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Apple Engineer Addresses Lack of Lossless Support on New AirPods Pro
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I'm not 'conflating' anything. Merely using your own analogy to show you how flawed your own thinking is.
Except none of these are actually facts. Just claims made on an internet forum. Claims I, and I suspect others, simply don't believe. No matter how loudly you keep banging that drum...
That's fine as long as you don't try to claim your test has some sort of scientific validity. If you want to do that you need to document your test methodology and the results in a way that allows others to review, replicate and validate it.
I apologize for not peer-reviewing something I did to satisfy my own curiosity.
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A waste of bandwidth certainly but a good use of marketing and that's what brings the money in.
No need to: as stated above, it's perfectly fine as long as it's not portrayed as a test that holds any kind of scientific validity.
This basically reduces its value in a discussion to "anecdotal evidence", which is fine: anecdotal evidence can have its place in a discussion as long as it's presented as such and it's addressed with full understanding of its many limitations.
Said that, even only for "your own curiosity", not having the test reviewed might lead to your "curiosity being satisfied" in an improper way: a wrong test methodology or mistake in interpreting the results might lead to the wrong conclusions. Basing further reasoning on these wrong conclusions can lead to further wrong conclusions.
No, 4K is in fact distinguishable, assuming either the screen is large enough or you're sitting close enough to it.
Our ears, however, aren't quite that great.
Even the Grammy Recording Academy can't change that (most) humans are not able to hear beyond 20 kHz. So for digital formats anything above 48 kHz is mostly pointless. Maybe it gives you more room when editing and mastering music but for the listener it doesn't really matter. The same goes for more than 16 bits.
My knowledge is probably not enough to argue against this (and I also don't have the time really go through it) but the question is, does it matter for the average person sitting in their home and listening to music. For them 44.1 kHz and 16 bit is more than good enough. There also won't hear the difference between 44.1 kHz/16 bit CD and that CD converted to 256 kbps AAC files.
Maybe a different mastering, also DTS-MA supports surround sound, it would certainly sound differently. There are million things which can influence the sound.
If wireless was lossless, ie 100% accurate then it could not include spatial audio which is a sound modification.
I'm not sure why you think you can demand features as a user of an off the shelf product. Apple is a market driven company that makes features because they think it will increase their market share in the market they want to be in. At this point, Apple does not appear to be interested in increasing the market by adding FLAC support.
I would like Apple to make sure they cover all my requirements, and yours too. Reality is though that Apple will only implement features that they want to build, where they think they will make lots of money. Many of my wishes will never be built, and many of the things that Apple builds are not for me. I'm choosing Apple as it ticks more boxes for me than other mobile vendors, and as the things I find most important are there. You can choose to go to another mobile device that does support FLAC, or you can find alternative software that runs on your iPhone that does support FLAC, or you can accept the not so perfect options that Apple provides.
I think the source is this.
Caveat: I don't consider the document linked to be accurate in many of the statements it makes, some of which are presented with no arguments in support of them (be it in the document itself or by reference) and sound more like an hi-resolution audio advertisement than an objective analysis. I advise to read it with a very hefty grain of salt.
Based on some of the things being said here, I think it's worth mentioning something.
If your playback system is one that's a typical 44.1/16-bit playback, and you have a .wav from a compact disc compressed into any compressed format and you play it back, the device reconstructs your file into a .wav to play it back to you.
You don't "play" .aac files.
Also, transparency isn't just opinion. Here's a test anyone can do. Get a file you find acceptable as a test sound. Then encode it, and then export the decode as an uncompressed file.
Basically, .wav -> .aac -> .wav
Then diff the original and reconstructed wav files. You may find that there's almost no or actually no difference depending on the codec used. (Remember codec literally is a smushed word of code and decode.)
When you get to variable rate AAC in the 320 range, you're just not going to see any differences in 16-bit audio when it's reconstructed.
If you're looking at 24-bit audio, and you're actually looking at all the decimals being dropped, there will be a difference but that difference is going down to 16-bit. You're going *down* to CD quality. So if you're playing in the realm of quality ABOVE compact disc levels, I can assure you that you are in the less-than-1% of people who care territory.
EDIT: Forgot… the test is actually very easy, so long as you have a wave editor that can put the two files together, inverting one. If you have anything other than silence, that's your diff.
If your playback system is one that's a typical 44.1/16-bit playback, and you have a .wav from a compact disc compressed into any compressed format and you play it back, the device reconstructs your file into a .wav to play it back to you.
You don't "play" .aac files.
Also, transparency isn't just opinion. Here's a test anyone can do. Get a file you find acceptable as a test sound. Then encode it, and then export the decode as an uncompressed file.
Basically, .wav -> .aac -> .wav
Then diff the original and reconstructed wav files. You may find that there's almost no or actually no difference depending on the codec used. (Remember codec literally is a smushed word of code and decode.)
When you get to variable rate AAC in the 320 range, you're just not going to see any differences in 16-bit audio when it's reconstructed.
If you're looking at 24-bit audio, and you're actually looking at all the decimals being dropped, there will be a difference but that difference is going down to 16-bit. You're going *down* to CD quality. So if you're playing in the realm of quality ABOVE compact disc levels, I can assure you that you are in the less-than-1% of people who care territory.
EDIT: Forgot… the test is actually very easy, so long as you have a wave editor that can put the two files together, inverting one. If you have anything other than silence, that's your diff.
👍🏿
Thanks I really needed this simple real world feedback without the hype. I previously owned AirPod Pro’s, 3x juggling between them and Sony’s WF-1000XM3’s and comfort, ambient sound and weight beat out the Sony’s.
I’ve moved onto the Beats Fit Pro’s for the soul reason of having a choice in Black! (Ear hair gets notice on non midnight dark skin with white earbuds. I may cave if Colorware has a discount on Boxing Day and still able to get AC+ with them in Black.
This is actually a GOOD thing with not going the proprietary route. AAC Apple shares without a license so if they go with another codec as long as no license fees is a very GOOD thing for us all and especially in these “EPIC-like” times or App Store-like times Apple is not going to be perceived in such a good light for long without a crazy onslaught of whiners and EU policy makers.
Lol Apple created AAC coded they SHOULD better BE THE best encoder out there! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Why?
Up until now …
Bandwidth: mobile networks in USA didnt have unlimited data. Also speeds of 3G really didn’t allow for such large music tracks of 20MB per track for say 10 playlists of about 20+ tracks to download directly from iTunes Store to an iPhone. Sure most used wifi then. But even at Apple Music launch doing all of that via streaming over LTE would be catastrophic costly to your mobile phone bill.
Selection and upload from artists:
Most artists don’t upload music for streaming in such sound quality.
Apple Music Spotify, SoundCloud etc are born of and for users that use mobile devices or cars to stream music. These stores are not born from and for DJs that play/host/stream music for large parties and clubs and venues that need super high quality to pump out at over 1000W RMS of speaker quality with low ohms across huge crowds.
Smartphone storage. iPhones for a very long time barely went above 64GB until iPhone 6 I believe. Android/S60/Microsoft smartphones mostly had MicroSD storage expansion but beyond 128GB during iTunes era was quite expensive! When 256GB was available on iPhones the cost of 256/512GB MicroSD cards still was costly unless discounts for the average consumer. Furthermore on board storage began getting faster, much faster by the iPhone X and that’s when you started to see Android devices shun expandable storage (MicroSD) which is VERY rare now. Also better security for Android not to have that.
Backups: the most important preventive reason for lossless music on streaming services as a norm was backup/restore space to cloud. With 5GB to content with on iOS you as a user would have to chose apps, data ( iMessage text history, app data, pictures, videos, and settings) over music to be restored in that quality, playlists, original tracks vs live vs remixes etc of songs of the same name. Android sure you can backup on your computer and directly restore on device like a usb key or keep on external storage as a major advantage or even use draft emails (waaay back before GDrive) But that latter part was a pain! iOS users iTunes restore took a PAINfully long time ti restore music back they way you had it.
Apple Music doesn’t have such a mechanism to restore music from computer to iPhone over wires or even Wi-Fi connection.
So I’d say those are good reasonable reasons why, beyond having created trails wireless headphones using Bluetooth which continually improves even after AirPods OG was released.
I hear people just hate anything Apple, will deny ever owning or using anything with their brand yet cannot ever explain why (even unreasonably, my GF included) lol. Yet they never know, realize and will never acknowledge Apple’s foresight or great contribution to the entire technology space that many of them love to have on their brands of choice.
In this case here, it’s
Truest wireless headphones with great audio quality, ANC first time and done right with ambient again first time as well as Spatial Audio, a third time first to this market segment.
Sure we want more YET we’re not even thinking about the costs and how that’ll bring a crap experience.
How much battery power is needed for playback and to receive lossless audio for True Wireless earphones even without ANC/Ambient sound? And at what weight and size to accommodate 7hrs+ playback for lossless audio?! How reliably can it be done?! AFLAC or what Sony has isn’t that reliable unfortunately but they don’t give up but their earphone weight and design that supports it with ANC/Ambient is much noticeably heavier and not as sleek and the comfort STILL isn’t anywhere close to being a match for even 1hr let alone forgetting them in your ears in most situations to even notice they were in your ears.
That pretty much encompasses the y you’re asking.
AAC was created by Fraunhofer, Dolby and others; Apple had no involvement.
That's fine, apology accepted, but don't expect others to accept your 'findings' as fact.
This is what I was saying. I posted up similar anecdotal findings; I just didn't try to present them as facts. In a world full of BS, I think it's vitally important to concentrate on establishing facts; from partisan media bias when reporting on politics, conflict etc, to understanding how marketing works. In this case, such marketing has led to some people thinking that Apple are somehow 'cheating' us by not offering something that science tells us is irrelevant anyway. It's also not a 'scam' that lossless is put in some brands of wireless ear/headphones, it's just marketing.
What's worse, is when others base their reasoning on such wrong conclusions. And here we are, with people moaning about not having lossless in consumer grade lower end and quite compromised audio equipment. All I want from a pair of £249 earphones, is that they connect easily, tick, they offer decent sound quality, tick, they are small and unobtrusive, tick, and that they offer some form of reasonable noise cancellation, tick. If I want the ultimate in sound quality, I'll be spending a lot more than £249.
Actually I didn't even spend £249. I had an £80 voucher from buying an iPad, so they were effectively £169. What annoys me slightly even so, is that had I waited a bit for Black Friday™, I could have effectively 'saved' another £25 or something. Oh well.
Forgive me, but isn't that confusing sound wave frequencies with digital sampling frequencies?
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.
Lossless is useful for 1) audio editing rather than playback, 2) for similar reasons, audio archival for later reëncoding. For example, transcoding from MP3 to AAC incurs more loss than from FLAC to MP3, then FLAC again to AAC.
It's not that useful for playback.
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.
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.
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In the end, the first Apple headphone to get Apple Lossless support through UWB will be the AirPods Max. Reason: there is enough space inside the AirPods Max physically to get a U1 chip in addition to the H2 chip.