Apple TV Won't Support Hi-Res Lossless at Launch, AirPods Max Wired Playback 'Will Not Be Completely Lossless'

[bsolar]

I read on diyaudio about someone trying to blind test speaker drivers, and they had to cancel because all they learned was that they couldn’t consistently hear ANY difference between ANY of the drivers…

That's the wrong approach, at least from a scientific point of view. Assuming that the experiment is flawed when its outcome contradicts what is expected is definitely not the right way to do it.

If you have an hypothesis, devise an experiment to test it, perform the experiment and the results contradict the hypothesis... the conclusion is not to cancel the experiment, it's to try to figure out what's going on.

I'm not arguing that the experiment might be flawed, it can definitely be the case, but it can also be that the experiment is well designed and one of the assumptions in the hypothesis is simply wrong.

My favourite analogy: Look at a bowl with 100 M&M’s. Now look at a bowl with 99 M&M’s. Can you tell which is which? Probably not. Now eat 100 M&M’s, and compare with eating 99 M&M’s. Can you tell the difference? Probably not. Now find 100 5-year olds and tell them they can each have one M&M. You should now have a very noticable auditory response letting you know if you had 100 or only 99… you changed the test conditions, so now the difference matters.

If you cannot tell which is which, the difference is irrelevant from the point of view of "fidelity". I'm not sure how the analogy works with the "splitting" compared to an audio sample, you suggest comparing e.g. different frequency components? Different frequency components can lead to the same perceived composite audio sample, especially given that human hearing has different responses to different frequency inputs.

 

[Velli]

Please also note that I am only defending my own arguments here, not audiophiles as a whole. I realize that there are some that will state that if you are listening to a lossy file, the sound will by definition be bad. That is not my belief at all. It all depends on a lot of factors. What I DO believe in, is avoiding deteriorations that there are no significant practical or economical reason to tolerate, and what constitutes “significant” is highly individual. I do not understand why you want to force me to tolerate unnessesary deterioration, detectable or not.

 

[bsolar]

It tells me I can only download my library and that it is controlled through Apple Music when I try to sync. Interesting. I will have to see if I have something set up wrong. And if I do, thank you for alerting me to this.

**Edit: It worked. I just had to manually delete my library on my phone to make the setting be recognized. Simply changing the setting wasn't enough for MacOS to recognize what I wanted to do. Thank you again.

Glad it worked. Note though that the iPhone's internal DAC is limited to 24bit/48kHz. It can be a good idea to convert audio with higher bitrates/sampling-frequencies down to those values (still in lossless format) and if done properly the result will be indistinguishable.

 

[Velli]

That's the wrong approach, at least from a scientific point of view. Assuming that the experiment is flawed when its outcome contradicts what is expected is definitely not the right way to do it.

If you have an hypothesis, devise an experiment to test it, perform the experiment and the results contradict the hypothesis... the conclusion is not to cancel the experiment, it's to try to figure out what's going on.

I'm not arguing that the experiment might be flawed, it can definitely be the case, but it can also be that the experiment is well designed and one of the assumptions in the hypothesis is simply wrong.



If you cannot tell which is which, the difference is irrelevant from the point of view of "fidelity". I'm not sure how the analogy works with the "splitting" compared to an audio sample, you suggest comparing e.g. different frequency components? Different frequency components can lead to the same perceived composite audio sample, especially given that human hearing has different responses to different frequency inputs.

1: I’m arguing that the assumption that is proven wrong, is that the testing method is valid. It has not been proven by anyone to my knowledge, that a difference that is detectable by the human ear is confirmable in a blind test. This is an assumption that I fundamentally disagree with, and you have provided precisely zero evidence why I should change that viewpoint.

2: You are obviously not familiar with the concept of abstract analogies, and want to translate 1:1. Pointless to carry on with that path. I’ll take the blame for that one. Bad habit.

You keep repeating the same argument, without answering my questions: Do you dismiss the idea that several undetectable errors can add up to a detectable one? It is a yes or no question.

 

[Velli]

Philosophically: When your only means of confirmation is a blind test, how are you going to scientifically confirm or deny a hypothesis that blind tests don’t work? The answer is, you can’t. This is why this debate will never, ever be settled. In the meantime, I will follow the path that has proven to ME to deliver the best sound in my system. I have enough practical experience with the objectivist approach, that a theoretical debate about it won’t change anything. Theory is great when your reading about audio. Always seems to be less so when you’re actually listening.

 

[bsolar]

I just did a very unscientific test using Michael Jackson's Billie Jean, AAC from Apple Music vs 24 bit 96 KHz from HDtracks, played back at the same level, and I can easily tell which version I'm listening to even without switching between them.

The difference you hear has likely nothing to do with the superior audio format, but simply to the fact that the HDtracks version is a completely different remaster. Of course if a different processing is applied to create a new master, the end result can be quite different no matter the audio format ultimately used.

Often there is quite a debate as of which version of a song or an album is the better, e.g. for Thriller a small thread here, or an overview of the dynamic range information for various Thriller versions here.

From the last link, this should be HDTracks's version, whereas this should be Apple Music's:

Purchased the basic 9 track album from the iTunes store in the USA on February 15th 2020. It is "Mastered for iTunes, Apple Digital Master." It just has the release year as 1982 listed as being sold from MJJ Productions. Unknown what year this re-master was actually released.

It seems clear to me they are completely different remasters, leading to audio differences which go well beyond any file format consideration simply due to differences in the processing.

Basically, the HDTracks version if properly converted to 24/48kHz lossless will sound just as well.

 

[Lazlow]

What you need​

You can listen to lossless on an iPhone or iPad updated to iOS or iPadOS 14.6 using:

• A wired connection to headphones, receivers, or powered speakers
• The built-in speakers

can't wait to listen to lossless on my iPhone's speaker 🙄

 

[SpringKid]

The difference you hear has likely nothing to do with the superior audio format, but simply to the fact that the HDtracks version is a completely different remaster. Of course if a different processing is applied to create a new master, the end result can be quite different no matter the audio format ultimately used.

Read my follow-up posts.

 

[bsolar]

1: I’m arguing that the assumption that is proven wrong, is that the testing method is valid. It has not been proven by anyone to my knowledge, that a difference that is detectable by the human ear is confirmable in a blind test. This is an assumption that I fundamentally disagree with, and you have provided precisely zero evidence why I should change that viewpoint.

The ABX methodology is well documented, including its rationale, not to mention that it's the de-facto standard test to determine whether audible differences between samples are perceivable and has been for decades. I have zero interested in "convincing" you though, so feel free to disagree with it as much as you want.

2: You are obviously not familiar with the concept of abstract analogies, and want to translate 1:1. Pointless to carry on with that path. I’ll take the blame for that one. Bad habit.

It's more that you presented a bad analogy which doesn't even support your own argument after even just a little scrutiny.

You keep repeating the same argument, without answering my questions: Do you dismiss the idea that several undetectable errors can add up to a detectable one? It is a yes or no question.

The answer is "no, I don't dismiss that idea". The point is "even if it's the case, it's irrelevant".

PS: On the last point, after I read some other comments I think what you are afraid of is the effect of subsequent lossy encoding. In that case you are correct that cumulating lossy encodings can lead to audible artifacts and it should be avoided. My discussion was more about discernible differences between 2 samples sourced from the same original where the only factor is a single round of different encodings.

 

[bsolar]

What I DO believe in, is avoiding deteriorations that there are no significant practical or economical reason to tolerate, and what constitutes “significant” is highly individual. I do not understand why you want to force me to tolerate unnessesary deterioration, detectable or not.

If you mean deterioration caused by lossy encodings, I actually agree since a lossy encoding per-definition discards information which is supposed to be within the human hearing range but it's assumed to be undetectable. That assumption might or might not be true, but information gets discarded still.

IMHO a very different discussion is the bits/sampling-frequency of a lossless encoding: in that case the only question is whether the sampling resolution is enough to cover the human hearing range. That question has very clear scientifically backed answers.

 

[MowgliWolf]

Regardless, that's just not how streaming of an audio file works.

Can you elaborate?

 

[MowgliWolf]

All the streaming services support offload playing. I almost never literally stream the music over the network.

Is that provided you have a subscription? As far as I can tell, that is the case with Spotify, Soundcloud Go and Google Play music but I very interested in additional insight on the matter.

 

[Chafka]

Correct. And again, there's no magic here, this is not my ears being special but me having experience in analysing minute differences in audio from many years of doing just that. I don't get why this is considered so out of this world odd.

Maybe this track is easier than others to distinguish, but the snare drum is really a dead giveaway where the transient is noticeably softer in the AAC version.

Fwiw. I get the same experience from the song I was discussing in my post. The crispness isn’t there.

 

[bsolar]

Read my follow-up posts.

I did: converting to AAC 256 can introduce audible differences. Converting to e.g. ALAC 24/48kHz should not.

 

[duffman9000]

You’re right statistical analysis doesn’t lead to definitive proof there is no difference. It proves there is no distinguishable difference in the current testing situation. Given the ABX tests that have been given, this means we know that with the vast majority of people’s ears and audio equipment, they can’t tell the difference. I will say my last sentence was not as specific as I indented and left it up for interpretation. What I meant to say was if there is no distinguishable difference with most people, then the difference is meaningless to most people. There are scientifically testable limits to the human senses. Using these limits and characteristics we know about the physics of audio, we can know the limits we need to take audio to be imperceivable to the vast majority of people. There will always be outliers, like you are with nickel. I’m also not trying to say there is no use for lossless audio. I’m not saying Apple or anyone else shouldn’t provide it. I’m saying for the vast majority of people on the vast majority of audio equipment, the difference is imperceivable

I’ll go out on a limb and say most people don’t know what good sound really sounds like. Most people don’t invest in discrete components and choose just an AVR. People then think an AVR is “good*” and those people are the majority.

*I used to think an AVR was good enough until I built my own semi discrete setup.

 

[vladi]

I am pretty positive that 9 out of 10 people on this thread could train their ears to hear the difference, especially Bluetooth people. It just takes a little bit of time investment to pay attention to what you are actually hearing and it takes some proper equipment which doesn't mean expensive equipment. A lot of proper headphones can be had for less than AirPods msrp.

 

[SpringKid]

I did: converting to AAC 256 can introduce audible differences. Converting to e.g. ALAC 24/48kHz should not.

Yes, and that's all I'm saying; it's not impossible to sometimes discern differences between hi-res and compressed audio due to artefacts that might be introduced. It will obviously not always be the case, though.

And no, I would definitely not hear the difference between 192 and 48 KHz.

 

[ErikGrim]

Again, the goal of the ABX methology is not to figure out what is "more enjoyable", it's to figure out whether there are objective discernible differences.

Which it can't. As a human being you are not a finely tuned enough instrument to pick up such minute differences. An ABX test where you listen to short samples over and over amounts to pure guesswork - even if you do pick up differences you won't be able to match it to the X as your mind can't keep two sounds in memory at the same time.

 

[TsMkLg068426]

I am confused so Apple TV 4K not current gen, but the previous gen will not support Dolby Atmos Spatial music? WTF? Then what devices are supported from the start.

 

[RTB30]

IMO lossless used to make a HUGE difference up until a few years ago when AAC compression got better. At least for the slightly more than casual listener. Audiophiles will still see the benefit

 

[iiiiiMAC!!!!!]

I don't know why there's so many people are up in arms over this feature. Majority of people wouldn't know the difference. I think it's a great option AND AT NO ADDITIONAL COST. Tidal HiFi... tried it out at discount prices... never could tell the difference.

I will try it out on my Apple TV 4K through my receiver system. Playing Apple Music through my system in its current form... I just reach for the vinyl.

Lol so you have to pick up and change the record everytime you want something different?

 

[Cayden]

I’ll go out on a limb and say most people don’t know what good sound really sounds like. Most people don’t invest in discrete components and choose just an AVR. People then think an AVR is “good*” and those people are the majority.

*I used to think an AVR was good enough until I built my own semi discrete setup.

I would say that’s most likely true as well. I think for the vast majority of consumers, the reason lossless won’t make a difference is due to their equipment, not due to a biological inability to actually hear a difference. I think it’s good Apple is bringing the change for the people who actually have the equipment capable of reproducing the accuracy of lossless audio, but I think for the vast majority it’ll just be a placebo. I have a couple “good-enough” pairs of headphones and experience mixing some DIY music, but I still have a hard time distinguishing 256 AAC vs FLAC with my equipment. I’m sure those with the correct equipment will be happy with the change

 

[tozz]

To me, is pretty sure Apple with lossless is in some reaction mode-maybe knee jerk is to strong, but with the new 4K Apple TV having the discontented HomePod pic on the box and their newest high-end headphones not supporting it fully even wired —something is really off.

Packaging is locale dependant, in Sweden there's no mention of the Homepod at all, it was never sold here officially either.

And if you read what the statement actually says, it's due to the conversion path (the DAC on the lighting cable using 3.5mm to lighting) that means you will get a conversion step using the AirPods Max with cable, it has nothing to do with the feature itself but rather how the signal travels. I don't know why you couldn't use a lighting to lighting cable for it to work, you'd have to ask Apple engineers on that one.

Just so that everyone understands this, no source connected via 3.5mm to lighting will be lossless on the AirPod Max, it's not specific to Apple Music.

 

[Abazigal]

To me, is pretty sure Apple with lossless is in some reaction mode-maybe knee jerk is to strong, but with the new 4K Apple TV having the discontented HomePod pic on the box and their newest high-end headphones not supporting it fully even wired —something is really off.

I fail to see how this is any different from other streaming music services offering the same feature, when they don't even make hardware of their own.

If you want lossless, you are by definition one of the minority who knows how to get it, and likely already have investment in the right equipment for it.

I think the real prize here is spatial audio (which is currently supported in at least 2 of their 3 AirPods models), and this seems to have largely gone unnoticed because everyone is falling over themselves to criticise Apple over a feature which by their very own admission, they lack the proper hardware to be able to hear it anyways.

It's really much ado over nothing, IMO.

 

[Velli]

The ABX methodology is well documented, including its rationale, not to mention that it's the de-facto standard test to determine whether audible differences between samples are perceivable and has been for decades. I have zero interested in "convincing" you though, so feel free to disagree with it as much as you want.



It's more that you presented a bad analogy which doesn't even support your own argument after even just a little scrutiny.




The answer is "no, I don't dismiss that idea". The point is "even if it's the case, it's irrelevant".

PS: On the last point, after I read some other comments I think what you are afraid of is the effect of subsequent lossy encoding. In that case you are correct that cumulating lossy encodings can lead to audible artifacts and it should be avoided. My discussion was more about discernible differences between 2 samples sourced from the same original where the only factor is a single round of different encodings.

The fact that you keep bashing my analogy even after i admitted it was poor, shows that you have zero interest in an actual discussion, only interest in showing you are right. EOD.