Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Look at your brain as a CPU with a finite GHz capacity.
Look at your ears as a peripheral with min/max specs. Biologically, the specs of the ear on the average person can't detect the difference between lossless and compressed music (mp3 192/384).
For the 5% that have ears with the better specs, they will need their brain undistracted to really hear it. When that brain gets immersed in visuals, like from a VisionPro, any Hollywood executive can tell you that audio is supportive to visual. You'll loose brain capacity to processing the visuals over using that brain capacity to enjoy the difference between lossless and compressed audio.
If you really want the best sound, I hope you a) belong to the 5% that has super ears and b) have the budget to buy true high end audio equipment.
Enjoy.
This. People react as if something Huge has been stolen from them, while in reality we haven't had lossless for years. Now we can have it, but only with newer Airpod Pros. It doesn't mean they've taken away features of the current ones. And it's probably not a big loss anyway.
 

Lossless Audio With Apple Vision Pro Will Be Limited to USB-C AirPods Pro 2​

the new headline:

Lossless Audio With USB-C AirPods Pro 2 Will Be Limited to Vision Pro​

 
Hopefully we get better info on this in the next three months. They've got time to either roll back this really odd decision or give some kind of AMAZING explanation as to why they can't. Hopefully everyone who's purchased one in the last couple weeks can return it.
 

Lossless Audio With USB-C AirPods Pro 2 Will Be Limited to Vision Pro​


Hopefully everyone who's purchased one in the last couple weeks can return it.

Why would they return it – or why would the seller let them return it? They got exactly what was advertised.
Also, the lossless audio this whole fuss is about will only work with the Apple Vision Pro, so this will be a non issue for most.

Coming back to the returns, should everyone who got an iPhone 14 in the last couple of weeks also be allowed to return it and get? Because the iPhone 15 has USB-C now and supposedly has a better camera.
 
Why call it like that if there's more than a charging port change?
The changes aren’t significant enough to call it third gen. At some point they’ll release an actual 3rd gen so we can’t call it third third gen.

Whatever differences won’t be noticeable to the average consumer. That’s why they aren’t calling it anything different
 
???
You mean $249 earbuds? Or the Mac hardware?
What exactly do you need "big time" money for?
Don't say this is about the AVP, because that's
not out yet and has nothing to do with
musicians using Apple products.
Anyone who is willing to spend money for high quality sound will not be using AirPods. End of story.
 
Possibly the reason is that Apple doesn't own the codec being used and is licensing it per device sold so only the newer units are licensed for it. If I remember correctly - there was a similar issue a long time ago with DVD payback on Macs.
 
any musician that isn’t a big time pro won’t have the money for Apple’s foolery.

Anyone who is willing to spend money for high quality sound will not be using AirPods. End of story.

So what you are saying is that no musician will buy Airpods?
The non-big-timers won’t have the money to do so,
the big time pros don’t want to because it’s … wireless?
 
So what you are saying is that no musician will buy Airpods?
The non-big-timers won’t have the money to do so,
the big time pros don’t want to because it’s … wireless?

The fact is that AirPods Pro aren’t that great. They’re fine sounding for casual listening but you can get vastly superior sound with wired earbuds that cost a fraction of the price. The quality of the sound isn’t what you’re buying with AirPods Pro. What you’re buying with them is Apple’s software features. Their noise canceling is superior to just about everything else out there. But when it comes to audio quality, especially for professional applications like mixing and mastering, AirPods Pro are not the best choice. Not by a long shot. Even casual audiophiles don’t include them in their recommended gear.
 
Last edited:
So what you are saying is that no musician will buy Airpods?
The non-big-timers won’t have the money to do so,
the big time pros don’t want to because it’s … wireless?
Any SERIOUS musician is not using AirPods for their work. The end.

Sound quality sucks for pro listening. Wireless reliability is spotty at best. Even a hobbyist will be better off with a different product as they currently stand.

If Apple is indeed aiming for pro musicians by making them lossless and ultra low latency, then they’re polishing a turd because the sound accuracy of AirPods is nowhere near acceptable for a reference platform.

AirPods are only good enough for casual listening. There’s nothing Pro about them.
 
Any SERIOUS musician is not using AirPods for their work. The end.

Sound quality sucks for pro listening. Wireless reliability is spotty at best. Even a hobbyist will be better off with a different product as they currently stand.

If Apple is indeed aiming for pro musicians by making them lossless and ultra low latency, then they’re polishing a turd because the sound accuracy of AirPods is nowhere near acceptable for a reference platform.

AirPods are only good enough for casual listening. There’s nothing Pro about them.

Yeah, there’s no way in hell Apple is targeting music professionals with this. AirPods aren’t appropriate for professional audio applications.
 
It’s ok. I was finding another way to say that we’re making noise about something minuscule. The upgrade is minute enough such that a company may decide it’s not worth calling it something different. That could be their logic but of course I don’t know.

Carry on ;-)
That’s fair. Some of us are very likely making this a bigger deal than it is, but it just seems like an unusual practice by Apple. After thinking it over, I agree it’s not a big enough change to call it the 3rd gen. The real 3rd gen will have more than one or two changes made to it, and not be as minor.
 
  • Like
Reactions: msackey
imho it’s a good theory that the airpods pro could only work with the vision pro - for now- because of the short distance to the headset. Or that the vision pro has some unique hardware advantage the iphones don‘t. Like another audio encoder, bigger antennas, or the known approximate distance to and position of the airpods. Or that there was a minor hardware revision on the usb-c airpods (I hope, iFixit does a teardown).

But I also think it‘s a marketing decision. They just have to be working on lossless - or at least higher fidelity - wireless audio for their headphones, especially for the Airpods Max. It‘s either not quite there yet, or not ready to be deployed along the whole product line (it has to work with macs and appletvs as well in the end) OR they are holding it back as a unique selling point for nextgen airpods pro/max. If those are not ready to be released before the vision pro, it makes sense to offer at least some sort of stopgap-solution.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bogey99
Are we certain that in order for this to work, you don't have to physically connect the airpods case to the vision pro headset via USB-C, then the case acts as the transmitter to the airpods?
 
Any SERIOUS musician is not using AirPods for their work. The end.

Sound quality sucks for pro listening. Wireless reliability is spotty at best. Even a hobbyist will be better off with a different product as they currently stand.

If Apple is indeed aiming for pro musicians by making them lossless and ultra low latency, then they’re polishing a turd because the sound accuracy of AirPods is nowhere near acceptable for a reference platform.

AirPods are only good enough for casual listening. There’s nothing Pro about them.

Yeah, there’s no way in hell Apple is targeting music professionals with this. AirPods aren’t appropriate for professional audio applications.
These. They'll have to most likely target them with something like the 2nd generation Airpods Max headphones (or something similar).
 
These. They'll have to most likely target them with something like the 2nd generation Airpods Max headphones (or something similar).

They'll have to do some SERIOUS work to the AirPods Max cuz the current ones aren't on the same planet as reference audio. If you're used to even low-grade studio monitors, the APM spectrum accuracy is really bad.
 
They'll have to do some SERIOUS work to the AirPods Max cuz the current ones aren't on the same planet as reference audio. If you're used to even low-grade studio monitors, the APM spectrum accuracy is really bad.

Yep. The Max phones are just like the buds. You buy them for the software features, not the sound. They’re not reference and they never will be.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.