatial Audio' 3D music, too.
Pros: - No cable
I'll keep my cable headphones :)
There's perfectly valid reason to have wireless headphones.
1. Too stubborn to move on from their favorite pair of enthusiast headphones 2. Haven't actually _used_ modern wireless headphones much, if at all.
I love a pair of good Sennheisers, or Audeze, or whatever the new $2000 hotness is these days when I'm sitting at my desk, but when I'm on the go? Give me a pair o f bluetooth headphones 100% of the time. The convenience is beyond worth it IMO.
For me, being able to walk around my house while doing a conference on my computer, or go to the fridge/oven while I'm on Discord, is a big sell.
Sure I have some higher quality wired equipment, but wireless is incredibly convenient.
The only time that Bluetooth gives me issue is with my 2014 vehicle.
You can't seriously list battery wear and charging and leave out the biggest annoyances with wired earphones: the cable gets tangled, and on earphones the cable is the weakest link, it's the first thing that breaks the majority of the time.
Compare to other laptops which never had a standard adapter, phones which were also not standard until they moved 3 times in ~8-10 years from barrel jacks to mini-usb to micro-usb and now usb-c.
But I might confuse those with display adapters.
Everything above is more deeply rooted in belief than it is in reality - or as the old adage goes: „Music fans use their equipment to listen good music. Audiophiles use good music to listen to their equipment.“
There are people in the community who claim to hear differences between digital cables using error correction as part of their protocol (HDMI).
Taking a step back from watching their every move or keynote is one way to keep being happy with your device, and you’ll probably find it does last years.
As a long time Apple user (since the 90's), I feel like this hasn't been true in a while. The number one exhibit is the dongle-hell they've been putting their customers through for the last 5 years. I have a watch, phone, headphones, a computer, and a tablet by Apple. All were made in the last two years. I have to carry a handful of different cables and power adapters if I want to charge them all. It's a huge pain in the ass and is FAR from the definition of "just works".
[0] https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MHXF3AM/A/magsafe-duo-cha...
1. As evidenced by Apple's internal arguments against iMessage on Android during the Epic hearings
Now if we go backwards to the old MagSafe era I had to carry a power solution just for the MBP alone. If I wanted to use it as the power hub (could also do the same above) I could carry a usba->lightening (assuming all the other devices were still lightening), and usba->watch. But what normally happened is I also brought additional charge bricks.
I just don't see how 5 years ago was radically better than today. A couple devices still have lightening on one end /shrug. A cable with usbc on the other mostly hides that for now.
They've made a billion dollar market for dongles, imo unnecessarily.
There is signal loss in noise-cancelling, too!
Also you need a Subwoofer and if you gonna implement a perfect set, you still need 4 ceiling speakers to have the full effect.
This cost of entry is the reason I still didn't put it in my house.
You don't - they use head-related transfer function filters (the Fourier transform of head-related impulse response) to make it work from a single pair of speakers.
The reason Dolby Atmos requires so many speakers is that each speaker is heard by both ears, like in real life, as a result you need a setup closer to real life. In addition, in theaters, people seat all over the place, so you need even more speakers to widen the "sweet spot".
https://www.novelbits.io/bluetooth-5-speed-maximum-throughpu...
Unless ALAC can consistently keep the data rate below 1400 kbps, I don't see how it's possible to have lossless audio over today's BT standards. And keep in mind that CD-quality is the lowest tier of Apple's new offering.
Apple filed a patent a few years ago for something called "high data rate" (HDR) that's capable of 8 Mbps. Maybe something will come of that eventually.
If my speculation is correct, did they do it early to get the jump on another platform? That also does not seem like an Apple style move.
Maybe their services teams are finally starting to be given leeway to operate as real businesses and do things to grow their revenue rather than just operate as growth channels for Apple hardware as they always have in the past.
It should have been a bullet point mentioned in passing at WWDC… assuming they had anything at all about the Apple Music APIs to mention. This isn’t something enough people care enough about to generate hype or growth, releasing it out on its own just allowed them to draw attention in isolation which has cast it in a less than ideal light due to its shortcomings.
If they new (and they obviously did) that it was supported in such a statistically limited (percentage wise) subset when compared to their overall customer base’s listening habits… then making any fuss at all was kind of stupid. They now have the unforced error of having high value customers buying their most expensive products asking uncomfortable questions like “why did you sell me $1000 headphones that don’t support your best stuff?”
So please tell me again how the wired headphone plugs were "deprecated" and "outdated" and that wireless audio was the future.
Seems absurd to launch a service where your $550 headphones launched just a few weeks ago don't even support the difference.
I have an old iPhone SE (2016). It has a headphone jack. Does this mean my old iPhone can play lossless music but the latest iPhones can't?
The Rode AI-1 is a great desktop-only option too, also a fantastic DAC/headphone amp. It just bothered me because it allows digital volume control so you’d have to make it an aggregate device in OS X audio settings to disable that.