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For now, not using Apple's audio devices since none of them support it yet

EDIT: HomePod (big and mini) do support lossless, but not the AirPods family of products
And if use wired headphones with the 3.5 mm Apple adapter ?
 
Makes sense why Apple wasn't working on AirPods Max 2 now, without lossless, no one will upgrade anyways.
 
100% of people no one has EVER done it, in any blind A/B study, EVER.

Yet Joe Blogs on the Mac Rumors forum and some nutty audiophile who were buying devices that shaved the edges of CDs back in the 90's thinks they can hear the difference, so make of that what you will 🙄

Don't forget, for maximum audio benefit, you also need to align all your door lock screw heads vertically in your house.
 
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You don't need lossless audio in £170 in ear buds - you can't hear the difference. You can't hear the difference on a £10,000 mastering studio setup with golden ears, it's been proven time and time again by the worlds best ears. No one here has the worlds best ears, despite what placebo they think - the upgrades to the drivers and processing are much much much more important and impactful.

If they tell you otherwise, they're wrong.

Edit - click disagree all you want, you're wrong - scientifically proven to be wrong, no ifs, no buts, no opinions, you're wrong, end of.

With all due respect; what kind of cut-rate mastering studio has a $10,000 setup? They wouldn’t be fit to master my iPhone voice memos, let alone a commercial release.
I’ve had mastering sessions with some of the best engineers, at some of the best mastering studios on the planet, such as Sterling Sound and Abbey Road… they have singular pieces of equipment that surpass $10K (ever check what a VMS-80 goes for these days? Or for that matter, what they sold for 40 years ago? You don’t even have to account for inflation) let alone having an entire system that amounts to that much. And for what it’s worth, any professional I’ve ever worked with would strongly disagree with your assessment of lossless audio.

Not that any of this matters of course, because it doesn’t take a $10K setup to be able to distinguish between lossless and lossy compression. It just takes some listening acuity. Tin ears need not apply.

You seem to be very offended by people who strive for better. I’m not sure how anyone wanting lossless affects you, unless you’re on the Fraunhofer payroll? You’re more than free to continue enjoying all the lossy compression you like.


Hearing "lossless audio" from a tiny driver packed into a pinky sized device is physically impossible.

Tell me that you don’t even understand what lossless audio is without telling me that you don’t even understand what lossless audio is
 
Looking forward to hear the “improved sound”…because no lossless 😢

The next AirPods Max should do lossless
 
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How much battery loss would be experienced streaming lossless for very little benefit? I'm sure Apple made a judgement call on this one, for the benefit of the user.
 
Bluetooth is lossy.
"Even the latest and greatest Bluetooth version, AptX Adaptive, a format that claims support for high-res audio, uses lossy compression."
 
I'm confused by all this... Doesn't lossless just mean a compression method for an audio file that doesn't involve any quality loss in order to save space? Haven't those files existed for ages? Haven't they been playable through any speakers you wanted for ages?

I figured the way it worked is the lowest common denominator in terms of the quality of the file, the quality of your speakers, and the quality of your ears and that was basically it. So the benefit of a lossless file would be that you'd just know you are getting the best out of your speakers that they can do without being held back by the limitations of the file data. If "supporting" lossless audio means being able to play them with no quality loss then I don't think that would even be possible because no set of speakers on earth is 100% perfect. If it's merely being able to play the files that is classified as "support" then wouldn't any set of speakers supporting audio also support lossless audio? I don't get what specifically people were hoping to see added here.

As far as what people are capable of hearing, I don't know if it's really safe to make concrete assumptions about that. I've heard too that the human eye cannot see more than 20 frames per second. That is very obviously untrue because the human eye doesn't actually process things in frames per second. Even if it did and even if that limit was exactly 20, the lack of ability to synchronize frame redraws in your eyes and a screen perfectly would mean you'd still notice a difference between very high frame rates on the screen. I feel like these assertions about the limitations of human senses are grossly oversimplified and so I'm wary of them.
 
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I'm confused by all this... Doesn't lossless just mean a compression method for an audio file that doesn't involve any quality loss in order to save space? Haven't those files existed for ages? Haven't they been playable through any speakers you wanted for ages?

I figured the way it worked is the lowest common denominator in terms of the quality of the file, the quality of your speakers, and the quality of your ears and that was basically it. So the benefit of a lossless file would be that you'd just know you are getting the best out of your speakers that they can do without being held back by the limitations of the file data. If "supporting" lossless audio means being able to play them with no quality loss then I don't think that would even be possible because no set of speakers on earth is 100% perfect. If it's merely being able to play the files that is classified as "support" then wouldn't any set of speakers supporting audio would also support lossless audio? I don't get what specifically people were hoping to see added here.

As far as what people are capable of hearing, I don't know if it's really safe to make concrete assumptions about that. I've heard too that the human eye cannot tell the difference past 20 frames per second. That is very obviously untrue because the human eye doesn't actually process things in frames per second. Even if it did and even if that limit was exactly 20, the lack of ability to synchronize frame redraws in your eyes and a screen perfectly would mean you'd still notice a difference between very high frame rates on the screen. I feel like these assertions about the limitations of human senses are grossly oversimplified and so I'm wary of them.
The thing about any speaker or earphone that uses Bluetooth is that Bluetooth does not have the bandwidth necessary to transmit the data. So, even if you are playing a lossless file on your iPhone, it has to go through a layer of lossy compression so the bitrate is low enough to be beamed out to the AirPods.


Imagine you have a really nice microphone, and you also have a very beat-up microphone cable to go with it that’s bent and frayed. That microphone might be able to generate an amazing high quality signal to start with, but as it goes down this cable that’s not capable of carrying that signal because the wires are all screwed up, that amazing signal never has the chance to reach the other end. You get something, but it’s not the original signal; it’s tainted and severely degraded but the cable did what it could.

Likewise; Bluetooth is not capable of 1411Kbps transfer rates (what would be needed for uncompressed 16 bit 44.1kHz stereo PCM data, what is typically considered “standard resolution” CD quality audio as defined by the Redbook Standard of 1982) so a lossy compressor needs to destroy and alter the data so something resembling the original audio can be squeezed into a low-bitrate transmission.
 
There’s a simple solution for those who want lossless…

Put hi-res audio chips in the iPhone (you’ll need a much thicker device that gives off a LOT of heat) and last but not least…

Put a damned hardwire jack in the device so you can use proper fine audio headphones and IEMs.
 
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