Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

New AirPods Pro Feature Lossless Audio With Vision Pro and Additional Dust Resistance

MrRom92 said:
That’s like saying it’s okay that the chef took a whiz in your soup because you’re not eating it with a nice spoon
Click to expand...
Its like complaining about the chef not using enough seasoning after you lost your sense of taste due to Covid.

Even if you could plug them in like the Maxes, you wouldn't hear any difference between High Quality and Lossless on APPs.
 
  • Angry
  • Haha
Reactions: KeithBN and Shirasaki
QuarterSwede said:
This is horse ****. Audio quality has definitely gotten better over the last 50 years. Shoot, mastering and the production pipeline is crystal clear nowadays and has noticeably more punch than even 10 years ago. People can’t tell the difference between high bitrate lossy (256mbps AAC or mp3) and lossless. You just plain can’t and it’s been proven over and over. This is a complete non-issue.
Click to expand...
The average person’s audio system 50 years ago was a half decent stereo receiver and some speakers. The average person’s audio system today is a Beats Pill or similar battery powered bluetooth speaker, if not just listening to the music straight out of the phone speakers. You really think this is an improvement for the average person’s audio experience?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Shifts, nrose101, Beltane63 and 2 others
aygwm said:
That's a very misleading headline. The fact that Apple can't get Loseless to work on the phone is embarrassing in 2023. Hate to say this... Steve cared a lot more about music than Tim. And it shows. Apple is openly hostile to creating an environment for music listening.
If you compare video quality over the past 50 years, it's gotten progressively better.
You can't say that for audio. The average person had a better audio experience 50 years ago than today. There are many villains here, but Apple is pretty high on that list.
Shame Apple.
We've now had 2 generations of listeners never knowing what the artist intended. Loseless doesn't totally solve this of course. But it shows Apple's complete indifference in creating a magical experience for audio. Spatial audio without Loseless is just plain stupid.
And yes, the law of physics mean AirPods will never sound great. But compressed audio through tiny speakers will always sound bad.
Cmon Apple.
Click to expand...

50 years ago... so you're saying 8-track and LPs had better audio quality than what we have today. Even Helen Keller knows that's wrong. Lossless definitely works on the phone. It's bluetooth that needs to catch up.
 
  • Like
  • Disagree
Reactions: KeithBN, nrose101, kurtfoster and 2 others
20bit/48khz lossless is more than good enough, 24bit is only needed for mastering purposes really to prevent generational losses in processing stages. For playback, the level of dynamic range increase over 16 bit will be perceptually perfect. But is a shame if limiting it to vision pro, even if likelt understanable due to the bandwidth needed.
 
Sikh said:
This most likely has to do with the significant bandwidth that is required by Lossless audio and the fact that Bluetooth can't do full bandwidth over distance. To me it makes sense that the Vision Pro can do it with the airpods being so close but with the phone, the airpods are roughly 3ft away from your pocket or more if you leave your phone on a table, your outside deck, etc while listening.

I don't like this restriction but the restriction is definitely because of bluetooth. Bluetooth 5.3 has a max banwidth cap of 2Mbps and that drops significantly over distance. From a BT 5.1 test I saw, the bandwidth dropped around 4ft and after that it kept dropping. There was a lot more detail to this test and it was done with solid bluetooth hardware.

When Im on my laptop again tomorrow, ill try to remember to find the link and share it here.
Click to expand...

That’s why it is so bizarre. Apple said they are using a new protocol here. So not Bluetooth.

“The H2 chip in the latest AirPods Pro and Apple Vision Pro, combined with a groundbreaking wireless audio protocol, unlocks powerful 20-bit, 48 kHz Lossless Audio with a massive reduction in audio latency.”

That makes sense as Bluetooth lacks bandwidth so they had to limit it to this new hardware as the new protocol likely needed new antennas. Where it falls down for me though. Why now? Why make the AirPod Pro even more confusing for a device that isn’t out this year?

Would make more sense launching this with AirPod Pro 3rd-Generation next year with the same chip on the iPhone 16.
 
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: Sikh, M1956 and ApplesAreSweet&Sour
aygwm said:
That's a very misleading headline. The fact that Apple can't get Loseless to work on the phone is embarrassing in 2023. Hate to say this... Steve cared a lot more about music than Tim. And it shows. Apple is openly hostile to creating an environment for music listening.
If you compare video quality over the past 50 years, it's gotten progressively better.
You can't say that for audio. The average person had a better audio experience 50 years ago than today. There are many villains here, but Apple is pretty high on that list.
Shame Apple.
We've now had 2 generations of listeners never knowing what the artist intended. Loseless doesn't totally solve this of course. But it shows Apple's complete indifference in creating a magical experience for audio. Spatial audio without Loseless is just plain stupid.
And yes, the law of physics mean AirPods will never sound great. But compressed audio through tiny speakers will always sound bad.
Cmon Apple.
Click to expand...
When Steve introduced the original iPod and said it holds 1,000 songs at 128kbps, he called it a "very high quality bitrate". lol
 
  • Like
Reactions: zach-coleman
fwmireault said:
I didn’t expect that at all, not that i think lossless will make any noticeable difference, nor that it justifies the price of Vision Pro. But it will be a nice addition for the four people owning both devices and being able to tell the difference
Click to expand...
The moment Apple says only working with vision pro, I lost interest already. If it doesn’t work with iPhone, there is no point to buy a new pair just for the sake of non-existent “lossless” support.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Beltane63
LogicalApex said:
That’s why it is so bizarre. Apple said they are using a new protocol here. So not Bluetooth.

“The H2 chip in the latest AirPods Pro and Apple Vision Pro, combined with a groundbreaking wireless audio protocol, unlocks powerful 20-bit, 48 kHz Lossless Audio with a massive reduction in audio latency.”

That makes sense as Bluetooth lacks bandwidth so they had to limit it to this new hardware as the new protocol likely needed new antennas. Where it falls down for me though. Why now? Why make the AirPod Pro even more confusing for a device that isn’t out this year?

Would make more sense launching this with AirPod Pro 3rd-Generation next year with the same chip on the iPhone 16.
Click to expand...
Bluetooth is not a protocol, AAC/SBC are protocols.
 
aygwm said:
That's a very misleading headline. The fact that Apple can't get Loseless to work on the phone is embarrassing in 2023. Hate to say this... Steve cared a lot more about music than Tim. And it shows. Apple is openly hostile to creating an environment for music listening.
If you compare video quality over the past 50 years, it's gotten progressively better.
You can't say that for audio. The average person had a better audio experience 50 years ago than today. There are many villains here, but Apple is pretty high on that list.
Shame Apple.
We've now had 2 generations of listeners never knowing what the artist intended. Loseless doesn't totally solve this of course. But it shows Apple's complete indifference in creating a magical experience for audio. Spatial audio without Loseless is just plain stupid.
And yes, the law of physics mean AirPods will never sound great. But compressed audio through tiny speakers will always sound bad.
Cmon Apple.
Click to expand...
That’s why my $20 soundpeats classics sound the same or better than $250 apple trash
 
  • Haha
Reactions: Shirasaki
Come on. My 2014 LG Bluetooth buds thingy did CD-quality when connected to anything that had an APTX codec (like my 2011 MacBook).

Weak sauce, Apple. Weak sauce.
 
tennisproha said:
This makes no sense. What connectivity protocol is it even using that’ll enable it to be lossless??
Click to expand...
They said they're using their own new protocol. Which is clearly too high bandwidth to allow arms length+ range reliably, so sadly being limited. I would like for option to try to do lossless and fallback to AAC automatically on increased range.
 
aygwm said:
That's a very misleading headline. The fact that Apple can't get Loseless to work on the phone is embarrassing in 2023. Hate to say this... Steve cared a lot more about music than Tim. And it shows. Apple is openly hostile to creating an environment for music listening.
If you compare video quality over the past 50 years, it's gotten progressively better.
You can't say that for audio. The average person had a better audio experience 50 years ago than today. There are many villains here, but Apple is pretty high on that list.
Shame Apple.
We've now had 2 generations of listeners never knowing what the artist intended. Loseless doesn't totally solve this of course. But it shows Apple's complete indifference in creating a magical experience for audio. Spatial audio without Loseless is just plain stupid.
And yes, the law of physics mean AirPods will never sound great. But compressed audio through tiny speakers will always sound bad.
Cmon Apple.
Click to expand...
Sorry, but the 8-Track tapes I listened to in 1973 did not sound as good as my iPhone and AirPods do today. There was plenty of loss with most analog tape.
IMG_1015.jpeg
 
So you mean to tell me they have the technology to stream SZA in lossless to your ears and they haven’t implemented it?
 
bgillander said:
Sorry, but the 8-Track tapes I listened to in 1973 did not sound as good as my iPhone and AirPods do today. There was plenty of loss with most analog tape.
View attachment 2260511
Click to expand...
8 tracks were a garbage format from the get go, let alone by today’s standards. I would not compare them to other contemporary analog tape formats, any of which would handily outperform it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: nrose101 and bgillander
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back