Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Don't Buy Into Apple's Hype About AirPods Max Gaining Lossless Audio
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I tried so hard over the course of the last 15 years to convince myself I was hearing meaningful differences.
If they are there, I could no longer hear them as my age has gone along
I both agree and disagree.
But I'm happy to see so much debate on this topic
But honestly, moving to lossless is just a best way to close this debate once for all.
It's a good thing and a good signal for music and audio quality.
PS: If needed there's a good test to reevaluate your personal position on that topic
> https://abx.digitalfeed.net/
But I'm happy to see so much debate on this topic
I'm exactly in the same situation. I even convinced myself that even if I can't hear it, it will provide better support for EQ, or even that I would feel less ear fatigue and less brain processing when listening over long period of time.
But honestly, moving to lossless is just a best way to close this debate once for all.
It's a good thing and a good signal for music and audio quality.
PS: If needed there's a good test to reevaluate your personal position on that topic
> https://abx.digitalfeed.net/
Last edited:
You don’t hear a difference. It’s all in your head. Keep wasting money though, my stock portfolio loves it.
44khz is the sample rate, 22khz is the frequency of the tone - these are different things!
Apple's fantastic marketing was fantastic, because in a creative and innovative way, they communicated creative and innovative products and features.
Now, they are overhyping products and features and they're falling below expectations. We might be witnessing the start of the fall of a giant.
Who will replace Apple?
Now, they are overhyping products and features and they're falling below expectations. We might be witnessing the start of the fall of a giant.
Who will replace Apple?
Aren't the AirPods Max just Bluetooth headphones? And don't they need at least one adapter to connect to an actual headphone jack? I doubt they sound that great with "lossless" audio if they are primarily Bluetooth. And that $500 price... I can get real studio quality headphones for 50% less, and they directly connect to a real headphone jack.
So weird how people can't seem to tell the difference between AAC and lossless, when I can hear the difference immediately on just my mid-level desktop speakers. On my full-sized audio system the difference is glaring. And while the difference between lossless and hi-resolution lossless is less, it's still there.
Anyone with a decent sound system can tell the difference if you know what to listen for. AAC is just MP3 done correctly, but no lossy codec should be the standard when people can hook up their Apple TV, or stream from an iPhone, to a home audio system. And while 48/24 lossless sounds great, but difference between that and hi-res is in detail.
For example, if you're listening to the sound of a violin, the difference is in hearing the notes played, as opposed to hearing the sound of the bow on the strings. Or not just hearing whether it's a Strat or Telecaster, but what gauge strings are being played. Some of us want to hear that realism. Why should we be denied just because "most people" can't tell the difference? Especially when the hi-resolution version is just sitting there on Apple's servers.
Let me put it another way: why even bother with 4K televisions, when most people can't tell the difference between that and 1080p? Why bother with high-resolution photographs, or even the retina screen on your iPhone, when most people can't tell the difference? Why are people wanting 120mHz refresh rates on their screens when most people can't tell the difference?
Lastly, not being able to stream high-res audio from Apple Music is bad enough, but not being able to stream high-resolution audio files from my Mac is just stupid. Why does my Apple TV take the extra step of down-sampling those files instead of just passing the audio full-resolution, like my 9 year old Blu-ray player does? It's just lame.
Anyone with a decent sound system can tell the difference if you know what to listen for. AAC is just MP3 done correctly, but no lossy codec should be the standard when people can hook up their Apple TV, or stream from an iPhone, to a home audio system. And while 48/24 lossless sounds great, but difference between that and hi-res is in detail.
For example, if you're listening to the sound of a violin, the difference is in hearing the notes played, as opposed to hearing the sound of the bow on the strings. Or not just hearing whether it's a Strat or Telecaster, but what gauge strings are being played. Some of us want to hear that realism. Why should we be denied just because "most people" can't tell the difference? Especially when the hi-resolution version is just sitting there on Apple's servers.
Let me put it another way: why even bother with 4K televisions, when most people can't tell the difference between that and 1080p? Why bother with high-resolution photographs, or even the retina screen on your iPhone, when most people can't tell the difference? Why are people wanting 120mHz refresh rates on their screens when most people can't tell the difference?
Lastly, not being able to stream high-res audio from Apple Music is bad enough, but not being able to stream high-resolution audio files from my Mac is just stupid. Why does my Apple TV take the extra step of down-sampling those files instead of just passing the audio full-resolution, like my 9 year old Blu-ray player does? It's just lame.
Update — March 25: While the increased sound quality of lossless audio is not perceptible to everyone, it is worth keeping in mind that the upgrade will unlock another benefit when paired with ultra-low latency. According to Apple's announcement, these two upgrades combined will make the AirPods Max with a USB-C port the only headphones that enable musicians to both create and mix in Personalized Spatial Audio with head tracking.
With respect, I'd say this March 25th "update" to your story is important-enough to warrant either a whole-new story (given the title of this one) OR an outright retraction. This makes the AirPods Max (with a USB-C port) singularly significant for those of us who create music for a living.
With respect, I'd say this March 25th "update" to your story is important-enough to warrant either a whole-new story (given the title of this one) OR an outright retraction. This makes the AirPods Max (with a USB-C port) singularly significant for those of us who create music for a living.
Right, it’s a big deal for 2 reasons:
1. You are using Apple’s renderer, meaning you should have theoretically perfect translation into Apple Music.
2. Head tracking is supported (which I personally hate), which is a differentiator. I think there’s only one (?) piece of software that emulates Apple’s specific implementation of this, and it definitely doesn’t do it with near zero latency.
“Personalized” spatial audio is unique to apple and something no other renderer offers but that should theoretically just make the sound more neutral, still a good thing and that’s what they can verifiably claim is truly novel.
Having all of this with one non-proprietary cable, no additional plugins, etc. is excellent even taking price out of the equation. With price involved if your focus is Audio and not Film I could see a good argument for mainly checking your Atmos (Spatial) mixes on these because .001% or less of your audience will have a real full Atmos system they use for music. Absolutely nobody is doing that except Audio engineers checking out what other engineers are doing, but a whole lot of people are using these headphones.
It just proves this saying true: people can hear differences in equipment; audiophiles are the only ones that care about them.
How else can one explain the popularity of Spotify and Pandora? The quality of music recording these days does not help either.
I don’t think you understand what low latency audio is or why it’s useful for audio professionals and artists. Wireless is not as good as a wire, that’s a physics issue and a computer software stack issue. There’s literally nothing that can be done about that without affecting reliability and sound quality, which would not be a worthwhile trade off.
Professionals use wired headphones for good reason, and they don’t choose their headphones based on tech and marketing. The enduring popularity of the Sony headphones is testament to that.
FWIW many professionals use AirPods Max to check mixes using an intermediary software solution or at least a final mix check.
A lot has changed in the last 5 years. Until now they weren’t suitable for real-time use with Spatial / Atmos though.
I’d bet Apple will have a hardware solution that offers sub-5ms wireless latency (RTL) for monitoring at high bitrate within the next decade.
Apple has a lot of expertise in audio and now a lot of expertise in real time hardware and applications with R1 and VisionOS. These specialties will likely converge into a product.
Apple is already achieving the low latency needed to track and program with airpods and vision pro. We're almost there. We need to get to around 15ms or less. Then things will be awesome.
I have seen no studies that purport to show that people can't tell the difference between 30fps and higher frame rates. I've only seen meme-like repetitions of that claim.
Perhaps the problem is they over-hype everything so when they actually can deliver on something they find themselves painted into a corner because they previously stretched the truth.
Yes? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the highest frequency tone that a 44khz sampling rate can generate is 22khz...
…That’s a blatant absence of evidence fallacy framing a very specific one at that.
Especially about something that is diminished returns as one gets older or deteriorates in ear health
