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Well, this makes me feel a little better about spending $550 on the AirPods Max and $35 on the cable. Perhaps someone with more A/V knowledge than me can explain why Apple can’t release a Lightning-to-Lightning cable to support a digital-to-digital-to-analog pipeline. Is it just a lack of interest in doing so or is there a technical reason?
I wish I knew. I lean towards believing it could be technically possible and may just not be an option they want to provide. (I also have the B&O H95 which, like the APM, handle the audio signal purely at the headphone level; they, however, have a USB-C port and do function as USB-C headphones when connected with a USB-C cable to my computer.)
 
AirPlay 1 and 2 don't go beyond 44.1 kHz for audio.

Now, the HomePod will get an update.

I'm wondering if this will mean an updated AirPlay protocol or just a HomePod specific update to go from AAC to ALAC.
 
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One could argue that Apple cares for its customer base :)

I am really happy about this announcement. Love my paired HomePods, have Apple Music - now waiting for this update.

Apple writes exactly this:
"HomePod and HomePod mini currently use AAC to ensure excellent audio quality. Support for lossless is coming in a future software update."

I wonder if this means that another transmission technique is already build into HomePods/minis? Anyone any idea what this could be?
WIFI!
 
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So, Apple TV 4K can play 24/48 but not 24/92 or 192! It says ‘currently’ not supported, but not mention to software update.

And I have an Apple TV HD, connected to hi-res 24/192 5.1 home cinema. No idea if I will get same 24/48 output, or they will force me to buy the new Apple TV, but in that case I want 24/92 for sure!
 
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Oh well at least my homepods will support the feature. Airpods pro would have been nice but 2 out of 2 isn't bad.
 
bravo Apple. Stop the haters

They are not wrong to hate. Considering that Apple plans these things years in advance, if the HomePods are not supporting Lossless Audio, Apple is either consciously making them obsolete or knowingly provided incompatible hardware. That the HomePods will support Lossless is a good thing. Really good thing. This means that listeners can enjoy their hardware for the life of it.
 
You probably wont even notice the difference on a homepod. It’s hardly a high-end speaker.
 
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Glad I bought those two homepods. Just like 3D Touch, they failed on the marketing. The HomePod sucks when compared to Alexa and all that other stuff for smarts. But it does the basic stuff I need that google home did.

But, it’s a freakishly incredible sounding device and adding this functionality pushes ir closer to soundbar/home audio space.

there’s no way a HomePod successor isn’t inbound. While discontinued, new features are still inbound.
They get the job done. I've got an OG stereo pair, mini stereo pair and a single mini in my kitchen. I might get a mini for the bedroom.
 
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what I’m confused is they say that AirPods don’t play lossless audio, but directly after that say that apple Music will still stream lossless file to AirPods over Bluetooth but the output won’t be lossless, but it will still play the lossless file? I originally thought Apple Music just wouldn’t play lossless on AirPods at all
Thats not how audio works. The headphones are dumb, they dont know about the file or how its played. Imagine that every headphone provides a direct pipe to your ear. That pipe is of a certain diameter. High res audio headphones have wider pipes, but thats besides the point, airpods max do not ply high res audio. So they have a standard sized pipe. When the iphone plays the lossless file it has to transmit it over bluetooth, by doing that the transmission gets compressed to fit in the bluetooth stream, once it reaches the pipe of the headphone its already smaller and easily fits in the pipe, there is probably room for more in there. Now if the iphone played over cable the pipe would be saturated and the whole of the lossless data stream would be transmitted to your ears.
 
You probably wont even notice the difference on a homepod. It’s hardly a high-end speaker.
I was convinced I could hear a difference on my stereo pair of OG HomePods between the Apple Music stream and CD-quality music from my library (pushed over AirPlay 2), but the support article says they have only been playing AAC format (so now I’m not so sure).

Feel free to not use Lossless if you can’t hear a difference. Save the bandwidth or storage space. I at least look forward to the FREE opportunity to test it out for myself.
 
This whole release of lossless music from Apple is one of the strangest things they have done. There has to be more to this than has been provided so far otherwise it’s just weird.

Since Apple announced it, a lot of buzz came out. Even more than expected – as an audio enthusiast I was quite surprised how much talk it caused.

This press update is related to it, IMO. Sort of: calm down folks.

Unfortunately some doubts still remain. We'll understand more in June.
 
From my understanding the digital signal of high quality is converted to analog and then reconverted to digital. So no you are not listening to a direct conversion of high quality sound on the AirPod max. All sound is going through conversion by the headphones from any source. The reason why you have to have power to drive the headphones and you can not listen through analog when the battery is dead.
 
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From my understanding the digital signal of high quality is converted to analog and then reconverted to digital. So no you are not listening to a direct conversion of high quality sound on the AirPod max. All sound is going through conversion by the headphones from any source.
If you could export audio from macbook usbc to lighting input of Airpods Max, all digital, you could eventually have Hi/res music. But the problem is that that doesnt work, right? The macbook 3.5 jack output is limited right?
 
From a third party seller on Facebook. But it was new and sealed in the box. Still has warranty and I can purchase Apple care for it.
That’s fantastic! I have been looking around on ebay and FB marketplace and I have only come across £180+ That too opened.
 
So much for the suggestion that the AirPods Max had a DAC unable to handle lossless— sounds like the limitation is bluetooth.

Alright now we’re talking. I was really surprised at first when they said it doesn’t support lossless, it’s definitely possible with the hardware
From the article:
However, given the analog to digital conversion in the cable, the playback will not be completely lossless.
 
I’ve subscribed iTunes Match for years but I’m not interested in Apple Music.
When a new feature is implemented in Apple Music, also it wasn’t published, it is disposable for iTunes Match.
Is this that case?
 
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Repeat after me: Dolby Atmos is NOT the same as Spatial Audio!

Dolby Atmos is an audio format from Dolby that allows sound to be positioned around the listener. The producer needs only to define where in space a particular sound should be, and the listener’s compatible hardware works out how to recreate that intent either through multiple surround speakers, a sound bar, or earphones.

Spatial Audio is different: it uses sensors (gyroscope, accelerometer, and U1 chip) in the earphones to track the listener’s head movements. The position of the listener’s head when the audio starts to play is fixed as the ‘forward’ point. If the listener then turns their head to the right, the audio ‘pans’ to the left earphone to make it seem as though the sound is still coming from the same place.

A piece of audio can be both Dolby Atmos AND Spatial Audio. But Dolby Atmos is NOT Spatial Audio.
Your comment deserves 1,000 likes.

@samifathi, you really should fix this.
 
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