True, lossless but sounds like garbage, so what's the point. My family thinks im nuts, but I probably have a dozen pairs of headphones. Including a pair of Hifiman HE1000 which costs over $3500 powered by a $3000 Woo Audio headphone only tube amp. The AirPods Max are the best sounding pair of wireless headphones I have ever heard and even best some of my much more expensive analog only headphones with standalone amps and DACs that are capable of lossless audio. Ultimately it's about the quality of the sound that comes out of the headphones, not simply the tech specs... and the AirPods Max sound amazing regardless if they don't support true lossless audio formats.
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AirPods Max Won't Directly Support Lossless Apple Music Over Lightning
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The point was the assertion that the WH1000 somehow is/was superior because it accepts ‘lossless’ when analog would have been the correct word to use (though the reviews say they do not sound as good analog). Based on the original assertion, any headphone that accepts analog accepts lossless.
Apple is going to release lossless audio for their streaming service for NO added cost, it doesn’t work with wireless headphones. I don’t understand the rampant disappointment in Apple. The vast majority of people will be unable to tell the difference. If you just turned 18, have huge amounts of disposable income & are SUPER picky about your audio, then celibate! For everyone else it’s a non event. Spatial Audio may be fun however - that will work on wireless devices made by Apple.
I don’t think your nuts. That is what audio is, very personal. For me I prefer Tidal masters with a good DAC (I have a Hegel amp) and Focal Clear wired headphones, or a good electrostatic. Night and day for me over the AirPod Max but very personal. As you know there are zillions if high-end speakers and everyone has something different they like. I am stunned that Apple didn’t consider lossless wired. Wow
If you know what to listen for, you can easily tell the difference with ANC vs without ANC, but it seems not everyone has this acuity.
For wireless I agree with you 100%. Wired is an entirely different animal. I’ve had people listen to my setup with Tidal and then Apple. Night and day difference - but it takes the right gear to hear it. 90% of the people won’t notice a thing. Other important thing is the source of the recording. Tidal masters are very, very good.
I don't have any special knowledge here, but I would be very surprised if there are any headphones that have onboard DACs that support better than 16/44 ... even ones that list support for LDAC. LDAC is 990kbps max in the perfect world scenario. 990kbps is basically top end for a 16/44 lossless FLAC CD rip, so why bother with a better DAC at this point. Remember, headphones with onboard DACs are designed for wireless. And nothing outside of wifi (E.g. Airplay and other proprietary formats) can best Bluetooth LDAC anyway.
Guess I'm going to be experimenting come June.
Edit: There seem to be some compressed but still good demos on YouTube.
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This is dumb, I have an iPad Pro 2021 coming and I own the AirPods Max and your telling me I can't listen to lossless audio on the 2 new big products from Apple, how dumb is that?
I also have an HD800S and a SMSL DAC but that USB DAC doesn't support ALAC it supports MQA. So I have to buy another DAC now that supports their dumb codec to use this lossless feature?
This entire messy release feels really bad by Apple and the fact they aren't out here smoothing out the storm and offering solutions prior to this release just feels bad. This is one of the first times where Apple is really failed to deliver to their marketing in a big way before the products even released.
I also have an HD800S and a SMSL DAC but that USB DAC doesn't support ALAC it supports MQA. So I have to buy another DAC now that supports their dumb codec to use this lossless feature?
This entire messy release feels really bad by Apple and the fact they aren't out here smoothing out the storm and offering solutions prior to this release just feels bad. This is one of the first times where Apple is really failed to deliver to their marketing in a big way before the products even released.
Ok, well that's actually pretty damn good then. Maybe there is a chance that a software update can provide lossless over the lightning port. Or more likely, will have to purchase new AirPod Max Pros. :-( In the end, it is true though that a majority of people will never hear the difference. Yes, I can hear the difference between lossy and lossless 16/44, but only with thousands of $$ worth of equipment. trying to hear the difference between 16/44 lossless and 24/196 lossless... that's 10's of thousands of $$ worth of equipment.
Sound signatures, volume, and noise floor make a more audible difference that bit rate. Hey, though, maybe we can turn this thread into how a $400 USB cables sounds better than a $5 one... and de-jitter'ers and noise isolators and linear power supply units.
Each one of those “adaptors” is a conversion between digital and analog, so the information is lost or altered each time, so adaptors are not going to give true lossless...this is the issue Apple acknowledges in the article, that they use several conversions (read adaptors e.g lightning ) to get the signal to the speakers in the headphones or homepod and so they cannot claim lossless and no one else could either. Not withstanding that folks buy wireless headphones to remove the inconvenience of being tethered by a cable so the situation should actually be moot (or mute /s). Seems everyone has forgotten the courage Apple showed when removing the headphone Jack. /s
In any event, the quality of DAC and / or speaker driver / housing / materials has far more bearing on how good a speaker sounds than a slightly higher bitrate
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This is half-tight. The APM won’t support lossless whether via wireless or wired connection. You can listen to lossless via two options;
1. Directly through the iPad Pro’s speakers
2. wired headphones connected to the iPad Pro.
You ‘might’ be right IF the DAC supports lossless resolutions (they don’t, btw… but I’ll wait for ifixit to tell us for sure).
The signal is converted from digital to analog then back to digital, the digital inside the AirPods Max won't be identical to the digital on the device. That makes it not lossless.
Ahh, yes. Supporting lossless or being analog doesn't have to equate to sounding good. AirPod Max's sound good regardless if they don't playback lossless. I only wish they were louder.
It's just table stakes for now. Apple didn't want to be the only streaming music platform without lossless. Not sure why they didn't coincide their latest audio hardware with this release but like everyone has been saying all along, you wouldn't hear the difference anyway. You only hear the difference if you spend >$1k on headphones, at least that's what audiophiles seem to think anyway.
I guess I should have qualified. The AirPods Max sound amazing... for wireless headphones. Yes, my external dac / external amp / analog headphones sound better.
Kind of see it coming as soon as it announces this lossless ********.
Bluetooth won’t be able to take advantage of that due to bandwidth and power requirements. As for wire…
Huh. A company dedicating a part of their career demoting wired connection and vowing to remove all ports and only support wireless charging definitely won’t support wired connections properly.
Bluetooth won’t be able to take advantage of that due to bandwidth and power requirements. As for wire…
Huh. A company dedicating a part of their career demoting wired connection and vowing to remove all ports and only support wireless charging definitely won’t support wired connections properly.
On Mac, you can't use the AirPods as audio input and audio output at the same time, which is ridiculous. When is Bluetooth going to come out with a new standard that fixes this problem?
I would be surprised if your DAC didn't "support" ALAC. Most USB outputs convert at the source to PCM then the DAC processes PCM. MQA is a different beast because it needs to be unfolded to get the hires content. Thats why DACs (or a software player at least) need to support MQA. Are you sure you have to replace your DAC to play ALAC over USB? Have you tried playing a ALAC file on your computer out the USB to your DAC?
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Think of it this way, Blu-ray 4K has 3-4 x the bitrate of say Netflix 4K and there is a very discernible difference in the visual experience, however if you’re watching on a 1080P TV or 32” TV you’re never going to appreciate it.
I have some pretty decent ($500+) headphones and buds, wired and wireless and despite how good they are, even with Amazon HD (lossless), they do not sound anywhere near as good as my Stereo AMP and Stereo bookshelf speakers that cost less. Headphones in general (for the masses) are about convenience and privacy (enhanced further by wireless) and not about ultimate sound quality (since until today people have been perfectly happy listening to compressed lossy sources / “rubbish”) unless your requirements are professional or you spend “crazy” money.
off topic, but I remember paying around $60 for some Sennheieser PX100’s 20+ years ago. These were the first headphones I had used that hadn’t been included with my iPod or phone and frankly when I listened to them for the first time I thought I had gone to heaven without dying, so stark was the difference in sound quality . Bitrate can make a difference, but there are plenty of other features and specs that make a much more significant difference.