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AirPods, AirPods Max and AirPods Pro Don't Support Apple Music Lossless Audio

Unregistered 4U said:
Would this be the same Steven Jobs that included a recessed headphone jack on the first iPhone because he didn’t like how a flat connector would have looked with the curved back? Even though that meant that many headphones couldn’t be used without… a headphone to headphone dongle? AND, notably moved the headphone jack from the top of the devices to the bottom? THAT Steven Jobs?
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He would of never taken away the 3.5mm Jack from iPhone. That was done by the bean counter in Cook because of the value to shareholders by up selling Bluetooth audio. They ripped it out to force consumers at bayonet to purchase Apple AirPods against their will. The best iPad ever made was the A10X with half a Terrabyte which is what I’m typing on. Because once Apple dropped the Jack, then there was a slight delay in audio over any other type of connection. The dongle significantly degrades the audio signal going to your ears and is a non-starter.

To create a iPad Pro without a headphone Jack for audio mixing and video production is a slap in the face to people who know what reference grade sound is. there is always a slight delay on the new iPhones and iPads with audio. I see the lips move and the sound doesn’t reach my ears sequentially. It is because of this that I backpack with the iPhone 12 Mini for ultrawide 16mm video & the 256GB checkra1n A10 iPod for audio. Because this setup enables me to hear 320kbps legit & I can shoot & listen without skipping a beat
 
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hot ham water said:
Hi-res audio is snake oil. I'm a classical musician with a 25 year career and I took the ABX test and could not hear any difference. Yes, of course there are people who can, but they are highly specialized audio and media pros at the top of their careers; 0.00001% of the general population. Apples knows this, but will sell increased bitrates and new equipment to people who need the best of everything and who think they can hear the difference.
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Those with the numberiest numbers wins! :)
 
hm42 said:
This is very un-Apple-like.
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I think we have to come to terms with the fact that Apple hasn’t been acting very “Appley” for quite some years now.

That’s not necessarily a criticism—look at how successful Apple has been as a business—but there have been quality trade-offs along the way that undoubtedly sacrificed that “Apple-ness” that originally attracted us.

e.g. Compare the stability of OS X Tiger to any modern Apple OS: there is no comparison—we’ve gone downhill. But we also gained many new features along the way (when they work, lol). The vast number of features and product offerings we have today introduced enourmous complexity, and for Apple stability <> complexity is an either/or discussion. And complexity sells better than stability.

And I think you’re picking up on the same phenomenon here. With so many features and products it’s not always going to make sense.
 
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macintoshmac said:
They’d do well to bring that 3.5mm diameter worth of “courage” back to their i-devices and also consider why their costliest headphones cannot be used to listen to their best audio output. This is becoming beyond funny, but I am sure they are making a DAC-enabled dongle to sell to us.
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They've made a 24bit/192khz DAC dongle since the iphone 7 came out. It costs $10.
 
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hot ham water said:
Hi-res audio is snake oil. I'm a classical musician with a 25 year career and I took the ABX test and could not hear any difference. Yes, of course there are people who can, but they are highly specialized audio and media pros at the top of their careers; 0.00001% of the general population. Apples knows this, but will sell increased bitrates and new equipment to people who need the best of everything and who think they can hear the difference.
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yes. but at least sell the snake oil applicator with the snake oil.
 
This is mind-boggling stupid from Apple. It's amazing how they make such great products and software, and then have stuff like that makes you go "Uh... why?"
 
This is hugely disappointing.

isn’t Apple supposed to be good as solving problems? Seems like they just updated some audio files and said F it.
 
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hot ham water said:
Hi-res audio is snake oil. I'm a classical musician with a 25 year career and I took the ABX test and could not hear any difference.
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I used to, when my ears were 30 years younger than today.
And also back then even the best Frauenhofer MP3 codecs were not what AAC can be nowadays.
Now if I focus on some very specific song bits and recordings (and masters) which I know by heart I can still tell the difference in blind ABX tests on a good day. It's getting harder every year.
 
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Instead of Apple selling you their own product, they’re encouraging users to go buy a 3rd party solution. I can today buy an Echo Studio for $199.99, or even an Echo at $99, and get Amazon’s HD service for $7.99 a month as a Prime member. Amazon even has a list of recommended 3rd party companies for playback. Really strange decision on Apple’s part, IMO.
 
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My hypothetical take on why this happened:

Imagine you’re Apple. Let’s say you experimented internally and found that the Airpods Max, while great headphones, are not quite at the level where lossless audio can be differentiated from lossy. Maybe they even tested it, with some simple blind A/B tests among their engineers and found this to be the case. I don’t think this is unreasonable to have happened, since lossless audio is already near placebo even with much more expensive and higher quality audio equipment.

If this is the case, then Apple is now in an extremely ****** position. The Apple Music team has been working on lossless music to compete with the other services, intended to be used for audiophiles with the right hardware. What does the Airpods team do? They have two choices:

1) Implement some new ALAC Bluetooth codec for the Airpods in a firmware update, and let people use it. I’m not even sure if this is technically possible, but if it was, and the Airpods Max are not at the level where lossless is appreciable, than it would be a lot of engineering work done that would ONLY result in the user experience being worse for the user. More data usage, more storage space, to play audio over a less reliable Bluetooth connection. They’d be implementing it purely for placebo and because it’s what people expect and want, even if it makes their experience worse.

2) Don’t add the codec, either because you can’t or because of the aforementioned reason. Now everyone is going to think the Airpods Max, a product with a reputation for a great sound as something lesser because it can’t play lossless (even though it would sound exactly the same either way).

The biggest counter to this theory is if the Airpods Max could actually theoretically take advantage of lossless. But I’m very skeptical of this, and I guess with the news that even the 3.5mm adapter won’t let the Max take advantage of a wired lossless source, we’ll never know.
 
Lemon Olive said:
You obviously know nothing about lossless audio, so you've obviously never cared about it in your life. So why is this suddenly "super frustrating"?

People have been listening to lossless audio via iPhone for many years, by:

- Using special apps that can play back FLAC files, of the user's own collection.
- Using Lightning headphones that also have an onboard DAC.

Nothing has changed here, except part 1. With Apple providing lossless tracks via Apple Music.
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You’re also right I don’t give a **** about lossless. It just makes the whole lossless thing seem like nothing more than a jab at Spotify if you don’t make supporting hardware.
 
Ah, so you need to buy an additional adapter 🙄. Apple really do know how to bleed you dry.

As someone stated; you’d need to be a real audiophile to truly notice the difference.
 
btrach144 said:
This is hugely disappointing.

isn’t Apple supposed to be good as solving problems? Seems like they just updated some audio files and said F it.
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It is not disappointing. You're response is overdramatic for no real reason. IF you have Apple headphones they still work right? Of course.
 
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HikerTrash said:
He would of never taken away the 3.5mm Jack from iPhone.
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Even though, under Steve Jobs, Apple effectively provided a far less compatible 3.5mm jack when producing the first post-iPod device? Steve Jobs looked at how that was configured understanding that the only headphones you could be guaranteed it would work with would be the ones it ships with, and was like, “GOOD, let’s do that.”

I can’t help but think that if the wireless audio market had been as robust then as it was years later, there wouldn’t have been a problem dropping the jack.
 
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I didn't expect lossless-wireless, but I did expect a firmware update for recent AirPods that allowed for some sort of "AAC 2.0" similar to Apt-X HD that closed the gap between wired and wireless from Hi-Res sources. Maybe this will be coming down the pike. I'm completely fine with truly lossless being limited to wired connections, but with existing higher-end Bluetooth codecs like Apt-X and LDAC having been out for so long, I don't see why Apple can't do get on board or make their own if they don't want to pay any licensing fees.
 
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EricNau said:
I think we have to come to terms with the fact that Apple hasn’t been acting very “Appley” for quite some years now.

That’s not necessarily a criticism—look at how successful Apple has been as a business—but there have been quality trade-offs along the way that undoubtedly sacrificed that “Apple-ness” that originally attracted us.

e.g. Compare the stability of OS X Tiger to any modern Apple OS: there is no comparison—we’ve gone downhill. But we also gained many new features along the way (when they work, lol). The vast number of features and product offerings we have today introduced enourmous complexity, and for Apple stability <> complexity is an either/or discussion. And complexity sells better than stability.

And I think you’re picking up on the same phenomenon here. With so many features and products it’s not always going to make sense.
Click to expand...

This! Mac OS X Tiger was my first Mac OS experience, and that, too, on a hackintosh. I always found that funny how that OS was more stable on a hack than Windows ever was (until 2011 when I got an Apple Mac).

That attention to detail, that polish, that stability has been lost in favour of features that don’t always “just work” which used to be Apple’s suggestion.

I still like macOS and iOS, but I used to love them before.
 
hot ham water said:
Hi-res audio is snake oil. I'm a classical musician with a 25 year career and I took the ABX test and could not hear any difference. Yes, of course there are people who can, but they are highly specialized audio and media pros at the top of their careers; 0.00001% of the general population. Apples knows this, but will sell increased bitrates and new equipment to people who need the best of everything and who think they can hear the difference.
Click to expand...
I am also a classically trained musician and sometime audio engineer. I can definitely tell the difference between lossless and lossy audio. The difference to my ear is generally in the overtones and silences. Lossless just has a much more natural sound than lossy codecs do. However, the best recording you can hear without going directly to masters are on record albums. But record albums are a pain to store properly, not portable, and degrade easily. IMO, analog still beats digital in pure quality, but digital gets better all the time. Digital is in fact good enough that I would never make an analog recording as it’s just too inconvenient and not worth the little extra quality just so somebody can listen through a pair of cheap, $10 headphones. And in the end, that’s the real issue. Audio quality is only as good as the equipment your using. If you don’t have decent equipment you don’t need lossless.
 
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