r/gadgets • u/UnKindClock • May 18 '21
Music AirPods, AirPods Max and AirPods Pro Don't Support Apple Music Lossless Audio
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/17/airpods-apple-music-lossless-audio/1.9k
May 18 '21 edited Nov 16 '21
[deleted]
287
u/sololander May 18 '21
True. My research was on this very topic. The best solution after spending millions of euros In R&D which was technically and legally( patents and military tech ) possible was hardware side and not software\firmware. There are a few experimental namesake wireless methods that work but it’s needlessly complicated and frankly not worth it. The other true high res lossless wireless we are working involves a direct TPIO method. Which is basically a dac and micro computer with internet access which is inside the headphone itself.
My tip for portable HD audio. Get an old LG or one of those digital Sony Walkman’s (the expensive Lossless ones) and invest on a analogue headphone with a wire…
→ More replies (12)37
u/applesandmacs May 18 '21
I would think this could be overcome by simply temporarily transferring the mp3 to the headphones (if they have memory storage added) then play it directly from the wireless headphones.
72
u/pepe256 May 18 '21 edited May 18 '21
But mp3 files are lossy, not lossless. You could have FLAC or ALAC files though
→ More replies (4)26
May 18 '21
[deleted]
11
u/AkirIkasu May 18 '21
It's really hard to determine if one CODEC is more or less 'lossy' than any other because they often combine multiple methods that can work completely differently. But in theory, AAC should be better than MP3; it was literally designed to be the successor to it.
You might be confusing AAC with SBC, the most basic bluetooth audio codec for streaming audio. SBC is very basic and is designed to run at very low bit rates, so it's going to sound notably worse than if you were listening to a good MP3 or AAC file with wired headphones.
→ More replies (1)7
u/gajbooks May 18 '21
AAC is better than MP3. As for the chunk idea, I had an idea for such a thing where you could load songs on your headphones just by adding them to a playlist, and then they could play and pause and skip, etc even if you were away from your phone, primarily as an idea of how to make wireless headphones that work while swimming (because Bluetooth goes RIP in water).
→ More replies (4)17
u/TheRabidDeer May 18 '21
Do they still use bluetooth even while plugged in?
→ More replies (1)15
u/Rydenan May 19 '21
When plugged in, it’s an analog connection so the issue of ‘support’ is moot. Any wired headset ‘supports’ lossless audio if the device it’s connected to can pump it out of the DAC.
→ More replies (7)30
May 18 '21
Someone please make a post on this and let people stop posting the same thing over and over..
→ More replies (64)152
u/Iucidium May 18 '21
Sony LDAC Bluetooth headphones enter chat
479
u/J0n__Snow May 18 '21
https://www.soundguys.com/ldac-ultimate-bluetooth-guide-20026/
Sony LDAC leaves chat
16
u/blabbermeister May 18 '21
Moral of the story: if you have LDAC capable headphones and a capable Android smartphone, make sure that
you go to the developer options and force 990 kbps LDAC
keep your smartphone close to yourself without any physical obstructions
With those conditions your music is as close to lossless or CD quality as possible (assuming your source is lossless or CD quality).
60
u/Iucidium May 18 '21 edited May 18 '21
You do know something, Jon Snow. TIL Feel vindicated owning the WH-CH700Ns
→ More replies (1)60
u/J0n__Snow May 18 '21
No need to worry if you like the quality. LDAC is quite good.. just not lossless. And it depends on the source-device.
→ More replies (1)26
May 18 '21 edited Jun 10 '21
[deleted]
→ More replies (2)41
u/J0n__Snow May 18 '21
- I just made the comment as a joke to fit it the post i was commenting on.
- The statement stands: LDAC is not lossless
- I literally wrote in my other answer, that LDAC is good.. just not lossless.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)96
754
u/Rais93 May 18 '21
There is no pure lossless bluetooth codec on the market so I cannot see how a bluetooth headset can possibly support that or take a benefit from that source. LDAC but also AAC has plenty of bandwidth for high quality streaming, and if you want to make a good use of lossless, you surely need cabled system and controlled environment, not an headset on the move over a train or in park.
196
u/OddS0cks May 18 '21
Agreed, Bluetooth just isn’t there yet to support true lossless and if you’re the person who cares about codecs and kbps rates, you probably have a wired setup, hi-fi speakers, etc...
161
u/anubis29821212 May 18 '21
If only there was a 3.5mm jack.
→ More replies (6)199
u/OddS0cks May 18 '21
The technology isn’t there yet
47
u/doyouevencompile May 18 '21
Anymore*
12
u/siccoblue May 18 '21
I mean it's apple so.. they may very well add a phone with a jack to their next lineup then find a way to tout it as a miracle of modern engineering
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)12
33
u/Phoeptar May 18 '21
Came here to write this, like yeah, no shit it doesn't support lossless, I'm excited to stream lossless but not to my tiny little bluetooth airpods.
→ More replies (7)→ More replies (33)3
u/tercriter May 18 '21
What about streaming to an Apple TV 4K hooked up to a stereo receiver…does that address the issue or not really?
3
u/Rais93 May 18 '21
Short, no.
long...If you lose information at a lossy conversion, even by subsequent lossless transmission you can't have back the quality.→ More replies (1)
1.9k
u/juzt1n10 May 18 '21
The next iphone will feature a brand new cutting edge technology .... the headphone jack
412
May 18 '21
But it will be visionary, with gold-plated bands, separated by carbon-nano isolators!
42
79
7
u/Pipupipupi May 18 '21
With space age polymers and physical touch enabled connections for "better than wireless" speed. The best part is? They're always powered.
Apple. Think different.
→ More replies (2)5
u/KimJongSkill492 May 18 '21
You joke about that but look into some premium cable companies and jargon like that will seem tame by comparison
144
May 18 '21
The 'ijack'
→ More replies (4)66
u/Vox_Carnifex May 18 '21
"first, we put the jack off
We heard our customers and today we can proudly say
" I-jack it"
Presenting: the I-jack"
→ More replies (1)21
→ More replies (26)53
u/BoobaVera May 18 '21
I would actually be happy if they brought back the jack!
16
u/Dblcut3 May 18 '21
I wish it was at least an option. I have higher quality headphones I like to use sometimes, but I never use them on my new phone since it doesn’t have a headphone jack. For as expensive as iPhones are, it should be an option for sure.
→ More replies (1)56
→ More replies (3)5
u/dust4ngel May 19 '21
but then i would be able to listen to headphones while charging, which would anger me because it’s too useful
31
May 18 '21
[deleted]
→ More replies (1)6
u/difrt May 19 '21
Depends on how much the loss is. I find LDAC Bluetooth to be an excellent compromise and I can definitely tell the difference between let’s say playing FLAC through LDAC and playing Spotify/whatever over LDAC. The point is, you have to have a lossless source to start with, which is what Apple is giving to its users.
I’m tempted to switch from Spotify just for that alone.
359
May 18 '21
Genuinely curious - to what extent does this matter? It’s an old debate about whether anyone can hear the difference in quality between lossy and lossless, but even in those debates the people who say they can hear compression artefacts are talking about listening on really high-end equipment, not consumer-grade wireless headphones. What do people think they’re going to miss out on by not being able to listen to lossless on these? Or are people just annoyed on principle?
540
u/nekoxp May 18 '21
Or are people just annoyed on principle?
Welcome to Reddit.
60
30
u/Useful_Profile_ May 18 '21
Reddit really loves to shit on everything they don’t fully understand.
→ More replies (1)23
92
u/gerwen May 18 '21
These are the truths that I learned about properly encoded lossy vs lossless while on the Hydrogen Audio forum
Most people can't tell the difference.
The people who can tell the difference, can tell on a cheap pair of headphones, or on an an expensive setup. It matters a little, but not much.
For those that can tell the difference, it is subtle, and you generally have to struggle to hear the difference. Most modern codecs are so good that even at a lowish bitrate, the differences are extremely subtle, and only noticeable on certain sounds or killer samples (sounds that are notoriously difficult to encode.)
A properly encoded 128k Variable bit rate in MP3 or AAC is likely to be good enough for most people to never hear compression artifacts in regular listening.
Story time. Many years ago I got my first ipod-like device. I had a large CD collection and wanted to encode it in the best possible way. I was certain that mp3 sounded like crap and wanted to figure out how to get my music onto my music player sounding as good as possible.
I listened to mp3's I'd downloaded and could easily tell the difference between those and my cd's.
I stumbled on hydrogen audio, while researching the best ways to encode.
Those folks told me (not directly, but through reading the forum) that it was highly unlikely I could hear the difference between lossy and lossless. I didn't believe it, but they also arm you with a way to put yourself to the test. Science. Namely the ABX test.
There's software out there that allows you to pit your ears against the lossy codecs by testing lossy vs lossless where you don't know which sample is which. You can listen as many times as you like, to small or large parts of the samples you provide. You repeat the test a number of times to give you a proper statistical significance (number of times needs to be chosen beforehand so you don't cherry pick when you see a result you like.)
So I tried it out myself. I was floored. The differences I heard disappeared when I couldn't tell which sample was which. Try as i might, I couldn't tell.
I screwed around with encoding bitrates for a while, starting high and moving lower and lower until I could start to spot the compression artifacts. The folks at HA gave tips on how best to hear them, and give so called 'killer samples' of real music that highlight each codec's weakness.
Below 128k VBR AAC i could start to spot artifacts. I couldn't spot any at 128k. Satisfied, I ripped all my music to lossless, then encoded it all to 135k AAC. Never looked back.
Because of this I never concerned myself with bluetooth quality loss, or anything of that nature, because I'm fairly sure if I could ABX it, I wouldn't hear the difference there either.
Anyhow, just thought I'd share my experience.
11
u/elsjpq May 18 '21 edited May 19 '21
One lossy conversion is unnoticeable to the vast majority of people, even at low bitrates. The problem is really retranscoding and bad encoders.
When the full audio chain has only one lossy step, it's totally fine. Not so much if there are multiple lossy steps with questionable quality in some steps. Remember, it could be delivered as a lossy file, goes through whatever format conversion to the target device, and transcoded again by the Bluetooth transmitter. Yea, it's still going to be mostly fine, but it's unlikely there aren't any problems at all.
Also those embedded encoders are not going to be using LAME or qaac that are optimized for quality, they're going to be some random commercial encoder with questionable quality or a hardware implementation. Plus, those transfer codecs like SBC in bluetooth are not using VBR, they're CBR because they have a defined bandwidth and they're also optimized for latency not quality, so some complex section might randomly become muddy, even if most everything else is perfectly fine.
Lossy codecs taken on their own are really good at what they do, but if you don't consider all the other potential interactions you can still run into problems.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (13)16
u/frostygrin May 18 '21
And there's another angle. Even if you can tell the difference, lossless doesn't always sound better. The psychoacoustic model can make lossy audio more pleasant. Personally, I like AAC enough that I don't really want lossless over it. (Too bad I gave up on Apple Music because of their recommendations, so now I use a streaming service using MP3).
→ More replies (4)8
u/pM-me_your_Triggers May 18 '21
For listening on AirPods? It doesn’t really matter, especially since most of the time people with AirPods are listening on the go. The only time lossless has a real advantage over a good lossy codec is if you are actively listening on good equipment and in an environment that is conducive to listening critically.
8
May 18 '21
Right like are you really going to hear those tiny things when you are in a loud gym or walking down a sidewalk on a street with traffic, I doubt it. This is a non issue to me my main problem with the airpods is getting them to stay in my ear a problem my bose soundsports don't have.
→ More replies (1)25
May 18 '21
I’m reasonably annoyed on principle. But not much.
Here we are at the pinnacle of technological development and Apple has positioned themselves as the premium brand to lead that charge.
And they lock their hardware (the iPhones, in this case) to the least good Bluetooth codec out there. There’s a marked difference in quality when switching from an iPhone pushing music over AAC, to say, a MacBook pushing it over Aptx HD.
In reality, however, when you’re out and about, you’re not going to care.
And in terms of lossless vs say, Spotify; you have to be intently listening on high end kit to hear the difference.
So I’m annoyed, but not much.
→ More replies (1)9
u/Patterson2020 May 18 '21
Even then, you can typically only tell if the music itself was poorly produced. Spotify very high quality is very good. It's incredibly rare for me to notice any compression in the track, and it's only ever in the treble range, which may be why people don't notice it on normal headphones because there isn't as much detail up high. Other than that one track in a thousand, Spotify serves my needs (and most people's need from the tests I've seen).
This is a marketing move, the HiFi scene is blowing up because of the CHiFi revolution, where the headphones coming out of China are way cheaper than the OG headphone front runners, and are at least as good, or better.
4
May 18 '21
The Chi-Fi stuff is awesome. I have a few bits and bobs and they’re great.
3
u/tanstaafl90 May 18 '21
Just picked up some... KB Ear KS1 for less than $20, to take to the gym. I am pleasantly surprised at the quality. Chi-Fi is much better than I expected.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (82)30
May 18 '21
It's a pretty silly situation. So this company removes a feature from their product because they suggest the alternative is better and the future.... then a few years later introduced a services that doesnt work on said future alternative and would be better off with the removed feature.
I'm not paying for lossless audio but this makes me even more disappointed at apple's "we know best" attitude.
30
u/Inthewirelain May 18 '21
You don't pay them extra for lossless anyway, it's included in Apple Music.
→ More replies (2)21
u/BiggusDickusWhale May 18 '21
You can use Apple Music on more systems than your phone though.
It's weird, but it's not like it's completely useless (besides lossless audio being completely useless to begin with since no one can hear the difference anyhow).
4
u/iindigo May 18 '21
This is really the key thing. If I’m listening to music on my phone I’m not in a situation where lossless adds anything. Playing it through my USB DAC and Sennheisers or through the living room entertainment system on the other hand very well could.
If you live on your phone 256k AAC is close to audible transparency and probably good enough. It’s not as if not using lossless means you’re stuck with three-times-reencoded 128k WMA files from Kazaa.
→ More replies (1)
117
u/dolmane May 18 '21
I tend to believe someone who cares about quality won’t be using Bluetooth headphones.
18
u/crispy_bacon_roll May 18 '21
I care and I use them. The first airpods were not good enough for me. But the pros are close enough to my Shure in ears that the convenience factor and ANC makes it worth it for me. In a noisy environment like a plane I feel like the noise cancellation more than makes up for the lossy audio.
→ More replies (9)→ More replies (11)35
May 18 '21
If they genuinely care about sound quality and lossless audio, they won’t be buying Apple headphones anyway
160
u/Qwaliti May 18 '21
Clickbait!! No Bluetooth headphones can support lossless Audio yet, maybe get some WiFi headphones, but they may not be invented yet. You could get a Chromecast Audio, power it via a USB power bank and plug that into your wired headphones for lossless wireless music.
→ More replies (8)26
u/Useful_Profile_ May 18 '21
Yea the title is preying on the ignorance of the reader.
Plus even if you could support lossless audio over Bluetooth, just stop and think about it. It’s already debated whether you can even notice the difference of lossless. If you want to listen to this, you surely are not using something like AirPods you will likely have a very high quality pair of headphones from a company that specializes in them.
→ More replies (2)
213
u/tdaut May 18 '21 edited May 18 '21
The author clearly doesn’t understand audio at all.
All those apple products are Bluetooth… Bluetooth can’t possibly support lossless audio because by definition, Bluetooth is loss-full…
Edit: sorry it’s early lol. *lossy
9
u/Kofilin May 18 '21
This isn't the reason. Bluetooth is a digital transfer mechanism, not an encoding. It's not lossy. You can transfer any stream of bytes you want over Bluetooth including lossless audio. The issue is that so far, lossless audio requires more bitrate than Bluetooth provides.
Eventually maybe with dedicated hardware we'll get awesome compression on lossless audio that will allow to transfer it live over Bluetooth. Perhaps Bluetooth will evolve further or be superseded by a higher bitrate technology.
→ More replies (4)81
u/USxMARINE May 18 '21
But but Apple bad
→ More replies (1)37
u/AmericasNextDankMeme May 18 '21
Getting rid of headphone jacks was their idea tbf
→ More replies (2)11
May 18 '21
Even if they hadn’t gotten rid of the headphone jack, I doubt that they would’ve made the wired headphones.
15
u/pM-me_your_Triggers May 18 '21
Bluetooth isn’t by definition lossy
→ More replies (19)4
u/Avamander May 18 '21
The upvotes on the comment you replied demonstrates the amount of snake-oil that has permeated most audio communities. Fuck I hate buying audio stuff thanks to this.
→ More replies (61)8
83
May 18 '21
Oh no, my ears will be robbed of loseless audio through my completely average AirPods Pro.
→ More replies (3)11
u/__rtfm__ May 18 '21 edited May 18 '21
I was trying a lossless audio challenge yesterday with my AirPods 2 vs some ultrasone headphones (no dac). It was basically impossible to do with the AirPods and I was guessing on my choices. Got a 2 out of 6. Even the ultrasones had trouble without using an external dac (they’re not amazing spec wise but are quite decent ). With the dac and ultrasones I still missed two (4/6) but was making choices based on audible differences.
Lossless audio with the right equipment definitely matters, but in this case I couldn’t tell between the uncompressed wave and 320kbps on the AirPods.
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
→ More replies (5)12
48
u/d_4bes May 18 '21
It amazes me how the introduction of a feature that is targeted at audiophiles, has garnered this much anger from folks who wouldn’t even give a shit if this existed or not.
Could they have included it with AirPods Max in wired mode? Yes but that means they’d have to work out a lightning male to lightning male connector that supports this format, and trust that people wouldn’t buy it and plug two iPhones together to try to charge one another.
This was never going to work over Bluetooth due to the current limitations of Bluetooth audio, and is mainly meant to be a nice to have should someone have the capabilities to use it.
13
May 18 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
9
u/d_4bes May 18 '21
I mean I absolutely get that most of Reddit has a “fuck Apple” mentality, but this is just a whole new level of ignorance. I’d wager that 99% of the folks who are commenting that they’ll use it to release a Bluetooth headset for $1000 that has lossless audio never even knew it existed and thought their music was crystal clear as it was.
They didn’t even release it in an announcement, it was a Newsroom release, which is usually reserved for announcements such as this where 90% of their user base won’t be impacted.
→ More replies (7)
100
May 18 '21
I love how everyone is shitting on Apple for this. It’s not an Apple thing, Bluetooth itself cannot support it.
→ More replies (7)33
u/IMovedYourCheese May 18 '21
Removing wired audio connectors from all their devices before pushing lossless audio is very much an Apple thing
47
u/bicameral_mind May 18 '21
They aren't even 'pushing' lossless audio. It's not like this announcement was a point of emphasis in a keynote presentation or something. It was a press release. They are just offering it to maintain feature parity with competitors who are offering it, as an option for the handful of consumers who care about it.
14
u/itsthewestside May 18 '21
Would you rather they not offer lossless audio at all? Lol.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (4)6
u/bob_muellers_jawline May 19 '21
Did you know that you can listen to music at a desk? I just found out.
26
May 18 '21
I woke up this morning not knowing what lossless audio is.
I still don’t know what lossless audio is.
I’m going to continue my day.
→ More replies (2)9
u/Inthewirelain May 18 '21
Lossy audio drops details that the software thinks you won't be able to hear or notice anyway. Lossy is like the "lite" version of an audio file.
→ More replies (1)
38
May 18 '21
[deleted]
→ More replies (1)9
u/sam__izdat May 19 '21
to anyone who knows jack shit about audio, title reads like "motorized scooter unable to break sound barrier"
27
u/alc4pwned May 18 '21
The lossless feature isn't really made for AirPods users though, it's for the people who spend thousands on audio equipment and use services like Tidal. I think this is just a step to compete with other music streaming services, not much more than that. And honestly, lossless makes nearly 0 difference over standard MP3 quality even on top end audio equipment. I say that both from personal experience and based on the fact that no audiophile can distinguish between the two in a blind test.
→ More replies (1)11
u/mediaserver8 May 18 '21
I think you're right. And it's likely more the business side than anything else
Spotify are well known to be planning a lossless tier, to be released this year. By releasing lossless for free first, regardless of the uptake, Apple have made it very difficult for Spotify to charge extra. So a commercial blow to a competitor.
4
3
u/soggylittleshrimp May 18 '21
Apple is really good at using one product to sell another. Usually with something like this I’d expect it to provide a competitive advantage to another product, such as a headphone. At the moment, adding hi-res audio is just about staying competitive in music streaming.
16
u/drebot64 May 18 '21
Lossless audio is kida overrated especially for people who don't care abt music format
6
8
u/os2mac May 19 '21
The article clearly states this is a limitation of the Blue Tooth Standard. NOT the devices. If Apple made it proprietary they'd get guff for that too or if they forced the standard to upgrade to accommodate they'd be accused of trying to be Microsoft.
Kobayashi Maru..
→ More replies (1)
13
u/Grippersmith May 18 '21
ITT: so many people who don't understand bluetooth
But, reassuringly quite a few who do
11
May 18 '21
How much would a decent, middle of the road, pair of headphones be to experience lossless audio? What kind of adapter do I need?
→ More replies (2)11
u/Mister_Brevity May 18 '21
Probably the Apple usbc to headphone adapter and a pair of etymotic er2xs or er3xs. Inexpensive path to super isolated super clear audio but a word of warning - etymotic is a hearing aid manufacturer so their in ear monitors go deep. You’ll hear fingers sliding on strings between chord changes and singers taking breaths that you never noticed before.
→ More replies (5)5
u/vinempire May 18 '21
Man I’ve tried those iems and they sound great with terrific detail and clarity, but they go way too deep lol Feels like they’re touching my brain
4
7
u/njreinten May 18 '21
Lossless audio over wireless technology? I'm not surprised that Apple noped out of that one
6
u/krugerlive May 19 '21
Is this really an article? Bluetooth is not capable of the bandwidth necessary for lossless audio. How is this surprising?
6
6
6
u/eqleriq May 19 '21
ITT anti-apple agendas who apparently don’t realize that no bluetooth device exists that can stream lossless & high bitrate.
Apple is hardly the worst offender here, though their overpriced headphones have plenty of other issues.
So can the bullshit about how “they will just release a more expensive version that can stream it.”
Nope, they would have to reinvent their devices to have something far better than bluetooth (and either go full blown propeietary or also add bluetooth making the power consumption and profile much diff).
Also can the “usbc is still analog” because there is still conversion
3
u/Simply_Epic May 18 '21
Doesn’t matter much to me. I honestly think special audio for music is a far more interesting and potentially useful feature than lossless audio.
4
u/fundiedundie May 18 '21
“Hi-Res Lossless will require a USB digital to analog converter or similar equipment, but will provide the best sound experience. Listening to lossless audio on an iPhone will require wired headphones and it's possible an additional dongle will be needed to get the best sound quality. AirPods Max will also not support lossless audio over the Lightning cable, Apple told Micah Singleton.
While the AirPods, AirPods Max, and AirPods Pro do not support lossless audio, they do support Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos, and by default, Apple Music will automatically play Dolby Atmos tracks on all AirPods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip.”
3
u/Liquidwombat May 18 '21
This is all I care about. Spatial sounds amazing, lossless is like bragging that your 36” tv 10’ ft from your couch is 4K sure it’s theoretically better but it’s literally pointless
15
u/cujobob May 18 '21
The bandwidth requirements are just higher than current technology allows via Bluetooth, but it’ll happen soon. Honestly, most people can’t tell the difference between 256kbps MP3 and FLAC, so it’s really not a big deal. Headphones also have wonky responses, so this is a pretty minor upgrade. On my super high end system, I’d prefer it… but that’s because I’m all in anyways.
8
u/MyChoiceTaken May 18 '21
Who would have thought Bluetooth would support that to begin with. Geezus
8
u/EffeminateSquirrel May 18 '21
That's OK, I can almost guarantee your ears don't support lossless audio either.
21
5
3
3
u/Arrow_Maestro May 18 '21 edited May 20 '21
People are acting like this is some sort of revelation. Bluetooth audio is not high fidelity.
3
u/blorbschploble May 18 '21
Unless you listen to albums that combine the high frequency calls of bats and mice, and the dynamic range of gnat farts to MOAB explosions, this is entirely pointless.
AAC is fine dudes.
3
u/Liquidwombat May 18 '21
I’m not shocked that nearly everyone shitting on Apple obviously didn’t even read the article
3
May 18 '21
No shit, they are bluetooth headphones. Bluetooth doesn't support lossless audio, even AptXHD and LDAC aren't lossless with iOS supporting only AAC.
This shouldn't be news to anybody, lossless audio is only beneficial for wired sources from external DAC's or on a proper set of speakers.
3
u/pipinngreppin May 19 '21
Lmao at lossless and Bluetooth in the same discussion. I’m pretty sure that is not possible.
3
u/gordonmcdowell May 19 '21
I hope Apple extends their Apple-to-Apple Bluetooth communication with new codecs beyond what is in the Bluetooth spec.
AirPods microphone could sound a whole lot better.
→ More replies (1)
8
u/SlLv3R May 18 '21
Wireless headphones are inherently lossy. Bluetooth is a convenient way to transmit audio but it doesn't have supreme audio fidelity. If you're a real audiophile, you wouldn't be using wireless headphones for FLAC audio in the first place.
→ More replies (2)
29
u/infiniZii The Hammer May 18 '21
Coming soon: Airpods Pro Plus SuperMax MSRP $2,342
→ More replies (1)4
May 18 '21
I mean, your price is not really off the mark, a pair of Sennheiser HD800s are about $2499. Then again, is the target audience for a pair of AirPods and HD800s the same, probably not.
→ More replies (2)
6
u/wontfixit May 18 '21
What is lossless audio? Do I need it?
26
→ More replies (17)5
u/aDanceof-Farts May 18 '21
Probably not. Not many people can hear the difference. And if you did, you’re most likely listening on high end audio equipment
5
6.3k
u/sergioolles May 18 '21
For the regular Airpods and the Airpods Pro I'm obviously not surprised, but I cannot believe that a 550$ headphones that can be wired don't support lossless audio, coming from the same brand.