I understand converting analog 3.5mm to digital will lose quality, but can’t APM just use a lightning to lightning cable to keep it all lossless digital (until the final digital to analog conversion in the headphones)?
How do you know this? This is not what I understand to be true. I believe it supports at least CD (lossless) quality. I did a quick search and this article says “technically speaking, Airplay 2 is capable of Hi-Res audio but sampling rate is limited to that of CD.”
Did you mean it doesn’t support hi res streaming as of right now? Otherwise, source?
The article says wired APM do not support true lossless audio because of the analog to digital conversion (of the cable), not digital to analog.
As I understand it, “lossless” is only a term that applies to digital data, not analog. Eventually, all digital audio must be converted to analog audio by a DAC in order for humans to hear it (other Bluetooth headphones and even homepod has a DAC too), so you want lossless audio up until that very last conversion to analog. But once it’s analog, it cannot be considered lossless any more.
Of course, you do get varying levels of final audio quality based how how good the DAC is (as well as the amp and speakers, all of this built into the APM).
So since the 3.5mm (analog) to lightning (digital) cable interrupts the lossless transmission, what I’m wondering is why you can use a lightning to lightning cable in order to keep the signal digital and lossless all the way through (until APM converts it to analog for final sound).
I don’t remember the part of the article you’re referring to, and not sure if I know exactly what you mean, but as I understand it, basically when a device like an iPhone has lossless audio and streams it to the airpods via Bluetooth, because of Bluetooth’s limited bandwidth, the audio HAS to be compressed as it is streamed, which HAS to lose quality. So as far as I know, any wireless AirPods can never receive a lossless transmission.