New AirPods Pro Do Not Support Lossless Apple Music

[JGIGS]

Would lossless or closer to lossless would be nice but as others have mentioned you can't tell the difference. I was hoping for the bluetooth change that would have needed a lot less power that was rumored. Was it LE or something like that. Too lazy to go back and check.

Since its fall I'll either wait till the holidays or summer to try and get them on sale unless I get my lazy but back to working out then I need them pronto to replace my long lost gen 2 airpods. May they rest in peace.

 

[paulovsouza]

I wonder if they could somehow use the U1 chip, and Bluetooth to do lossless audio on wireless devices.

 

[ntlman]

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.

Simply going back to the Wolfson DAC chip from the special Hifi iPods would be a nice touch. Technically Cirrus owns Wolfson, but as someone with both an iPhone 13 and a modded iPod 6.5, there's a real difference in audio quality.

 

[imnotthewalrus]

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.

THIS. And I'll take all the downvotes in supporting this. I was one in a million that ordered and used Neil Young's PONO lossless player when it was launched. No difference from Apple's 256 files. I listened to numerous 24/192 files and could not hear ANY difference. Now, given a tube amp and an expensive turntable/cartridge with VERY high end speakers - YES a difference can be heard. But on AirPods...give me a break.

 

[red elma]

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

Ask me what you don't understand and I will gladly give you the details...

 

[scrapesleon]

Underwhelming product that was released today was expecting a redesign but oh well

 

[wolf359design]

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.

Thats like telling me I can't tell the difference between tube guitar amplification and digital or Apple music algorithms and Windows (the math part)... sorry bud, I can tell the difference, even with my old ringing ears...

 

[Waldorama]

That’s just sad.

Must have spent all their innovation points on the iPhone.

There are a lot of nice upgrades here.

 

[mag01]

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 also the transcoding problem. If your source is already in some lossy format, it's going to be transcoded to another lossy format making things even worse than they could be (if using a lossless source). Using lossless "transport" avoids this.

 

[Waldorama]

I use my current AirPod pros a lot. There are some very good upgrades here. Better noise cancellation, volume control, better spatial audio, etc. Definitely will be purchasing these on 9-Sep.

 

[dampfnudel]

A redesigned charging case? Ooohh…take my money…

I don’t know about you, but improved sound quality, ANC and battery life sounds like good reasons to upgrade. The refreshed case is just the cherry on top.

 

[grouch]

Anyone who cares enough about audio quality to complain about lossless isn't using wireless in-ear headphones.

 

[falkon-engine]

Yawn, my wallet will remain lossless.

 

[dampfnudel]

In Germany/most of EU:

200€ - airpods pro
300€ - airpods pro 2

50% (!!!) price increase for no lossless, no new features except "better sound because of new chip". Lol, time for mr Cook to say goodbye and someone competent to step in.

Well, for Germans and others who already had plans to travel to the US in the next few months, you can save a little bit buying them in the US and you don’t have to worry about a missing SIM card tray like those who were thinking of getting the 14/14 Pro in the US.

 

[nt5672]

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.

Actually not, they are scientifically wrong (as in not able to hear the difference) as long as all of the preconditions are met. These preconditions have something to do with correctly constructed reconstruction filters on the analog portion. The filters and the corresponding amplification do make a difference and can be heard.

When you have a lot of space, say in a desktop DAC then scientifically you are close to correct as most have the space for correctly constructed filters. But in small earbuds with the converter in the earbud, the same same does not hold necessarily true and I've not seen that same science applied to earbuds.

What is also absolutely mathematically proven is that the higher the bit rate, the smaller the analog filters have to be to achieve the same sound. Now hmmm. That seems like it might likely effect earbuds different than your desktop speakers.

Not to mention the faulty tests that have been done to prove your assertion, of which there are plenty. So yeah, theoretically you are correct, but in only very narrow circumstances.

 

[meboy]

I can tell the difference pretty clearly between flac and wav on any half decent listening source.
The source recording matters a lot though.
A thin, **** recording shows almost no improvement even from 128 mp3 to flac.

You could blind a/b me as scientifically you want just as I have done to myself testing different capacitors, tubes, transformers etc when building, upgrading, and swapping components many times.
Yes. I'm really not normal but I do exist.

 

[CarlJ]

Shaving the edges of a CD is crazy. The edge is where you put the green felt marker!

You shave it, then you polish it, then you use the green felt tip pen on it (but not just any green felt tip pen, it has to be an audiophile green felt tip pen).

 

[MrRom92]

I can tell the difference pretty clearly between flac and wav on any half decent listening source.
The source recording matters a lot though.
A thin, **** recording shows almost no improvement even from 128 mp3 to flac.

You could blind a/b me as scientifically you want just as I have done to myself testing different capacitors, tubes, transformers etc when building, upgrading, and swapping components many times.
Yes. I'm really not normal but I do exist.

I’m going to assume you meant that you can hear the difference between FLAC and MP3. There IS no difference audiowise between FLAC and WAV. That’s kindof the entire point. Same PCM data, different container.

 

[jjudson]

Simply going back to the Wolfson DAC chip from the special Hifi iPods would be a nice touch. Technically Cirrus owns Wolfson, but as someone with both an iPhone 13 and a modded iPod 6.5, there's a real difference in audio quality.

I'm running around these days with a Fiio M11 Plus LTD and a pair of Meze Rai Penta IEMs. I gave up on Apple a long time ago when it came to expecting hi-res audio. After all, they were partly responsible for dumming the bit rate down when iTunes first came about. Since then, folks got used to crappy audio. I think some of them are posting on this thread...

Many good options out there for audiophiles -- iBasso, Astell & Kern, Fiio, Shanling, just to name a few. Apple could own this market if they'd get their heads into it and do it right.

 

[Apleeseed84]

Yeah we know they don’t support it, that’s why i use wired earphones for that and use my airpods for tvshows and movies!
this is why apple should release A dedicated music platform i.e. ipod 2.0 although that will never happen Now.

 

[Rce84]

I watched the event with intentions to upgrade my pro1’s…. Left event with plans to buy 14 and possibly Watch Ultra.

Apple missed on this one; it should have been a much better update. Very disappointing.

Wait.....you're leaving the event with plans to buy a thousand dollar iPhone and a new Apple Watch (and let's be honest, you know you will) and somehow Apple "missed" and was "disappointing" in this event? Sounds like they got you hook, line and sinker 😂😂😂

 

[Hmm]

You shave it, then you polish it, then you use the green felt tip pen on it (but not just any green felt tip pen, it has to be an audiophile green felt tip pen).

A lossless audiophile green felt tip pen.

 

[Moonlight]

I honestly think this is such a minor upgrade the 1st gen are a better buy if you can get a good deal on them

Oh wow, you heard the new ones already and know their perceived value?

 

[CarlJ]

After all, they were partly responsible for dumming the bit rate down when iTunes first came about.

Eh, AAC at a given bitrate generally sounds better than MP3 at the same bitrate. And Apple was in the middle of managing to bring the major labels to an agreement to sell their music in a digital form at reasonable prices, without crazy rules (remember when Sony put rootkits on CDs to try to keep people from copying music?). I suspect the bit rate was part of the negotiations (labels wouldn't want it "too good"). Then Apple negotiated for 256kbit and the removal of DRM when the labels were demanding multiple price points.

Complain all you want, but if iTunes hadn't come along, the music industry, and digital music, would have been in a much worst state now.

 

[ignatius345]

Oh god, this again. If you are chasing that goal of "lossless" quality, you're not using Bluetooth. Move on.