HomePod and HomePod mini to Gain Support For Apple Music Lossless Audio in Future Software Update

[GigabitEthernet]

I find it odd that people get so worked up over something that 99% of them won't be able to hear anyway.

There's a good argument to be made that the quality even via 256kbps AAC will be better if it's being converted only once rather than twice (I don't know if that is the case at the moment, does the AAC audio from iTunes require conversion over Bluetooth to the AirPods, or is it the same exact audio?). But beyond that, this is a feature that most people won't even notice.

 

[Theryesider]

That’s fantastic! I have been looking around on ebay and FB marketplace and I have only come across £180+ That too opened.

John Lewis have the real MCcoy, but at £279 both Colours.

 

[H-B0mb]

I guess I’m not 100% certain either— I assumed it could carry data because you can still transfer data between an iPad / iPhone and a Mac over a cable… I haven’t tried it with the USB-C - Lightning cable that now comes with iOS devices though.

I don’t get why a lightning to lighting cable couldn’t work. The current 3.5mm to lighting cable converts the analog signal to digital right before it enters the APM.

It’s going to be ridiculous that I will have to connect my iPhone to a lightning to 3.5mm adaptor, connect the adaptor to my 3.5mm to lighting cable into the APM. Seriously 🤯

This seems stupid!

My rant applies to regular lossless, not hi res.

 

[brookter1]

I got one for £120 yesterday.

Is that in the UK -- where was that from, please?

EDIT -- never mind, I see you've already answered that, thanks!

 

[Ikertxo40]

I don’t get why a lightning to lighting cable couldn’t work. The current 3.5mm to lighting cable converts the analog signal to digital right before it enters the APM.

It’s going to be ridiculous that I will have to connect my iPhone to a lightning to 3.5mm adaptor, connect the adaptor to my 3.5mm to lighting cable into the APM. Seriously 🤯

View attachment 1779176This seems stupid!

My rant applies to regular lossless, not hi res.

You are right

same for USBC cable from macbook pro to lighting. This is stopping me from buying them at this point. I want at least CD quality if i pay 600 euros

 

[iSayuSay]

It's really strange that Apple keeps adding new features to a product that is quietly being discontinued? eARC passthrough, a possible lossless music streaming, spatial audio and what not.

What's the deal here really? I really want to buy a second HomePod for the bedroom as stereo pair. But the dire situation of it being discontinued keep bugging me.

 

[atmuwben]

AirPods Max

iPhone -> lightning -> DAC -> 3.5mm -> 3.5mm -> ADC-> lightning -> DAC -> ears

Elegant.

 

[BigPotatoLobbyist]

I find it odd that people get so worked up over something that 99% of them won't be able to hear anyway.

There's a good argument to be made that the quality even via 256kbps AAC will be better if it's being converted only once rather than twice (I don't know if that is the case at the moment, does the AAC audio from iTunes require conversion over Bluetooth to the AirPods, or is it the same exact audio?). But beyond that, this is a feature that most people won't even notice.

That’s exactly right, a few others had joined me in this sentiment a week ago. The PCM could introduce artifacts or what not, and bluetooth bit rate can drop, etc, but even then as for general transcoding modulo issues with the PCM or AAC (which iOS does not generally have) - the AAC codec is ****ing transparent, takes on the order of what 99 times (sequential) to really degrade at least on a decent PCM system.


Between this and the WiFi & AirPlay 2 confusion, thirst for - not just nearly-imperceptible 16 bit rates - but effing 24 bit-rate audio (LMAO), etc, this forum is really showing out on the entertainment value sell for me. Thanks fellas.

 

[BigPotatoLobbyist]

AirPods Max

iPhone -> lightning -> DAC -> 3.5mm -> 3.5mm -> ADC-> lightning -> DAC -> ears

Elegant.

Yep. Between this and the internals, screams “overengineered” which is later retconned into “making Sony’s look like Toys”

Otoh over-engineered isn’t quite the right term.

 

[EmilTB]

You are right

same for USBC cable from macbook pro to lighting. This is stopping me from buying them at this point. I want at least CD quality if i pay 600 euros

I’m certain they’ll come with a firmware update allowing usb-c/lightning to lightning cables for lossless audio transfer to the DAC in AirPods Max.

 

[shenfrey]

I didn't realise it requires additional hardware to be able to enjoy lossless audio. This announcement was definitely for the audiophiles amongst us and less for the average consumer.

 

[dannys1]

Ah now that makes more sense. Bluetooth just doesn't have the data bandwidth for uncompressed, raw, digitised music.
But for Apple to not support it on its on Music playing hardware, which it touted at launch a few years ago as being best in class, made no sense at all.

It's not uncompressed and raw - it's Apple Lossless - that's a compressed file - just not compressed music. A Wav or Aiff file is totally uncompressed and raw and even bigger. It just doesnt' affect the sound in the same way that unzipping a PDF doesn't affect the PDF.

 

[Squuiid]

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.

Care to share? Did they have more?

 

[amartinez1660]

All the effort for a discontinued product. Why Apple???

For all the planned obsolescence talk going on, these products do get support for years and years sometimes.
An iPad Air I still use (an 8 years old product) got iOS security updates in May.

This all makes sense but why-oh-why didn’t they announce this at the same time as the Apple Music announcement?

Agreed, quite weird. At least it got us to talk around here but I wonder if that buzz is even representative for a several trillion dollar company.

Too bad we have no way to send digital stream wired to AirPod Max. That would be actual lossless.

Curious to know how close to lossless that would be. The video editing industry works all fine with video codecs that are “imperceptibly lossless” to the eye.
A sound played at the final destination device at 99.99% lossless (no clue what’s the actual loss) is enough.

 

[dannys1]

Funny that a discontinued Apple product is getting support for a new feature, but I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

They'll be updating the large HomePod for years. Just because they don't sell it anymore doesn't mean they don't support it. Hell they still push occassional security updates to the AirPort Extremes!

 

[B/D]

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.

No. The support article was only talking about Apple Music streams played back directly onto the Homepod. Not about lossless playback of local files.

Since 2018, you have indeed been able of playing lossless files on the Homepod via Airplay 2, which supports lossless CD quality wrapped in an Apple Lossless container. So yes, the difference that you perceived is real.

You have been able to do this because, hardware wise, the Homepod has hardware decoding support for ALAC and FLAC streams up to 24bit/48khz. CD quality is 16/44.

So it made NO SENSE whatsoever that these wont support Apple Music lossless, specially when, right now, you can play lossless Deezer (CD quality) directly on the Homepod (not using Airplay, they added natively support not long ago). If a third party music service can do this, them im sure as hell Apple Music can too.

 

[B/D]

For all the planned obsolescence talk going on, these products do get support for years and years sometimes.
An iPad Air I still use (an 8 years old product) got iOS security updates in May.



Agreed, quite weird. At least it got us to talk around here but I wonder if that buzz is even representative for a several trillion dollar company.


Curious to know how close to lossless that would be. The video editing industry works all fine with video codecs that are “imperceptibly lossless” to the eye.
A sound played at the final destination device at 99.99% lossless (no clue what’s the actual loss) is enough.

They did. T3 reported that Apple confirmed to them that both the Apple TV and the Homepods will support Apple Music lossless, but shortly thereafter Macrumors published an article that said the exact opposite. Every other media (inclusing international ones), seemed to replicate what Macrumors said. Hence the confusion.

 

[hans1972]

so we come full circle for the stupid decision to remove the 3.5mm jack. wonder if apple will backtrack on that just like they did with their stupid decision on macbook ports.

It would still not be lossless. The analog signal through the cable would detoriate on the way to the headphone speakers.

 

[lah]

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.

I think they included lossless just so they can say they have it. They know the majority of their users will not benefit from lossless whatsoever, but they needed to announce it in order to avoid being accused of offering an inferior product. The Spatial Audio thing will be the killer feature which could lead to more subscribers but it also has the risk of being labeled as gimmicky or limited by the purist/pundits out there. But by including lossless tiers, this keeps everyone happy, especially those with their DACs and audiophile grade headphones.

 

[Westside guy]

Funny that a discontinued Apple product is getting support for a new feature, but I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

That's how I felt when they added Airplay 2 support to my 802.11n Airport Express. 😁

 

[iSayuSay]

For all the planned obsolescence talk going on, these products do get support for years and years sometimes.
An iPad Air I still use (an 8 years old product) got iOS security updates in May.

Security update isn't the same as new features. Yes I also have the original iPad Air and I'm grateful that it's still receive fixes and updates despite being stuck on iOS 12.

But HomePod is incredibly "being taken care of" for a product that is quietly discontinued. New features after features that is previously unavailable, and not even available for the supposedly newer HomePod Mini.

 

[hans1972]

I don’t get why a lightning to lighting cable couldn’t work. The current 3.5mm to lighting cable converts the analog signal to digital right before it enters the APM.

It’s going to be ridiculous that I will have to connect my iPhone to a lightning to 3.5mm adaptor, connect the adaptor to my 3.5mm to lighting cable into the APM. Seriously 🤯

This seems stupid!

My rant applies to regular lossless, not hi res.

You want get any lossless since the conversion from digital to analog is lossy.

What you have is digital -> lossy -> analog -> lossy -> digital.

 

[lanomds1]

There’s no way Apple isn’t updating the larger HomePod if they’re rolling out all of these updates for it. I hope they announce this big update at WWDC

 

[honglong1976]

Agreed. Based on how the article is written I thought maybe there was something new and that this would be enabled down the road (could happen but they’re not committing to it the way they are the HomePod update so I’m not getting my hopes up… nor am I terribly concerned about it.)

“AirPods Max can be connected to devices playing Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless recordings with exceptional audio quality. However, given the analog to digital conversion in the cable, the playback will not be completely lossless.”

So it isn’t lossless then. Haha

 

[david.olstein]

A few thoughts -

First, even if Bluetooth doesn't have the bandwith to transmit 44.1/16 and 48/24 digital audio losslessly, the are advanced codes - AptX HD and LDAC -- that provide substantially more bandwith that the Bluetooth codec Apple uses. So there's no reason why Apple couldn't provide a better Bluetooth listening experience that is currently does.

Second, the inability of the AirPod Max headphones to receive and decode lossless digital audio strikes me as a serious design flaw for such an expensive product.

Third, Apple's messaging on the HomePod has been terrible. Surely they could have figured out whether the HomePod would be able to play lossess audio when in advance of the first announcement. Note, however, that even though HomePod will, with a software update, be able to play lossess audio (up to 48/24), it won't be able to play hi res lossless audio. A number of wireless speakers on the market - including KEF and Bluesound speakers - are capable of this.