Apple Engineer Addresses Lack of Lossless Support on New AirPods Pro

[DeepIn2U]

I’m not sure you actually read anything in my post which you responded to. Please allow me to touch on some of the points you brought up.

Network Bandwidth - I didn’t say anything about grabbing FLAC files from a network. This is completely irrelevant to locally stored FLAC files. Apple also has no trouble pushing their larger ALAC files over the network so this isn’t a real problem either.

Most artists don’t upload in such sound quality - uhh, what? You got a source for that? Find me one artist signed to a label that doesn’t have lossless music available. I think you’re forgetting that lossless digital has been the standard for over 40 years.
Also, this is totally irrelevant to files that already exist. I’m not complaining about files I wish I had in fantasyland, I’m complaining about files I already have that Apple won’t let me play.

Smartphone storage - not sure your logic checks out on this one since ALAC files are bit-for-bit actually larger than the same encoded as FLAC. So, their larger proprietary format isn’t too big, but FLAC is? Also, whether or not smartphone storage is at a premium, who is anyone to say what I do with my iPhone storage? Apple will gladly sell me a 1TB iPhone but now they have to protect me from using it too?


Backups - the music library isn’t even stored in iPhone backups.

Hi ...

I did read your post. I was simply offering possible answers as to your why.

Network bandwidth.
Yes Apple did have no issues pushing their ALAC files over the network - that's mostly via iTunes and recently Lossless over Apple Music. What you may not have understood my reasoning is most listened to Apple's lossless music playback over iTunes via a computer. It was not available on iPhone. You may have intended computer focus only, but didn't mention it.


I may not have a source for lossless sound quality uploaded by artists, but it's not likely needed for Apple Music, Spotify, SoundCloud streaming services. I suggest this due to the audience and the quality of the stream being sent downstream - why push a higher quality stream down a much lower quality stream and stress servers to do so, or keep larger storage space of a catalog eating up costs? Doesn't make much business sense. Do you have any sources of majority of artists doing this to Apple Music, Spotify, Soundcloud, etc? Even now not all of Apple's music catalog has lossless available, so wondering why is that IF a lot of artists uploaded in lossless??

Regardless of lossless was available for 40yrs, doesn't mean the majority of artists did so for that long or even since 2012. It all depends.

You mention iPhone's having about 1TB ... when was that available on iPhone? I think only the last 3yrs. FLAC is 6x the volume of MP3's - iTunes primary choice and only choice over iPhone and iPod for a few years using the app (not USB).

oh well just my thoughts, right or wrong, I'm sure you can appreciate mobile use cases as time went on. Especially regarding storage at a time where AndroidOS supported FLAC at v3.1.

As time goes on lossless will be the default for streaming catalogs or for download.

 

[darngooddesign]

...I may not have a source for lossless sound quality uploaded by artists, but it's not likely needed for Apple Music, Spotify, SoundCloud streaming services. I suggest this due to the audience and the quality of the stream being sent downstream - why push a higher quality stream down a much lower quality stream and stress servers to do so, or keep larger storage space of a catalog eating up costs? Doesn't make much business sense. Do you have any sources of majority of artists doing this to Apple Music, Spotify, Soundcloud, etc? Even now not all of Apple's music catalog has lossless available, so wondering why is that IF a lot of artists uploaded in lossless??

I cant speak for independent artists, but all record labels have lossless master recordings of their artists because CDs, for example, are not created from 256k AACs. The labels, not the artists, provide the lossless files to Apple.

 

[coffeemilktea]

Even if they were wired, I'm not sure any earphones this small could sound good enough to notice the quality. 😅 It seems like anything good enough to notice lossless audio on would have to be the size of the AirPods Max.

 

[MrRom92]

Hi ...

I did read your post. I was simply offering possible answers as to your why.

Network bandwidth.
Yes Apple did have no issues pushing their ALAC files over the network - that's mostly via iTunes and recently Lossless over Apple Music. What you may not have understood my reasoning is most listened to Apple's lossless music playback over iTunes via a computer. It was not available on iPhone. You may have intended computer focus only, but didn't mention it.


I may not have a source for lossless sound quality uploaded by artists, but it's not likely needed for Apple Music, Spotify, SoundCloud streaming services. I suggest this due to the audience and the quality of the stream being sent downstream - why push a higher quality stream down a much lower quality stream and stress servers to do so, or keep larger storage space of a catalog eating up costs? Doesn't make much business sense. Do you have any sources of majority of artists doing this to Apple Music, Spotify, Soundcloud, etc? Even now not all of Apple's music catalog has lossless available, so wondering why is that IF a lot of artists uploaded in lossless??

Regardless of lossless was available for 40yrs, doesn't mean the majority of artists did so for that long or even since 2012. It all depends.

You mention iPhone's having about 1TB ... when was that available on iPhone? I think only the last 3yrs. FLAC is 6x the volume of MP3's - iTunes primary choice and only choice over iPhone and iPod for a few years using the app (not USB).

oh well just my thoughts, right or wrong, I'm sure you can appreciate mobile use cases as time went on. Especially regarding storage at a time where AndroidOS supported FLAC at v3.1.

As time goes on lossless will be the default for streaming catalogs or for download.

Again, I’m asking you to please re-read the post you responded to - it was about Apple deliberately blocking people from loading locally stored FLAC files onto their own iOS device’s storage, in an effort to push people towards ALAC; their inequivalent and inferior competing lossless format.

 

[MrRom92]

Even if they were wired, I'm not sure any earphones this small could sound good enough to notice the quality. 😅 It seems like anything good enough to notice lossless audio on would have to be the size of the AirPods Max.

I don’t understand the argument that the earbuds are not “good enough” for lossless. They never were amazing sounding and never will be. Is that the point? Where do we draw the line for what is and isn’t good enough?

The drivers in the AirPods can reproduce the same frequencies that are primarily affected by lossy encoders. So if they can reproduce lossless and lossy differently, I’d say they are “good enough” for lossless. Are they going to sound like a $500K audio salon? No. I don’t know how or when that became the goal.

Once an adequate wireless standard is developed, it won’t be exclusive to earbuds. It will something that will also eventually be implemented in larger/better headphones and full-sized speakers.

Also, Apple sold wired earbuds for YEARS, that were not very good. But they certainly didn’t degrade the signal until they got to the tiny little drivers. The input was never forced through a lossy-compressed pipeline.

You can’t argue that a lossy-compressed signal going into a bad speaker is better than a lossless signal going into the same bad speaker.


Allow me to make an analogy. There was a restaurant, and for many years they sold soup. It wasn’t very good soup, but at least clean/quality ingredients went into that soup - even if you couldn’t discern them in the end product. The soup was very inexpensive and even occasionally given away for free with other purchases. People did not expect it to taste like a 5 star meal but it served its purpose.


Then, suddenly one day, the restaurant had the “courage” to stop providing that soup with the clean ingredients. Now they will only offer a soup with the chef’s urine in it - but don’t worry, it’s only a little urine! It’s really not that bad, and since the end product was never great you will never even be able to tell the difference between this and the urine-free soup. Also, the urine soup costs $100+ now.


Do you slurp it up and ask “please sir, some more!” Or do you ask for them to develop a better soup with no peepee in it, even if you might not be able to tell the difference in the end product?

 

[chucker23n1]

If it is a scam, what does the scam achieve?

I didn't call it a scam.

 

[darngooddesign]

I didn't call it a scam.

My comment you originally replied to was a response to someone who asked it it was a scam.

 

[macsound1]

If it is a scam, what does the scam achieve?

AB testing has shown that some people can hear the difference if they have a good non-BT speakers, maybe the person asking is one of them. If they aren't or don't have a good sound system, lossless wont provide a benefit.

I think the scam is companies selling music in a lossless format as superior than that sold my competitors.
Tidal for example is touting what they sell as superior.
Imagine if BMW touted their cars drove better but in reality were just a hundai under the hood. Or if iPhones weren’t actually Apple designed and were just reskinned Android phones.

It’s not a scam that they’re selling the lossless music, it’s just that they’re touting it as better than what the other guys offer.

 

[MrRom92]

I think the scam is companies selling music in a lossless format as superior than that sold my competitors.
Tidal for example is touting what they sell as superior.
Imagine if BMW touted their cars drove better but in reality were just a hundai under the hood. Or if iPhones weren’t actually Apple designed and were just reskinned Android phones.

It’s not a scam that they’re selling the lossless music, it’s just that they’re touting it as better than what the other guys offer.

If the other guys don’t sell lossless, then it is superior.

If the other guys do sell lossless, then there’s no superiority. It’s the same.

At this point in 2022, I really don’t know of any DSP that isn’t already lossless or planning to go lossless in the immediate future.

 

[darngooddesign]

I think the scam is companies selling music in a lossless format as superior than that sold my competitors.
Tidal for example is touting what they sell as superior.
Imagine if BMW touted their cars drove better but in reality were just a hundai under the hood. Or if iPhones weren’t actually Apple designed and were just reskinned Android phones.

It’s not a scam that they’re selling the lossless music, it’s just that they’re touting it as better than what the other guys offer.

Apple is saying it is better than both their and their competitors' non-lossless, which it measurably is, but they are not really saying that their lossless is better than their competitors lossless so your car analogy isn't really accurate since the label provides the same files. It would be a scam if Apple said their lossless is better than other lossless, but they aren't doing that.

I guess a car analogy that works is if a car manufacturer is selling their car's performance trim as better than the regular trim of that same car. Its better but you probably wont notice it during your normal day-to-day commute.

 

[Velli]

In my case, it's my ears...

I find that experience in listening counter-balances the actual physical hearing loss for most people. People tend to over-estimate the extremes of the frequency range. They think bass that sounds deep is 20 Hz, when it's actually likely more like 60, and they think that something high-pitched is 16 kHz. In reality, you're not missing as much as you think you are, just because you can't hear anything above 14k. You will still totally be able to hear the difference in a good and a bad representation of a triangle, even though you can't hear above 12k. On the other hand, it is a lot more difficult if you've never actually heard one live.

 

[Boidem]

Allow me to make an analogy.

That was a truly terrible 'analogy', and definitely isn't analogous to the topic.

I find that experience in listening counter-balances the actual physical hearing loss for most people. People tend to over-estimate the extremes of the frequency range. They think bass that sounds deep is 20 Hz, when it's actually likely more like 60, and they think that something high-pitched is 16 kHz. In reality, you're not missing as much as you think you are, just because you can't hear anything above 14k. You will still totally be able to hear the difference in a good and a bad representation of a triangle, even though you can't hear above 12k. On the other hand, it is a lot more difficult if you've never actually heard one live.

What I meant was, that the weakest link in the audio listening 'chain' is human hearing. Not just my ears. Although I totally accept that my ears aren't as amazing as they once were.

 

[Boidem]

They're mathematically related. To accurately reproduce a waveform, the sampling frequency has to be at least twice the highest waveform frequency. He's saying that sampling at 48kHz can accurately reproduce all frequencies in the range of human hearing.

Ah right, thanks.

 

[Boidem]

Even if they were wired, I'm not sure any earphones this small could sound good enough to notice the quality. 😅 It seems like anything good enough to notice lossless audio on would have to be the size of the AirPods Max.

Size doesn't matter, actually. Well, it does, but it doesn't. The best headphones are the very expensive large open backed type, but they're crap for most people's uses. Pointless in open areas with lots of noise. But you can get small earbuds that are extremely good, and used in all sorts of professional applications. Again, very expensive, and... wired. People just need to understand that Airpods (including the Pros) are a 'consumer' level product, and accept the limitations and compromises. I've really no idea why people are still banging on about 'lossless' on consumer level products...

 

[MrRom92]

That was a truly terrible 'analogy', and definitely isn't analogous to the topic.

Well I beg to differ!

 

[tehabe]

Forgive me, but isn't that confusing sound wave frequencies with digital sampling frequencies?

Not really, 48 kHz digital sampling frequency is equivalent with 24 kHz sound wave frequency, at least for PCM and the Nyquest-Shannon theorem

 

[drumcat]

Ah right, thanks.

Nyquist theorem. Need 2x frequency to describe something. Thus 48000 sample points will allow up to 24kHz.

Humans generally hear up to 19kHz, dropping to 15kHz as you age. FM radio is capped at 15kHz.

 

[DeepIn2U]

So I read this as saying that, no surprise, these “sound experts” sometimes differ on which potential final tuning is the best. So why oh why does Apple not offer the ability to select between alternate tunings (other than by using the rather crude EQ settings in the Apple Music app) but instead only offers a single “our way is the right way” unalterable tuning when, reading between the lines of that quote, some of its own sound experts might think it isn’t the one they prefer the most? Apple often gets dinged in comparative reviews about the inability to customise the sound and with all the DSP magic going on, and this panel of sound experts, it really shouldn’t be impossible to come up with at least 2 or 3 tunings to at least get closer to satisfying everyone.

I use AirPods Max for listening on my balcony and I like them a lot but if it wasn’t for the fact that I use Roon to listen to music at home and so can use the Roon DSP capabilities to EQ the sound to my liking my Airpod Max would have gone back within the return period since, for my tastes and genres of music that I listen to, the default tuning to my ears sucks the life out of the music and removes a lot of excitement and rhythmic drive Particularly around the rhythm section (drums and bass guitar).

Although your suggestion would work best using Air Max, and others like myself would agree, you did know they wouldn’t when you bought them.

But my rebuttal is about the nature of the AirPods, non-Max models’ use cases. Most importantly something I noticed on the AirPod Pro’s after the 5th firmware update since initial launch. The automatic and independent, self volume adjusting ,ambient sound enabling when hinpitched frequencies come within 20 ft of you. Public transit bus breaks squeaking, car breaks, pile drivers, and whoever AirPod Pro’s earphone is closest that receives the highest ambient-to-anc eardrum protection. Quite phenomenal to be honest and I have it with my Beats Fit Pro’s as well.

I can only imagine how much better this is let alone calls and music playback.

 

[pdoherty]

You can ask for lossless all you want, but the fact remains that (1)bluetooth as of the current state does not have enough bandwidth to support lossless (2) if it somehow supports lossless (LDAC is not really lossless, btw) it will devour battery life and (3) about 95% of listeners cannot distinguish between AAC and ALAC.

PlexAmp plays FLAC files over Bluetooth. It's probably doing the decompression on the phone/tablet before sending the audio. Is that not what an AirPro could do, too? Why would the decompression of the audio need to occur on the headphone itself?

 

[chucker23n1]

PlexAmp plays FLAC files over Bluetooth. It's probably doing the decompression on the phone/tablet before sending the audio. Is that not what an AirPro could do, too? Why would the decompression of the audio need to occur on the headphone itself?

Because Bluetooth doesn't provide enough bandwidth for uncompressed audio.

I don't know what PlexAmp does. They might be using a proprietary Bluetooth profile that supports higher bandwidth, but that wouldn't work with most headphones. They could transcode the audio to lossy compression, making the whole thing moot.

 

[pdoherty]

Because Bluetooth doesn't provide enough bandwidth for uncompressed audio.

I don't know what PlexAmp does. They might be using a proprietary Bluetooth profile that supports higher bandwidth, but that wouldn't work with most headphones. They could transcode the audio to lossy compression, making the whole thing moot.

That was kind of what I was asking. The tablet/phone are the ones running whatever player app is dealing with the audio. In dealing with that audio, presumably it's doing the decompression from FLAC and would be sending the resultant normal analog audio data over bluetooth to the speakers/earbuds. So that should mean it doesn't matter (to the headphones/earbuds) what format the audio was in since all it will ever see is pure analog audio. Unless the DACs are resident on the earbuds/headphones themselves?

 

[chucker23n1]

In dealing with that audio, presumably it's doing the decompression from FLAC and would be sending the resultant normal analog audio data over bluetooth to the speakers/earbuds. So that should mean it doesn't matter (to the headphones/earbuds) what format the audio was in since all it will ever see is pure analog audio. Unless the DACs are resident on the earbuds/headphones themselves?

Again, there is nowhere near enough bandwidth for uncompressed audio. And yes, the headphones just have DACs.

 

[MrRom92]

That was kind of what I was asking. The tablet/phone are the ones running whatever player app is dealing with the audio. In dealing with that audio, presumably it's doing the decompression from FLAC and would be sending the resultant normal analog audio data over bluetooth to the speakers/earbuds. So that should mean it doesn't matter (to the headphones/earbuds) what format the audio was in since all it will ever see is pure analog audio. Unless the DACs are resident on the earbuds/headphones themselves?

It’s not analog audio until it is converted by the DAC, which is in the Bluetooth device being streamed to. No analog signal is created or beamed out of the iPhone. It is still a digital stream. Bluetooth is an entirely digital communications protocol, and only sends/receives digital data.


Here’s how it works. No matter what format is being played on the device doing the streaming, it is fully digitally decoded on-device (this is not the same as conversion to analog), and then mixed with other system generated audio (notifications, OS chimes, app sounds, etc.)


THAT audio stream is then encoded with a lossy encoder to reduce the bitrate necessary to transmit it over Bluetooth’s limited bandwidth, and beamed digitally over Bluetooth to the receiving device, which digitally decodes that signal, and passes it to the DAC which turns the digital signal into an analog electrical voltage, which then gets passed to the amplifier which drives the speaker, which vibrates the air into your eardrums.

 

[Nsousa]

THAT audio stream is then encoded with a lossy encoder to reduce the bitrate necessary to transmit it over Bluetooth’s limited bandwidth, and beamed digitally over Bluetooth to the receiving device, which digitally decodes that signal, and passes it to the DAC which turns the digital signal into an analog electrical voltage, which then gets passed to the amplifier which drives the speaker, which vibrates the air into your eardrums.

Only thing missing is the pre-amp (anything with a Volume knob in the analogue domain).

 

[tehabe]

For Bluetooth a new audio codec is coming and I found one listening test which concluded that currently AAC is better than LC3, at least when from a lossy source: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,122575.msg1011716.html