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Nice! I was considering adding a Tidal subscription since I recently purchased a Hifi setup but now I'll wait and see if this manifests.
 
Many dozens of reviews of these are already being planned, with zero objective testing of output or microphone quality.

Modern tech reviewers are horrible.

Sigh.
 
WTF is happening in the world when folk are now starting to reference CD Quality as Audiophile, do we need any additional kit to play CD quality files, I mean c'mon seriously?
For folk that have bought into this 256kbs AAC is enough, remember back to when iTunes launched & we were told 128kbs AAC was enough, until it seemingly wasn't.
CD quality is not audiophile in the strictest meaning of the word, it's just as things should sound.
Just play the Foo Fighters new album on iTunes & tell me it sounds ok, just about right, it sounds god awful, as does any other kind of music on there.
256kps is a convenience only.
IIRC, I remember someone saying that the music source files that Apple holds are lossless anyway, so storage issues should face any additional cost.

100%

It's unbelievable that somehow being able to discern a difference between 128/256kbps and a CD means you have some type of magical ears or audio equipment. I guess those guys citing their studies and so-called science will insist on not getting a free upgrade to lossless...
 
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100%

It's unbelievable that somehow being able to discern a difference between 128/256kbps and a CD means you have some type of magical ears or audio equipment. I guess those guys citing their studies and so-called science will insist on not getting a free upgrade to lossless...

Being able to discern a difference between 128 and 256 on good equipment doesn't mean you have magical ears, that's possible even for "normal" ears. Discern a difference between 256 and lossless? Yeah, rest assured you would fail in a real blind test. The "so called science" is your "hifi" placebo imagination – and I am telling this as a guy who owns a so called audiophile stereo equipment and always tries to achieve perfect sound.

That said, if the AM hifi upgrade is free, I take it, or course. Surely won't pay five or even ten dollars more for it though.
 
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Yup. Archimago’s blind test comparing 320 MP3 to lossless found only a small number who showed any consistent preference, and most of those who did actually preferred the MP3. These were almost all self-proclaimed audiophiles with high end equipment. It just goes to illustrate that we’re past needing to worry about bitrates and codecs. Far more important are the transducers (headphones and speakers), room treatments, and especially the quality of the mixing and mastering in the original recording.
Thank you, I appreciate this explicit reference to it. I often forget to bookmark things like this.

Agree RE: Mastering. I came to this conclusion as well.

I will say I'm still curious to see how much bluetooth can change things insomuch as the "AAC 256KBPS" stream may be compromised by poor remixing (forget bit rate drops for a moment). Again really not 100% sure there, as it may well be all in the inaudible range, but it does at least pose a distinct scenario from plain 326 vs FLAC on a desktop with USB C/Aux-out. For Apple devices, less of an issue if any, but there are other manufacturers with poorly implemented AAC spec, so.
 
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100%

It's unbelievable that somehow being able to discern a difference between 128/256kbps and a CD means you have some type of magical ears or audio equipment. I guess those guys citing their studies and so-called science will insist on not getting a free upgrade to lossless...
lol dude, using 128kbps and 256kbps interchangeably as though the discrepancy in bit rate is a linear function that outputs musical hedons - such that lossless is some Turkish Delight **** - entirely misses the point.

People can hardly discern 256kbps MP3 vs FLAC on ABX tests. And AAC is the successor to MP3 - it uses psychoacoustic modeling to pave over the deficits. The ceiling is fairly clear and it ain't linear.


Here's LC3, the new Bluetooth LE standard to succeed SBC. See for yourself:
 
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Being able to discern a difference between 128 and 256 on good equipment doesn't mean you have magical ears, that's possible even for "normal" ears. Discern a difference between 256 and lossless? Yeah, rest assured you would fail in a real blind test. The "so called science" is your "hifi" placebo imagination – and I am telling this as a guy who owns a so called audiophile stereo equipment and always tries to achieve perfect sound.

That said, if the AM hifi upgrade is free, I take it, or course. Surely won't pay five or even ten dollars more for it though.
Exactly. Man I can discern 128 and 256 all the time, srs - whenever I **** around with my Casting and Deezer I notice it ****s up the quality on bluetooth later/ the next time I listen, and usually takes me two songs tops of even modest volume to realize the quality was shafted. Or when doing iOS restores etc

128 vs 256 is huge! after that imma need to see the ABX independent verification or a really ****** audio chain/remixer proof
 
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I'm betting Apple will be pulling a Tidal and soliciting some new remastered tracks to slip in as HiFi exclusive - and thus we'll never hear the end of how great lossless is.
 
Wouldn't go that far with the "96kbps mp3" – people really believing that their Homepods and AirPod Max Pros sound better with lossless vs 256 AAC or 24-bit instead of 16-bit are real audiophile placebo victims though.
Oh man the 24-bit stuff kills me lol. Really there's something about that one part of this entire machination that is just over the top
 
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To be clear though: I am all for lossless at no cost if only because it ensures any degradation in the chain - which, is at least theoretically plausible certainly outside of Apple products - is less likely to noticeably degrade the sound. But again I'm not 100% on all that and it's certainly nothing like people want to believe lol
 
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You should try bringing them in! I had my original airpods replaced even though they were out of warranty
Those of us outside the USA do not receive such stellar service, unfortunately.

I've had a similar thing happen in the USA with an iPhone 6 at the time, they just swapped it for a new one even though it was 3 months out of warranty. But in Europe or Asia, tough luck, no they won't.

With AirPods it's really the epitome of consumerism to have a product with an obsoletion date of 1 year + a few months. My AirPods now last about 1 hour on battery. Bit of a joke of a product. The other issue being it fries my brain, so actually having it die is not the worst thing, it may save me from brain cancer....
 
is HiFi something only audiophiles will be able to appreciate or is this something that everyone can easily notice?
The best you can get from the iTunes music store today is 256kbit/s AAC encoded with a high-quality encoder from 192 kHz/ 24 bit sources. When I started ripping my music, I tried various quality levels and I couldn’t hear a difference between 160 kbit and 192kbit mp3 using good headphones.

So most people, including so-called “audiophiles” won’t hear a difference.

However, I _can_ hear the difference between 128 kbit and 256 kbit AAC. I _cannot_ tell you what the difference is, but I can hear that the 128 kbit just doesn’t have the same effect on me. It is less enjoyable. I can’t say what is missing, but something is.
 
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Being able to discern a difference between 128 and 256 on good equipment doesn't mean you have magical ears, that's possible even for "normal" ears. Discern a difference between 256 and lossless? Yeah, rest assured you would fail in a real blind test. The "so called science" is your "hifi" placebo imagination – and I am telling this as a guy who owns a so called audiophile stereo equipment and always tries to achieve perfect sound.

That said, if the AM hifi upgrade is free, I take it, or course. Surely won't pay five or even ten dollars more for it though.
Go listen to the Foo Fighters then tell me there's no difference, I'll grant you for some music genres, the difference can appear slight on others it's huge, that said, I can normally tell the difference between Hi-Res & CD, YMMV.
 
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Apple doesn’t have to come up with their own format. ALAC has been there for many years.
Two different things.
ALAC is an offline lossless codec designed for archival.
Aptx and LDAC are high res audio streaming codec for wireless bluetooth transmission.

So far, Apple only supports SBC (the lowest common denominator) and AAC on all their bluetooth devices. There's probably a reason for that, ie. Apple doesn't want to pay licensing fees to Qualcomm or Sony.
 
Not sure about the Apple Music app, but iTunes had a conversion utility that enabled you to convert "up" a song in your iTunes library to create a version in AIFF 16-bit / 48kHz / 1536kbps. AIFF is an uncompressed lossless file format. It would retain the original copy and create a 2nd version with the higher bit rate. The downside is that AIFF files are HUGE, but the upside is that it provided you with a CD-quality music file that could play through iTunes or on an iPod/iPhone, which you couldn't do with a FLAC file, so it was basically the highest resolution available for play though the Apple environment.
I did this for the 4000 songs in my iTunes, and was able to get about 3200 songs on a 160GB iPod. I think iTunes also let you set that bit rate as the default for Import of new songs.
 
I now wonder if the H2 chip that will likely be in the new AirPods was designed to handle higher-bandwidth audio, such as the potential use of Apple Lossless in Apple Music for this new "hifi" format.
 
Every leak and rumor suggests third gen Airpods won't have rubber tips. I'm confused why websites keep reporting they'll have a 'similar design' to Airpods Pro?
 
A service for a non mainstream audience, from Apple? Unlikely.
No, I called it. Read up on this, they are actually doing this. Just like Audio Sharing and Spacial Audio.

Also, AriPods are the mainstream wireless headphones. The hardcore ones are niche products.
 
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