Could H1 support hi res?

[H-B0mb]

Just bought APM and although I love the sound I’m not sure if I’m going to keep them. I guess after spending 549 on headphones I want to ensure there’s some level of future proofing.

Wondering if the H1 chips could support hi res or even cd quality sound if apple ever allowed for it.

Thoughts?

 

[russell_314]

Just bought APM and although I love the sound I’m not sure if I’m going to keep them. I guess after spending 549 on headphones I want to ensure there’s some level of future proofing.

Wondering if the H1 chips could support hi res or even cd quality sound if apple ever allowed for it.

Thoughts?

I think you bought the wrong headphones if you're planning on audiophile use. They're meant for Bluetooth and will give really good sound from all the reviews I've heard but as MKBHD put it best they are for "luxury listening" not audiophile use. Go out and spend about 2k on some nice wired headphones and maybe another 2k on one of the new Sony Walkmans

 

[alee]

There is no future-proofing expected - the H1 does a lot of things but it's still fundamentally Bluetooth. The AirPods will continue to work up until the point the battery gives out. You'll continue to get periodic firmware updates with no release notes. They *could* introduce a new codec, but that's about it. Otherwise, what you get is what you get. I would not recommend you get them hoping for some future capability they will gift you via an update. Apple wants you on new hardware, as often as possible.

More likely, Apple will release something better to replace it and you'll dump your headphones like a bad date in favor of the younger/prettier one. The only thing we don't know is the product cycle length on the Max... is it a new pair of cans every 1 yr, 2 yr or longer.

 

[Absrnd]

There was talk from a Youtuber that it might me possible for Apple the stream the data, not as music, and have the Max decode the data into music again on the fly.
That might work to have better audio quality, but is an idea at the moment.

 

[Closingracer]

There was talk from a Youtuber that it might me possible for Apple the stream the data, not as music, and have the Max decode the data into music again on the fly.
That might work to have better audio quality, but is an idea at the moment.

That would produce so much lag it’s not worth it

 

[Absrnd]

That would produce so much lag it’s not worth it

Lag does not matter when just listening to music.

 

[tomashi]

seems to be that the limitation of audio quality will be the headphones themselves and not the inability to receive higher quality audio files. put these back to back against a true 'high end' wired pair of headphones with the same Spotify source and the high end headphones win everyday and twice on Sunday.

given that, this isn't trying to beat those high end headphones.

 

[Julien]

I think you bought the wrong headphones if you're planning on audiophile use. They're meant for Bluetooth and will give really good sound from all the reviews I've heard but as MKBHD put it best they are for "luxury listening" not audiophile use. Go out and spend about 2k on some nice wired headphones and maybe another 2k on one of the new Sony Walkmans

If (I know not much of a chance in hell, but) they can be updated to support the LHDC codec then it could do (lossy) hi res. LHDC supports up to 96kHz/24bit/900kbps audio. Also there is another codec LDAC that is high res but is proprietary Sony and has poor connectivity/latency.

Of course Apple would need to offer ALAC Apple Music files too.

​

 

[JasonHB]

seems to be that the limitation of audio quality will be the headphones themselves and not the inability to receive higher quality audio files. put these back to back against a true 'high end' wired pair of headphones with the same Spotify source and the high end headphones win everyday and twice on Sunday.

given that, this isn't trying to beat those high end headphones.

You go on about high end headphones and audio quality yet you use the worst sounding streaming service around as an example lol

Spotify sound quality is terrible, if you want decent sounding streaming, you have to look at Qo buzz, Tidal or Deezer, in that order.

Jason

 

[tomashi]

Point is that APM can’t even fully take advantage of Spotify. I’m not rating streaming services.

 

[JasonHB]

Point is that APM can’t even fully take advantage of Spotify. I’m not rating streaming services.

You say that, but I can hear a big difference between Apple Music and hi-res services such as Tidal Masters and Qobuz. The hi-res services sound much better, so whilst I know that the APM’s don’t support hi-res codecs, there is something going on and they definitely show the improvements with better sources.

You said that the limitation on audio quality will be the headphones themselves, but they clearly resolve the improvements in higher resolution audio formats

Jason

 

[iBug2]

If someone can point out which source is Apple AAC and which source is lossless in a blind A/B test, then congratz. I never could, even with my 20000$ speakers.