AirPods Max Won't Directly Support Lossless Apple Music Over Lightning

[lowkey]

I’d love to know who was in the product meetings when the HomePod and AirPods Max were being discussed. I still don’t know who these products were/are for. An audiophile is going to want a wired connection and if you’re not an audiophile these products cost more than most would be willing to spend.

Well as an audiophile I own 2 homepods. Whilst they don’t sound as good as my hifi system, nor my studio setup, they are super convenient.

I’d say the HomePod is better than my hifi if I’m not sitting in the sweet spot. Listening to a HomePod in the kitchen is better than listening to my hifi system from the kitchen. The bass from the HomePod is just awesome for low to mid level listening.

And it’s so much more convenient for listening to radio, podcasts and general background music.

I don’t think I would be able to hear the difference between 320kb MP3 and lossless on the HomePod. It’s not a super revealing sound. But makes things sound nice.

on my studio monitors and headphones I can tell the difference. Mainly in the ‘air’ and a lack of grainyness. But it’s a subtle difference that most playback systems won’t be able to show up.

 

[CarpalMac]

AirPods Max Pro. Now with lossless enabled. $999.99

99, checks out. 🧐

 

[j569mxr]

airpods pro max plus - $999

 

[newyorksole]

This is how I'm interpreting it, Apple stupidly put the wired connection through some extra AD>DA conversion for no purpose other than having the APM with only a single lightning connection and not a pure analog signal path. [[EDIT] I guess they need it digital for the NC processing.]

It would mean when you plug the APM in wired, you have a D->A going from device to cable, the cable carries analog, gets translated A->D at the input to the headphones through the lightning connector, and then has to go back to analog to drive the speakers. I suppose the headphones need a digital signal in order for the signal to be processed for noise cancelling/transparency, and it would be somewhat niche for the cable to carry a complete digital signal to the headphones (would make it incompatible with traditional 3.5 analog output).

What they would have needded to support lossless is one of two things:
1: An ability to directly support analog input direct to speaker over a cable (which would probably mean noise cancelling/transparency would be disabled in this mode)
2: An ability to support a direct digital signal path from device->headphones that would receive the lossless signal and then apply the NC/transparency or whatever; this would also require the headphones to support the codec.
Unfortunately these are most likely not fixable without revising the hardware.

They really should stop having their separate teams working in bunkers where they aren't allowed to communicate with each other.

If they come out with new APM and they look fairly similar to the current pair, I’m just going to buy the new set, put the old pair in the box and return those. Don’t care an ounce.

 

[hajime]

Audiophile here, i own a 2000 dollar pair of Sony cans, a custom molded set of earbuds and a nice android digital music player along with an ipod touch and an ipad.
The issue with the Air Pod Max is that they have their own DAC that may not support the full decoder range.
If i plug my customs into my iPod Touch and play an apple lossless track i encoded i will get that full range, same if i used my android music player.
The cable or the jack is not the issue, the DAC, digital analog converter is what allows the decoding and playback of the music then outputs it to whatever jack it is connected to. Lots of small USB-C and lightning dongles support very high rate decoding. I can use my android music player as a DAC plugging it in to my Mac Book Pro, windows machine and my iPad and it will run at full high bitrate decoding up to 384kHz-32bit/DSD256.
Basically you need a wired headphone and a DAC dongle combo if you have an iphone you want to use lossless with.

Don't know the reason but my AirPodsMax does not play Dolby Atmos files. No sound at all.

It seems most Apple “specialists” don’t know squat about the stuff they sell. I’ve overheard specialists giving out incorrect informations before when I was at the store checking out the iPhone 11 in 2019. I feel it’s rude to butt in and correct them though.

I think many members here know more about Apple products than the folks that sell them. When I bought a HomePod after it was discontinued, the specialist was stunned when I showed him how to decode a serial number and we say that a HomePod purchased a few months ago was made in early 2018.

Exactly! You are right! Many of them don't know a lot of things. They also gave me incorrect information about an adaptor for iPad. I followed his advice, bought it, tried it and returned it.

 

[Sherif Iskander]

So. This is what I think is happening.

The lightning to 3.5mm adapter is probably using a hardware DAC that the device would be using for phone calls and audio output via the Lightning Port. When you attach this adapter, the phone or iPad actually takes over the data pins on the Lightning connector and outputs analog audio on them. The same happens for Apples wired earbuds. I think that DAC is the reason the analog output via the 3.5mm cannot do Lossless.

For the wirelessly connected devices it is an issue with wireless bandwidth for example with Bluetooth.

So how do you listen to lossless?

1. via the internal speakers of the iPad or iPhone since they are probably running of a different DAC.
2. Use a "digital out" connection such as HDMI, or optical fiber (on Apple TV) to connect to any device such as an Audio Receiver that has it's own DAC.
3. Wait for either headphones that have their own DAC and are recognized by the playing device as a "digital accessory" so the lightning or USB-C connection remains digital and is not taken over by the device's DAC to output analog audio. Of course another variant would be a small adapter that would house a Lossless capable DAC taking digital signals from the playing device to convert those to analog for the headphones etc.

Maybe in the future Apple's devices would use Lossless capable DACs on board, but I assume that's not the case now. I'm sure those DACs are a lot more power hungry that the ones currently used and hence the tradeoff makes sense.

In essence I think what Apple meant with the announcement was to tell people that the files being provided by Apple Music will include Lossless versions for those people that have a need for it and the equipment to play it. For everyone else, things will pretty much stay the same with the exception of Spatial Audio which will manipulate the files digitally to create the sense of space before sending them to the onboard DAC for conversion and output.

Hope this helps

 

[MarkIII]

Does anyone know if the old wired lightening ear buds that Apple used to supply allow for lossless listening?

 

[Sherif Iskander]

Does anyone know if the old wired lightening ear buds that Apple used to supply allow for lossless listening?

I believe not. They are analog headphones running off the phone's internal DAC which takes over the lighting pins and uses them for Analog output instead of Digital.

 

[rlhamil]

I'm guessing actually that no headphones with noise-cancelling will "support" lossless in the same sense that the AirPods Max don't support it. This is because
1: you need a wired connection unless the ALAC codec is supported over Bluetooth, I don't believe any headphones meet this criteria.
2: the headphones need to have digital audio in order to process the noise-cancelling, I don't believe there are any headphones that take a wired digital input.

What this means is that the Apple Lossless will be converted to analog for the wired connection, and then converted back to digital at the headphones for processing. This extra step means that it cannot be called "lossless", since there will be some loss associated with this D->A->D conversion.

As long as the conversion is done well, this will probably mean the APM (and other noise-cancelling headphones over wired connection) will be **better** quality using the streamed Lossless Apple Music than they would be using the standard definition (since you are doing these conversions with a better quality source on the device). So they "support" the Lossless music in that sense, it just can't still be called lossless after these conversions.

Pioneer RAYZ Plus have ANC and a Lightning connector. AFAIK, the Lightning connector only supports digital (up to 48kHz and probably 24 bit samples, I think). Obviously digital has to ultimately be converted to analog for playback, and the ANC happens just before that, I guess (with ambient samples converted to digital?). It would then come down to whether the ANC processing can work directly with the unaltered digital input.

But there are enough other things to get right for a really good pair of headphones or earphones (the analog stage has to be really good); and since SOME digital processing is taking place for ANC (and that almost always sacrifices SOME precision, why digital studio work is done way higher than CD grade, so some can be lost and still have something good), it's almost a semantic question whether any ANC is truly lossless, although a good design (internal processing at higher resolution than input or output, possibly) could probably get close.

 

[Greenmeenie]

I can see it now....Apple announces the $999 Airpod Max PROS! 😂

 

[rlhamil]

I believe not. They are analog headphones running off the phone's internal DAC which takes over the lighting pins and uses them for Analog output instead of Digital.

Nope: https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...arpods-lightning-to-35mm-adapter-for-iphone-7

One could probably use a better DAC, if it wasn't made to be as tiny as possible.

 

[Sherif Iskander]

Pioneer RAYZ Plus have ANC and a Lightning connector. AFAIK, the Lightning connector only supports digital (up to 48kHz and probably 24 bit samples, I think). Obviously digital has to ultimately be converted to analog for playback, and the ANC happens just before that, I guess (with ambient samples converted to digital?). It would then come down to whether the ANC processing can work directly with the unaltered digital input.

But there are enough other things to get right for a really good pair of headphones or earphones (the analog stage has to be really good); and since SOME digital processing is taking place for ANC (and that almost always sacrifices SOME precision, why digital studio work is done way higher than CD grade, so some can be lost and still have something good), it's almost a semantic question whether any ANC is truly lossless, although a good design (internal processing at higher resolution than input or output, possibly) could probably get close.

I think Lightning supports a lot more transfer rate that the 48kHz / 24bit. I think the 48kHz/24bit is the capability of the internal DAC that outputs analog onto the lightning pins.

 

[Htsi]

Sad. Both 1st gen products given the finger. Somethings never change.

 

[Sherif Iskander]

Nope: https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...arpods-lightning-to-35mm-adapter-for-iphone-7

One could probably use a better DAC, if it wasn't made to be as tiny as possible.

Weird. Because here is the pinout for the Lightning to 3.5mm.

 

[hajime]

I can see it now....Apple announces the $999 Airpod Max PROS! 😂

Also all current Macs do not support Lossless. They may announce Mac PROS.

 

[TiggrToo]

It’s hilarious reading all these disgruntled posts considering that even before this announcement it was well known the Max couldn’t do lossless.

Tidal’s been out for a while and you’ve needed a DAC to listen to their music lossless via an iphone

None of this is new. It just feels new because Apple are doing lossless now.

It’s still lossless though - wether it be Tidal, Apple HD or now Apple Lossless.

The inconvenient truth about MQA on iOS | Darko.Audio

iPhones don't *do* hi-res audio.

darko.audio

My guess is that the iPhone 13 might support lossless via the port.

 

[TVreporter]

Wait until iPhone 14 - Apple DAC on the pro model with the headphone jack!!!

 

[happyhippo1337]

Does anyone know if the old wired lightening ear buds that Apple used to supply allow for lossless listening?

Even if they could it would make no sense at all. They aren't even remotely suitable for normal lossy listening at high quality.

 

[SgtPepper12]

I just love how this is presented like a hot new feature that is only supported by some high-end products, when 25 years ago playing lossless music was literally the only thing that headphones could do.

 

[djdj]

Analog headphones for the win

 

[djdj]

Anyone know of a guide for dummies (like me) to take full advantage of lossless audio?

1. Buy some old-school analog headphones.
2. Buy a Lightning-to-3.5mm adapter.
3. Plug in.
4. Enjoy.

 

[nathansz]

….

 

[jhwalker]

I've never tried it no, its just the article said the DAC would have to support it digitally and I figure its like MQA where it transmits it to the DAC to decode.

ALAC is a FILE FORMAT, almost exactly like FLAC (just an Apple variant). The PLAYER software outputs PCM (or DSD, if your player supports it and / or you choose to do so), and the DAC converts that to analog output to play it.

DACs don't support file formats, just PCM or DSD input - so you're good. You don't need a new DAC.

 

[infinitejest]

Can someone please explain to me what kind of fancy setup I need to actually be able to listen to lossless audio on my MacBook Pro? I have a pair of ATH-M50xBT headphones. Will they support lossless audio when I use them wired?

 

[djdj]

Wait so if I buy a DAC like this and plug my APM to it via the correct lightning to audio cable, I won’t get the high res audio?

Nope. The AirPods Max don’t have a direct analog connection from the input to the drivers. The basic design precludes that.

APM gets is “high quality” audio not by using high quality drivers, but through digital processing to make mediocre drivers sound better than they really are. Any audio you listen to HAS to go through the digital processing, which has some designed-in limitations. The signal is converted from analog to digital, proceased, and re-converted back to analog at a specific sampling rate and bit depth, and get “a higher quality” and additional latency along with it. You’re locked in to a very specific level of quality because of the fundamental design; there’s no way around it with this product.

This is one of those cases where old-school analog headphones win. No fancy digital processing, no latency… just a faithful reproduction of the incoming signal.

Its kind of funny that people fall all over themselves to get high-end digital wireless headphones, shelling out a lot of money in the process, when you can literally buy analog headphones that sound a LOT better for under $100. I get that cordless is nice and convenient, but if good quality sound is the goal, traditional analog headphones are a far better way to go.