If there are other hardware differences then they should have called them APP 3rd Gen; regardless, according to Apple chat the Lightning case APP2s get lossless as well.
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New AirPods Pro Feature Lossless Audio With Vision Pro and Additional Dust Resistance
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This is the weirdest Apple product update in years. The only Apple product that could really benefit from lossless audio, the AP Max, is completely ignored in this update. I can't get my heard around it. It's almost as messy as the whole lossless and hi-res roll out.
It’s cause it’s a ridiculously stupid mention!
“20-bit, 48 kHz lossless audio with ultra-low latency” but the bitrate is unknown and not mentioned, why?!?
Moreover it says iOS 17 will introduce new features in AirPods Pro 2 with USB-C but nobody can use the Lossless Audio for Apple Music listening?!
This is the Apple that is extremely annoying cause you know which headphones are LONG overdue which probably will get this in ios17 to enjoy Lossless Audio in Apple Music: AirPods Max.
Grrrrr
Just read the press release. Sounds like it’s the H2 chip that has this new protocol built in, since only the Airpods Pro 2 and Vision Pro will have it currently. But the begs the question, why can’t the AP2 with lightning do lossless since it also has that chip. Very weird that they wouldn’t announce this in the keynote.
Apple Chat told me the Lightning case APP2s will support it as well.
You didn’t really have to be rich to get decent speakers back then… it was actually much like today, where most people think “ehh, good enough” for sound quality, and some of us bought decent speakers and obsessively cleaned our LPs with Discwasher D3 (or was it D4? But I never got bad enough to buy their anti-static gun, so I wasn’t the craziest one in my group!) Nothing has really changed that much… some people obsess about music, while most just listen.
You assume I’m just a layman. My background is in the recording industry. I assure you, you can’t, and there are many extensive A/B tests that prove it. A well mastered track/album has a greater impact than anything lossless will provide over a high bitrate lossy track.
My background is in the recording industry, and I strongly disagree with you. The effects of lossy encoding are not difficult to hear, once you are familiar with what to listen for - you can’t “unhear” it.
Funny enough, the Audio Engineering Society published an audio/data disc JUST for this very purpose! It’s titled “Perceptual Audio Coders: What To Listen For”
What you’re claiming would be at odds with the opinions of basically every professional in the field you say you work in, and contradictory to the AES’ own publications.
Since you are a professional in the recording industry, surely you will be attending the next AES convention - which is only just 6 weeks away. You should have no trouble obtaining a copy there.
You are right and wrong at the same time. But give me a second to explain.
I co-own a mastering and live recording studio, not the home studio. We got the real vocal booth, room just for drums, etc. I aint an audio engineer and I don't touch mixing even when I arrange my own stuff. I got zero real education in audio production but I've picked up the pieces on the way and the first thing I learned is that hardware makes the difference. To untrained ear they can hear the addition to a sound but they can pin point what it is. Once they show you what to look for then you can pick up easily difference between various AD-DAs, mastering compressors and so on. Difference is quite noticeable. Simple fact: on a live concert there is a huge differnce when you play a synth patch on a live synth like Roland JP8000 or when you just play the Ableton clip of pre-recorded riff off the same synth.
And that brings me to compression. Compression completely kills that additional invisible oomph you get from your tears, sweat and thousands of wasted dollars on various racks. Does anyone care? Nobody cares. And that's where you are right about. Most of the people listen to music on some ****** speakers or even ******** buds that can't reporduce the original sound even if they play freakin DSD if they could. You are also right about mixing, majority has no clue how to do a proper mixdown all they care is to be loud and sharp with high degree of frequency separation. We all had that one jam that we were like oh god it has such an awesome clear bass! And you can still feel the bass while hook is playing. So awesome! Well reality is there is nothing going on between that bass and the hook so its scalpel like sharp frequency cutoff without any harmonics inbetween. That's very popular these days and video euqivalent of that would be image sharpening to oblivion and posterizing color for separation. For some genres that works, it certainly works for consumers as well cause they think they got quality stuff cause the kick is so tight and wide through out the whole song instead of getting thiner as more harmonics are introduced.
There are some producers who do mixes for compression and there are software simulators like how it would sound on Airpods, Toyota Corolla speakers and so on so they could master the track to get the most out of the compressed MP3. Kudos to them. But if you have a quality portable audio player with quality IEM you can hear the artifacts and thinness right away without even knowing how original would sound like
Not true. apple recently confirmed the usbc version has an updated H2 chip that enables this
Well there you go. Just read an article the H2 runs at 2.4Ghz while the H2.5 runs at 5Ghz.