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Apple says using Max with $35 Lightning to 3.5 mm Audio Cable comes "close" to Lossless quality . . . 95% of Lossless?
- Thread starter Luba
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92.54356%. I just typed in some random number. Let me ask you, how would anyone know? Even Apple probably won't know it.
I had no idea that Apple wouldn't know. If they knew enough to say it's close I figured they knew how to quantify it.
There is either:
Lossless - No compression
Lossy - compression
Close to lossless - compression
It's Apple's spin on things (from a PR point of view, close to lossless sounds better than lossy or compressed audio, which is essentially what you are getting).
The whole Apple Music, are the headphones, homepod supported? Lossy? lossless? it's a disaster!
Lossless - No compression
Lossy - compression
Close to lossless - compression
It's Apple's spin on things (from a PR point of view, close to lossless sounds better than lossy or compressed audio, which is essentially what you are getting).
The whole Apple Music, are the headphones, homepod supported? Lossy? lossless? it's a disaster!
The audio quality over bluetooth is likely indiscernible from wired. They both should be audibly transparent. Lossy audio at a decent data rate sounds the same to human ears as lossless.
Audiophools sometimes worry more about sound they can't hear than the sound they actually can.
Audiophools sometimes worry more about sound they can't hear than the sound they actually can.
Many lossy formats are "close to lossless". Lossless means 100% lossless, otherwise it simply is lossy.
If you buy "one hamburger" and get "almost one hamburger", then there is something missing, even if it almost looks like "one"
But personally I do not focus too much on that feature. You simply do not hear the difference in a mostly noisy environment.
If you buy "one hamburger" and get "almost one hamburger", then there is something missing, even if it almost looks like "one"
But personally I do not focus too much on that feature. You simply do not hear the difference in a mostly noisy environment.
Should be this one.
Lightning to 3.5 mm Audio Cable (1.2m) - White
This cable allows you to connect your Beats Solo Pro headphones to 3.5 mm audio ports. It can also connect your iOS or iPadOS device to 3.5 mm audio ports.
www.apple.com
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You are probably looking at adapters that are not made by Apple (I did the same thing). But as the ones made by everyone else - at this point - rather than Apple are not bi-directional. They are for sending audio from the Lightning end (which would be in your iPhone/iPad) to the audio connector (which would be in a speaker, etc.), not the other direction.
The more accurate term for it is "audibly transparent". That means that in a direct comparison with lossless, human ears can't discern a difference. AAC is audibly transparent at around 192. If you add VBR, it's probably transparent at 128. Apple Music is AAC 256 VBR. It is certainly audibly transparent.
Just picked up a pair of open back headphones and I was wondering if I could use the lightning to 3.5 cable to pass lossless to those or am I stuck using the lightning to 3.5 dongle and then a 3.5 cable to the headphones?
I believe the DAC in the Lightning cables that come with the iPhone accepts only 256kbps AAC audio (it is a small cheep/integrated device). So you will likely need a 3ed party DAC.
For reference the Lightning cables made for the AirPods are ADC (opposite of what you need) and not applicable.
so it’s only 3.5mm to lightning for audio not lightning(from iphone) to 3.5mm? bummer. guess i’m stuck living that dongle life to audio cable.
Thank you. I think I was getting hung up on the fact that it didn’t work with the APM.
No problem.
I think the only reason the APM do not support lossless is because everything has to pass through the built-in DAC. I’m really hoping that it’s not a hardware issue so it’s possible that Apple can change that with a firmware update.
So you're thinking it's the DAC in the APM that's the issue? If a lightning to lightning cable existed it wouldn't give us lossless on APM?
There is a processor inside the AirPod Max. It controls the microphones and equalization to correct the EQ as the position of the cups change, and it has the head tracking for the spatial audio. It might do other kinds of processing as well. The chip is limited in how big a file it can process. We are told that it operates with files in bluetooth codecs only.
What I mean is how does it make the sound quality worse? It’s still encoding and decoding AAC, so how do the other processes affect it?