Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
From what I’m gathering, it’s a sample for sample accurate bitstream of the source audio. It’s not even lossless compression. Someone on YouTube said that it’s an uncompressed bitstream. Packeting would add latency.

At any rate, we need more info on this protocol asap. To me it’s as big as the Vision Pro. I get that lossless vs compressed is moot for most listening purposes and applications, but a low latency lossless enables music production and mixing at the buffer level. Opens new realm of possibilities to produce for spatial. I get that it won’t be available for Mac, but hopefully soon or maybe it gets reverse engineered. I would think the only way to scramble an uncompressed bitstream would be to have a lookup table for each bit, but that’s all way over my head.
I wonder why Apple doesn't bring this protocol to the iPhone and Mac, seriously. The absolute worst that could happen is they would... sell more AirPod Pros? If it's using 5GHz they can probably extend the existing WiFi chipset to do it.
 
It has speakers built in. They made a huge deal about how the speakers "Scan" the room to simulate surround sound.
I’m confused about that scanning the room/audio raytracing feature. The marketing says it’s to optimize the audio for the space but I don’t know what that means when I presume the little speakers are only shooting sound down into your ear, not filling the room and bouncing sound off the walls and furniture like a HomePod would.

Whatever the advantage is, I also wonder if it will still be communicated to the AirPods when using them instead of the VP built-in speakers. Or maybe using headphones will make that advantage irrelevant.
 
  • Like
Reactions: arkitect
Here I am. I can hear all those things, and you're presumptuous and arrogant to tell me I can't.

If you can't hear it it's because you've listened to low-quality audio your whole life.
And yet according to a National Academy of Sciences paper from 2014, trained orchestral violinists cannot identify sound from a Stradivarius or a modern violin with any frequency greater than chance.
 
i actually did a blind test of it when apple added lossless to music using a pair of Shure se215 with ipad air 2. Quite a few people could feel the difference and correctly tell them apart. I am sure with better equipment the difference would be even more noticeable. Not sure how much airpods pros specifically are held back by lossy codec, but to claim that lossless makes no difference would entail that our current headphones reached the limit of human perception and we would not distinguish them from real instruments. This is obviously not true.

AirPods Pro need a better driver. Lossless would be nice. aptX support would be good as well. But that bio-cellulose (paper) driver just isn’t up to snuff. Drivers for IEM style phones are cheap. Apple could be using much nicer ones that would produce a better sound profile. The software is great but the drivers just aren’t capable of delivering audiophile quality sound.
 
No doubt a unique solution developed by Apple. Not that difficult. Using 5GHz as the carrier so plenty of bandwidth. They have no need to include all the bluetooth protocols so have freedom to optimise for high bandwidth audio. I'd expect to see this used on their future products.

I have a wireless Bose cinema system that does something similar. Each receiving component (rear speakers, sub) needs to be in sync with the front speaker soundbar within about 1-5 microseconds to ensure relative phasing is maintained.

In this case, no doubt also that the audio channel would need to be delayed anyway to not get ahead of a lot of video processing.

Right. So it probably isn’t lossless and it does still suffer from latency issues.

Wireless lossless is the holy grail for audiophiles. If Apple had actually cracked it that would be huge news in the segment. But clearly they haven’t.
 
  • Like
Reactions: arkitect
MR appears to believe so but I haven’t been able to verify that in any of the links they referenced or in any official Apple docs. Full specs don’t appear to be out yet. Apple’s marketing highlights that the AP2 with USB is lossless with VP, so I’m thinking MR interpreted that to mean the built-in speakers are lossy. But I would be confused as to why any wired/built-in speakers would be lossy. Overall lower quality speaker system is understandable, but not lossy data transmission. Even lossless, I imagine that since the VP speakers have to shoot sound down to the ear, they probably don’t sound as good as the in-ear AP2, just due to that physical constraint.

It would be VERY weird if the headset wasn’t capable of delivering the same level of audio quality as a pair of AirPods Pro. The reporting has to be wrong.
 
While I’m not super surprised how far Apple has shifted from being focused on delivering 'magic' to simply 'products' it would be a nice throwback to have them deliver a complete 'AppleVision' experience that included truly immersive audio. With their limited run on these and the absurb price point (this is the same company that sold us ceramic and gold case watches with a 12 mo half-life), they are heavily relying on a fanbase that has or will also buy Apple headphones to complete the system. Sure the original iPhones came w/ wired headphones - a fantastic play to get us to eventually buy their AirPods, but why not simply integrate the AirPods Max into the Vision, seems like a miss for someone who is already going to spend $3.5k on a toy.
Headphones are only for People who don’t want to disturb others. I live alone so I’ve never used them with my quest. The speaksers on the device probably deliver spatial audio better anyways.
 
lossless over bluetooth? lol. do people really think they're getting true lossless over pro 2's?

yes they support it but if you stream lossless audio codecs over bluetooth it isn't true lossless. until bluetooth improves you will need wired ear/headphones. remember not even the Airpod Max supports lossless and that has wired connection.

even when we can listen to lossless then most people won't even be able to tell the difference. it's all marketing crap.
The real question is: do people hear any difference between lossless and AAC?
 
It has speakers built in. They made a huge deal about how the speakers "Scan" the room to simulate surround sound.

No. That isn’t how the scan worked. It wasn’t to create surround sound. It was to compensate for the acoustic specifics of your room. Some rooms are sonically bright. Some sonically muffled. Some speaker placements are less than optimal. The scan “tuned” the HomePod to your specific room and speaker placement.
 
I wonder why Apple doesn't bring this protocol to the iPhone and Mac, seriously. The absolute worst that could happen is they would... sell more AirPod Pros? If it's using 5GHz they can probably extend the existing WiFi chipset to do it.

Because it isn’t lossless and will suffer from too much latency.
 
Headphones are only for People who don’t want to disturb others. I live alone so I’ve never used them with my quest. The speaksers on the device probably deliver spatial audio better anyways.

Well that isn’t true at all. Headphones can be and in fact are an end unto themselves. They’re not just about isolating you. If they were there’d be no such thing as open back headphones. In fact, headphones are audio tools just like speakers. They can deliver sound that’s as good or in many cases better than full sized speakers can. There’s a reason most popular music is mixed and mastered in headphones and then checked on studio monitors. Quality headphones are also a reasonable compromise when you can’t afford high end speakers.
 
I am kind of confused. So I own the Apple Airpods Pro 2 without USB-C. Is the only difference that I am not going to get lossless audio? Will my Airpods Pro 2 still work without any other issues?
 
Because it isn’t lossless and will suffer from too much latency.

It might not be a problem of latency so much as of distance. The AirPods & AVP combination mean the devices are less than a feet apart an can use higher and wider frequencies / bandwidth for a stable, high data throughput.

If you try with a phone or a computer you might be roaming around a room or an apartment and would be better served by a lower frequency, on which the lossless proposition or data throughput might just not be possible.
 
You may be right. Far be it from me to cast aspersions and I do beg your pardon. May you enjoy a fully-lubricated aural climax while enjoying extremely-serious-and-not-at-all-silly lossless audio.

That's a start. Next time, try "I may not be able to hear it but I fully acknowledge that there are plenty of people on this planet that can."

Or, just keep being ignorant. Your call.
 
I'm one of those who doesn't care about lossless audio. When I buy an AVP in November or December, I will use the built in speakers or my non-pro airpods.
 
  • Like
Reactions: doelcm82
I wonder why Apple doesn't bring this protocol to the iPhone and Mac, seriously. The absolute worst that could happen is they would... sell more AirPod Pros? If it's using 5GHz they can probably extend the existing WiFi chipset to do it.
Yeah I’m curious for why the transmitting device has to have H2. Maybe there’s some sort of weird handshake. Would reckon VP exclusivity is based on range.
 
And yet according to a National Academy of Sciences paper from 2014, trained orchestral violinists cannot identify sound from a Stradivarius or a modern violin with any frequency greater than chance.
That is the most laughable comparison I've ever heard and it clearly shows you have zero idea of how sound and instruments actually work.

Almost nobody can tell a Strad apart from a finely hand-crafted modern instrument because they both sound as good as it's possible for an instrument to sound. When two instruments are pushing the bleeding edge of their craft, it doesn't matter how old they are or aren't. They will both have the same tonal characteristics. Period. Modern instruments can and do sound just as good as Strads.

And you can guarantee the comparison was not Strad vs Amazon Basics.

Further more, that ridiculous comparison has absolutely nothing to do with the perception of audio information coming out of a speaker.

I guarantee if you were to take those same people, play them a 44.1khz CD-quality recording vs a 96k recording through a set of middle-of-the-road monitors, not a single one wouldn't be able to immediately tell you that the 96k recording has way bigger soundstage, more dynamic range, and far more detail.

In fact, I've tested it with many non-musical people and the vast majority of them were shocked by how obvious the difference was.

44.1k CD audio sounds like it's had a chainlink fence put over the treble bands, and compressed audio is straight-up warbly garbage.

If you can't hear it, it's your own damn fault for not seeking it out and continuously listening to compressed trashed over bluetooth on 5-cent drivers.

So quit trying to shove the rest of us out of consideration.

So I suggest you quit parading ignorance and pretending like nobody else hears better than you, because we do, and we also know how music and sound work better than you.

Gosh I can't believe I took the time to write this out but the sheer cluelessness when it comes to sound and music is just astonishing.
 
Last edited:
Give me an example where you can clearly hear the difference. I'd love to listen to it!

To what end? More anecdote? Regardless of what you hear you’ll claim there’s no difference so we can just cut to the chase. Resolution is important. Most people don’t give two poops about it, but it is. Whether or not you personally can hear a difference isn’t really a relevant data point. Audio perception is highly subjective.
 
  • Like
Reactions: subjonas
To what end? More anecdote? Regardless of what you hear you’ll claim there’s no difference so we can just cut to the chase. Resolution is important. Most people don’t give two poops about it, but it is. Whether or not you personally can hear a difference isn’t really a relevant data point. Audio perception is highly subjective.
Even if Apple claims you have immersive audio there is no way your body can even feel bass in a room with AVP w/ AirPods Pros. Their audio drivers are very small/light not anything special compared to even cheap full size over-ears headphones. They sound acceptable for what they are, but heck a cheap wired gamers headphone like the wired LogicTech Pro X for $129 makes them sound bad for the money. That even is bundled with a USB external DAC to 3.5MM jack.

Screenshot 2024-01-18.png
 
  • Like
Reactions: Wizard_of_Woz
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.