Apple Engineer Addresses Lack of Lossless Support on New AirPods Pro

[I7guy]

There’s no excuse for a tech company making a supposedly modern multimedia device not to support an incredibly common modern file format. In fact they already claim to “support” it on their device, it is listed in the specs and the hardware can decode it. Apple is only blocking you from actually adding the files to the device. IMO this is false/misleading advertising and should be grounds for a lawsuit.

Should be able to get a class action faster then Phil Schiller can say: "innovate my ....". Right?

Seriously, this would take a single intern a fraction of their daily lunch break to add support and push out an update to iTunes if they were given the task. This is a trillion dollar company. No other company has this problem. Nobody should be making excuses for them.

Fraction of their daily lunch break?

Imagine if the Photos app didn’t support JPEGs? If the Books app didn’t support PDFs? I wonder if the sycophants would still find a way to justify deliberately crippled software and anti-consumer behavior from daddy Tim.

Maybe the majority of people don't care about FLAC. What I know I want is something that sounds half decent wireless. Of course, "half decent" is purely subjective. But if Apple doesn't give you what you want , there are ways around it. And maybe the iphone 15 will have that magical something.

 

[jicon]

There’s no excuse for a tech company making a supposedly modern multimedia device not to support an incredibly common modern file format. In fact they already claim to “support” it on their device, it is listed in the specs and the hardware can decode it. Apple is only blocking you from actually adding the files to the device. IMO this is false/misleading advertising and should be grounds for a lawsuit.

Seriously, this would take a single intern a fraction of their daily lunch break to add support and push out an update to iTunes if they were given the task. This is a trillion dollar company. No other company has this problem. Nobody should be making excuses for them.

Imagine if the Photos app didn’t support JPEGs? If the Books app didn’t support PDFs? I wonder if the sycophants would still find a way to justify deliberately crippled software and anti-consumer behavior from daddy Tim.

I imagine there might be one possibility...

Push for their own format used by the iTunes Store. Once you accept another option, there's possibility to lose some stickiness with customers.

Ogg Vorbis I know was something called for in the iPod days back when Steve Jobs got questions from the audience after presentations... his answer was something along the lines of 'not big enough audience using the format for us to care', but I question if there ever was a motive to have people use m4a files with no license cost, and virtually no other player at the time utilizing the format. What you got from the iTunes store was the listening standard.

 

[Nermal]

Double-blind tests show over and over that almost nobody can distinguish bitrates that high.

The first time I heard some 96 kHz music I commented to a couple of friends about how it sounds so much better. I later discovered that the computer was downsampling it to 48 kHz... the placebo effect is real.

 

[MrRom92]

I imagine there might be one possibility...

Push for their own format used by the iTunes Store. Once you accept another option, there's possibility to lose some stickiness with customers.

Ogg Vorbis I know was something called for in the iPod days back when Steve Jobs got questions from the audience after presentations... his answer was something along the lines of 'not big enough audience using the format for us to care', but I question if there ever was a motive to have people use m4a files with no license cost, and virtually no other player at the time utilizing the format. What you got from the iTunes store was the listening standard.

I do know that early on behind the scenes there were internal discussions and Jobs wanted FLAC as a part of Apple’s software. But this was at a time when they were not very friendly to the concept of open source software, they wanted the creators of FLAC to sign off on a very restrictive agreement - they essentially wanted complete control and ownership of FLAC - and their requests were rightfully refused.

That is the historical context. ALAC was born from that failure and designed as Apple’s proprietary lossless encoder. Of course, the irony of the situation is that Apple has since open-sourced ALAC as well, yet it remains a bad clone of a format, still just as poor of a choice as it was when first introduced.

 

[Chaos215bar2]

I wonder if my hearing is truly bad or if people simply have a placebo effect.

Tried Master, Atmos and 360 Real Audio on Tidal and I hear no difference to regular 320kbs on Spotify, certainly don’t feel „emerged into the experience of feeling like I am at a concert hall“ as marketing always says

Spacial audio (e.g. Atmos) isn’t just higher quality. If you can’t gear the difference between that and stereo, either you’re either not listening to what you think you are, or you’re missing some pretty obvious differences.

 

[fibrizo]

Seriously, this would take a single intern a fraction of their daily lunch break to add support and push out an update to iTunes if they were given the task. This is a trillion dollar company. No other company has this problem. Nobody should be making excuses for them.

Imagine if the Photos app didn’t support JPEGs? If the Books app didn’t support PDFs? I wonder if the sycophants would still find a way to justify deliberately crippled software and anti-consumer behavior from daddy Tim.

Let me start with the fact I am an audiophile. I own an exceedingly large number of headphones, some costing significantly more than the airpods max, or even heck my iphone 14 pro max etc. Add that to various DACs and AMPs, and I'll straight up say, the airpods pro, max or anything are just normal consumer headphones. Which don't get me wrong, are great. I use airpod pros, and the sony headphones all the time. It's a matter of diminishing returns. When I'm out and about and there's outside noise etc and I'm not focusing intently, for all intents and purposes I cannot head the difference and need the full setup and attention to truly appreciate lossless. And heck in the Sony App, they let you choose reliability in connection vs audio quality, which apple does not. The issue here is bluetooth itself. It's a low power connection with currently limited bandwidth. In an ideal world with an ideal connection, it's certainly more than enough for flac, alac etc. But the real world is not that ideal. Even with low bandwidth lossy codecs we still get occasional interruptions, and there's code to keep the data queued, and synchronized. To add another codec that would probably be not useful to the vast majority and continue to support it, while not a huge task, isn't so insignifcant that someone can do it on part of their daily lunch break. That's just hyperbolic.

Also your other examples are equally hyperbolic. If you wanted to use accurate examples, then the Photos app not supporting Oxipng (a lossless compressed format for images), easy enough to support. And iBooks would not support folders of Tiff files for books (again another lossless compress format used for scanning books).

 

[MrRom92]

Spacial audio (e.g. Atmos) isn’t just higher quality. If you can’t gear the difference between that and stereo, either you’re either not listening to what you think you are, or you’re missing some pretty obvious differences.

Atmos and spatial audio have very valid use cases. Headphones and other 2 channel stereo systems are not one of them. Anyone thinking they are experiencing Atmos on AirPods or any form of earbuds is being scammed and drinking the Kool Aid a bit too eagerly.

 

[MrRom92]

Let me start with the fact I am an audiophile. I own an exceedingly large number of headphones, some costing significantly more than the airpods max, or even heck my iphone 14 pro max etc. Add that to various DACs and AMPs, and I'll straight up say, the airpods pro, max or anything are just normal consumer headphones. Which don't get me wrong, are great. I use airpod pros, and the sony headphones all the time. It's a matter of diminishing returns. When I'm out and about and there's outside noise etc and I'm not focusing intently, for all intents and purposes I cannot head the difference and need the full setup and attention to truly appreciate lossless. And heck in the Sony App, they let you choose reliability in connection vs audio quality, which apple does not. The issue here is bluetooth itself. It's a low power connection with currently limited bandwidth. In an ideal world with an ideal connection, it's certainly more than enough for flac, alac etc. But the real world is not that ideal. Even with low bandwidth lossy codecs we still get occasional interruptions, and there's code to keep the data queued, and synchronized. To add another codec that would probably be not useful to the vast majority and continue to support it, while not a huge task, isn't so insignifcant that someone can do it on part of their daily lunch break. That's just hyperbolic.

Also your other examples are equally hyperbolic. If you wanted to use accurate examples, then the Photos app not supporting Oxipng (a lossless compressed format for images), easy enough to support. And iBooks would not support folders of Tiff files for books (again another lossless compress format used for scanning books).

I think you are misunderstanding my statement. I’m not talking directly about any AirPods being able to play them or not. I’m talking about actually getting the files onto an iPhone in the first place.

It would be VERY simple for Apple to add support for FLAC to iTunes - there is no hyperbole there. They are actively blocking you from importing the files to sync to your iPhone’s music library, and currently iTunes is the only official method to add files to your iPhone’s music library. So this should be rectified. iTunes is realistically the only roadblock here.

The file formats you mentioned are not common consumer/deliverable standards.

 

[MrRom92]

The first time I heard some 96 kHz music I commented to a couple of friends about how it sounds so much better. I later discovered that the computer was downsampling it to 48 kHz... the placebo effect is real.

there’s any number of reasons why it may have sounded better than whatever you were comparing it to, even after downsampling. There’s also any number of reasons why a 96khz file very well may sound worse than a similar recording at a standard 44.1khz.

To assume that a higher bit depth or sampling rate automatically equates to “better” sound would be wrong and a complete misunderstanding of the technicalities involved.

I’m also not sure how high resolution audio got dragged into this discussion. It is tangentially related to the topic of lossless and lossy encoders, but still really a separate matter altogether. The main issue here on this story is that AirPods, and the Bluetooth protocol in general, don’t even have enough bandwidth to reliably transmit audio losslesly at “standard resolution” 16/44.1khz - what has been considered the consumer standard for digital audio since 1982.

 

[avatuar99]

First of all nobody can tell the difference with lossless audio. Second the tiny airpods drivers are not good enough to reproduce lossless hi-res details anyway. Of course they know that but people keep wanting it. I don’t see what people are looking for… the recording studios don’t use magical hi-res mics anyway and their singers and guitar players are not talented enough to listen to anyway with their auto tune, retakes and punching and stuff like that

 

[xmx1024]

It’s been proven numerous times that lossless is pretty much indistinguishable from a good quality MP3 file; certainly in this kind of equipment.
It would just be a waste of bandwidth.

Maybe with pedestrian equipment or damaged ears. The Tidal blind test was a great way to blind test people I knew and most were able to distinguish even just with a pair of athm50x

 

[arnette]

Why in the world are most of these comments arguing AGAINST lossless quality?!? You are all consumers of Apple if you’re hearing Apple Lossless (or Apple NOT lossless), why are you defending the lack of it??!? Push for more in your dollar spend!!

 

[Adorable8]

It’s been proven numerous times that lossless is pretty much indistinguishable from a good quality MP3 file; certainly in this kind of equipment.
It would just be a waste of bandwidth.

Grossly disagree.
Regardless of the mp3 encoder, mp3 encoder settings, or hours and hours and years of trying to encode some of the toughest-to-encode-in-mp3-and-sound-transparent music tracks, there are tracks that simply sound awful in lossy mp3.
Naturally, because Apple has No lossless codec for Airpods, and no built-in headphone jack (or hq 3.5mm daq), the majority of wireless Apple headphone users simply don't have the right setup or equipment to hear such a difference.
Roll over to head-fi.org and there's more than enough lossless equipment and listeners that can discern the difference.

 

[Adorable8]

Out of curiosity, what makes you say this?

I'll jump in and argue why another lossless codec that isn't the market #1?
FLAC has already established itself across major music services, and introducing something different but does the same merely splits the market, confuses the consumer, and adds nothing to the quality.

 

[drumcat]

said that Apple does not believe that current Bluetooth technology is a limiting factor in audio quality for the AirPods.

THE ACTUAL QUOTE:

> "We don't think that the codec currently is the limitation of audio quality on Bluetooth products."


Some comprehension here, team. It's not the codec; it IS the Bluetooth standard. Only so much data can go via BT. Codecs squeeze information down, but there are limits to what can be done with *lossless*. True lossless means every bit has to be there, and Bluetooth cannot handle that bandwidth. Bluetooth is absolutely the limiting factor.

EDIT: To be fair to BT, AAC 256 is incredibly transparent. I think the only fair thing here is to leave BT as low power. If you want really truly lossless, start making the headsets listen as a wi-fi device. BT isn't designed for massive data; it's a power saving format.

 

[Adorable8]

You're supposed to buy the same music you already have over and over again every time a new format is out. Vinyl, CD, iTunes music, now streaming.

It's not like Apple is still selling a device that can hold your whole library... I'd love a simple player where you just slide in a standard SSD drive in and just have simple file browser and playback buttons. Like an updated version of an old iPod really.

Updated?
Only one with a SSD slot I can think of is the Aurender Flow that's probably out of production.
FLOW

I'd say today, that's the A&K DAPs.
E.g. Ak Ultima with up to 1.25TB of storage using 1TB microsd cards.

 

[Artemis70]

There’s no excuse for a tech company making a supposedly modern multimedia device not to support an incredibly common modern file format. In fact they already claim to “support” it on their device, it is listed in the specs and the hardware can decode it. Apple is only blocking you from actually adding the files to the device. IMO this is false/misleading advertising and should be grounds for a lawsuit.

Seriously, this would take a single intern a fraction of their daily lunch break to add support and push out an update to iTunes if they were given the task. This is a trillion dollar company. No other company has this problem. Nobody should be making excuses for them.

Imagine if the Photos app didn’t support JPEGs? If the Books app didn’t support PDFs? I wonder if the sycophants would still find a way to justify deliberately crippled software and anti-consumer behavior from daddy Tim.

Comparing JPEGs and PDFs to FLAC is interesting. FLAC is a niche market, while JPEGs and PDFs are everywhere. They don't compare at all.

The fact that it is technically possible and perhaps easy is not relevant to Apple. This is a niche market that Apple is not targeting.

 

[zapmymac]

Well if I was in my 20’s I would enjoy lossless, and I’d probably stick with a company that provided that…and repeat customer, in buying their phone/music device.

what’s wrong with pushing the industry forward?

BT5.3 LC3 should be standard in my just purchased AirPods Pro 2’s!
the iPhone 14 pro has BT5.3

we can’t even verify if the LC3 ‘optional’ hardware/software stack is there; stop being coy, and move us forward!!!

 

[Mindnoise]

The problem with 'lossless' music, is that to listen to it in order to really hear the benefits, you need some pretty decent kit. Either a decent hi-fi set up, or some very good earphones. IE; stuff that's superior to pretty much any wireless ear of headphones. I have done my own 'trials' with MP3 files at various quality, and 'lossless' music via CD. And above 192Kbps, you need progressively higher quality hi-fi gear to actually discern any difference at all. By 320Kbps, I could not tell the difference. Now that's entirely subjective and everyone's ears are different, but I'd be confident that not many people over 30, or even 20, could tell the difference either.

The next, and possibly most important factor, is 'does it actually matter'. For the vast majority of people, I'd say no. A lot of my older MP3 collection is pretty poorly encoded by current standards, but I can still enjoy the music. I'm fairly fussy about sound, yet I enjoy my APP2s, even though I know they are some way off 'proper' ear/headphones (ie stuff that costs many hundreds, if not thousands of pounds). At home, I have a lot of music ripped as lossless files, though some fairly decent speakers, and that experience is improved by having better quality source files. But for just walking about in a noisy environment, then APPs or indeed most basic ear/headphones are fine. Because I just enjoy the music.

'Lossless' audio is pretty much a gimmick. It has potential for high end systems, and multi channel recordings, but tbh for the vast majority, it's like having a car that can drive at 150mph, whilst most people have neither the skill nor the suitable environment to use the vehicle to anywhere near its true potential. Actually, not even like that most of the time. The average set of ear/headphones sold will be some way below the 'hi-fi' standard, very much in the 'consumer' range, so more like say a basic lower end Ford or whatever.

“'Lossless' audio is pretty much a gimmick.”

Actually lossless is an established audio standard, it is MP3 that is the gimmick.

Yes, I’m an audiophile.
Yes, I care about lossless on my fancy system.
But no, I don’t think it matters to me one bit when listening to music on the go.

ANC on the AirPods Pro 2 is a game changer for me and I can actually hear the music I’m playing on my commute. Can I hear if it’s lossless, in this use case, don’t care one bit.

 

[sorgo †]

“'Lossless' audio is pretty much a gimmick.”

Actually lossless is an established audio standard, MP3 is the gimmick.

Yes, I’m an audiophile.
Yes, I care about lossless on my fancy system.
But no, I don think it matters to me one bit when listening to music on the go.

ANC on the AirPods Pro 2 is a game changer for me and I can actually hear the music I’m playing on my commute. Can I hear if it’s lossless, in this use case, don’t care one bit.

100%, also I don’t care what anyone says (I too am an “audiophile”) there is ABSOLUTELY a discernible difference with higher-bitrate music even over Bluetooth. Heck, I can even tell a difference listening to ‘lossless’ Apple Music with the speakers on my iPhone 😂

It’s just…there. I took a hearing test recently and do have some hearing loss, so no I don’t think it has anything to do with that. It’s merely a matter of discernment.

 

[Aruchizan]

ALAC’s shortcomings are well documented, I can’t be bothered to really go indepth on any of these things for the millionth time,

You typed quite a bit for someone who claimed to not be bothered, just saying. If you're willing to explain further, I have a couple more questions, I'm just trying to learn here so I appreciate your help.

...compared to FLAC, ALAC is less efficient, less secure...

What does this mean? How are these audio files less efficient or less secure? They're audio files. I'm not even arguing with you, I just genuinely don't understand.

less supported outside of the apple ecosystem

I'm fully in the Apple ecosystem, so this is fine with me.

...less adopted by the consumers who are actually willing to build a personal music library

My library is ALAC. (And, obviously, that's why I'm reaching out to you. I've never heard of this stuff concerning ALAC before.) I've felt/been in the minority since before music streaming services became a thing, but I like having/maintaining my own library, and generally listening to albums in full. For a long time, I was keeping my library as 320kbps MP3s, but a couple years ago decided to make the jump to ALAC when I realized Bandcamp offered it and I had the space for it. I now maintain a library and listen to it through a macOS/iOS app called Doppler. This is neither here or there, just thought I'd offer context and my situation.

...whereas FLAC is an archival grade format designed with data integrity in mind. ALAC was only ever designed as a proprietary Apple format to lock people into their ecosystem...

What makes FLAC an "archival grade format"? What makes ALAC not one?

There’s no legitimate reason anyone would ever willingly use it if presented with the option of ALAC or FLAC.

I'm in the Apple ecosystem, so I figured the A standing for Apple meant it would be my best option for playing high-quality audio with Apple devices (not just Macs or iPhones, but the headphones [aka various AirPods models] themselves). The file sizes seem similar when I download albums through Bandcamp, so I just looked at the two as a compatibility thing. I'm sure there are things Apple isn't doing for reasons I don't understand concerning other file formats (e.g. FLAC not playing in Apple's Music.app), but ALAC seemed like a safe bet.

Thanks again for your help and time.

 

[guzhogi]

It would be really nice to see Apple develop a proprietary audio format specifically designed for working with Apple products with the potential to be far more superior than Bluetooth

I don't particularly want yet another proprietary format. I've heard that some companies make wifi headphones. Why not do something like that?

While it is a bummer that the AirPods can’t support lossless yet, there is no legitimate reason that FLAC support on their devices is practically nonexistent as it currently is.

Want to know something really strange? You can play FLAC files in Quicktime, but not in the Music app.

I'm irritated that Apple still hasn't released any headphones that can do lossless. Plus, Apple doesn't make any devices that can playback high-def lossless without needing a USB DAC, even on devices with a headphone jack. All this especially when there's a much wider adoption of lossless music than Spatial Audio music.

 

[teh_hunterer]

He's right though, for most people, reliability is everything. Everyone notices when one or both earbuds drop out. Pretty much no one (according to blind tests) will notice lossless support in comparison to the quality offered now.

Yep, and it has to be said that AirPods are very damn far away from reliable. They constantly drop out, fall out of sync, refuse to switch devices, one of them stops working randomly, etc etc etc.

 

[Mindnoise]

It’s merely a matter of discernment.

Exactly. If you don’t care for it ignore it, no use arguing about it. (Oops…, I forgot it’s the interweb after all)

I’m reminded of a coworker who raved about a bottle of wine, cause it was written up in the press as a must have.

I got myself a bottle. And I thought, “You like this crap”. lOl

 

[ThisBougieLife]

The first time I heard some 96 kHz music I commented to a couple of friends about how it sounds so much better. I later discovered that the computer was downsampling it to 48 kHz... the placebo effect is real.

Yep. And the quality of the recording matters far more than bitrate.