[MICHAELSD]

Have you comparatively listened to Tidal or Qobuz vs. Amazon HD, Deezer, or any other Hi Res service? They don't compare. The others are not horrible but Tidal sounds so much better and that's on my gear. I can only imagine some of the high rollers in here with the real deal gear achieve for SQ. Am I hopeful that Apple Music will sound great? I am! Optimistic, not so much.

I do think Tidal is the leader and a step above Amazon Music HD, but benefits at this level are somewhat diminishing. They should all be within the same league. I’m confident Apple Lossless files will preserve the same amount of detail as whatever format (FLAC?) Tidal is using.

 

[MICHAELSD]

No Bluetooth streaming for Apple Lossless on AirPods Max:

https://www.t3.com/news/airpods-max-and-airpods-pro-dont-support-apple-music-lossless-apple-confirms

It is going to be a difficult pill to swallow for early adopters if Apple releases a second-generation AirPods Max within the next year that supports Apple Hi-Fi.

 

[mainguy]

No Bluetooth streaming for Apple Lossless on AirPods Max:

https://www.t3.com/news/airpods-max-and-airpods-pro-dont-support-apple-music-lossless-apple-confirms

It is going to be a difficult pill to swallow for early adopters if Apple releases a second-generation AirPods Max within the next year that supports Apple Hi-Fi.

The kind of pill thatd magically make me not buy another apple audio product lol

 

[tkddans]

The kind of pill thatd magically make me not buy another apple audio product lol

Or sell the first one and buy the next one .___.
That would be me.

 

[3Putter]

No Bluetooth streaming for Apple Lossless on AirPods Max:

https://www.t3.com/news/airpods-max-and-airpods-pro-dont-support-apple-music-lossless-apple-confirms

It is going to be a difficult pill to swallow for early adopters if Apple releases a second-generation AirPods Max within the next year that supports Apple Hi-Fi.

Nothing is in the same league as Tidal and Qobuz yet. Apple Hifi won't be either is my guess. You're going to trust that the same people who design and make excellent phones, tablets, and laptops to make great sounding music service delivery now? I sure hope so but they just put out the APM's and now the Hifi tier. Since they didn't connect the two do you really believe they are that engaged with Hifi music quality? They're becoming the TaylorMade of Technology!

 

[MICHAELSD]

Nothing is in the same league as Tidal and Qobuz yet. Apple Hifi won't be either is my guess. You're going to trust that the same people who design and make excellent phones, tablets, and laptops to make great sounding music service delivery now? I sure hope so but they just put out the APM's and now the Hifi tier. Since they didn't connect the two do you really believe they are that engaged with Hifi music quality? They're becoming the TaylorMade of Technology!

Apple Lossless is a technically excellent format. There’s no reason why it wouldn’t be in the same league or better.

 

[tinyman392]

I’m well aware of your opinions on frequency response. There is no point in the two of us rehashing this same argument again. I can be disappointed that Apple still hasn’t offered a hi res BT codec.

This could be the Mandela effect kicking in, but I remember instances of people testing what was being sent to the headphones and found that the transfer isn't a fixed 256 AAC. I could be wrong though and be thinking of something else. I've seen numbers hitting the mid to high 300's though.

The question to ask is: why now, at no additional cost?

It could be to encourage new subscriptions. I will admit that it is odd that Apple wouldn’t charge more, but maybe once they ran the numbers they realized an extra $5 of revenue from ~ 5% of subscribers wasn’t compelling. Instead offer it to everyone without changing the price of any of its services, and it makes Apple Music a better service for all.

In that regard Apple did just change the streaming industry. Amazon already followed suit by including Amazon Music HD with a standard subscription. Why would anyone pay twice as much for Tidal or Spotify Hi-Fi?

I also found it odd that Apple would automatically play Dolby Atmos versions of songs, so they must feel it’s a superior experience even if some purists may not prefer it. Potentially combining it with spatial audio down the line would serve to make the feature even more impressive.

Re: Dolby Atmos, this seems like a way to increase space and instrument separation within a closed-back or semi-closed format. I’m not sure they’d ever release an open-back headphone for consumers, so this is a solution to that.

If there’s no lossless streaming protocol announced now wait a few months, and I’m sure we’ll see new lines of AirPods/Beats headphones designed for Hi-Fi audio.

Marketing alone is enough to get consumers to upgrade, so they’ll be able to incentivize new purchases and potentially push the price of wireless consumer headphones even higher.

If AirPods Max doesn’t already support lossless wireless streaming it does seem like there will be a lot of disappointed customers. Beta software did point to wireless support, so I’d say wait until Apple Hi-Fi is launched before passing judgement. Perhaps they’ll discuss this at WWDC in June.

I was asking the same questions. I guess it's for competing with Amazon and Spotify that have recently started going lossless. So maybe not to get more subscribers but to avoid losing some to their more mainstream competitors? Some have stated that they already store the lossless masters on server side, so the cost may not have been huge for them to stream it already, hence the lack of added cost over Spotify which would need to allocate server space and overhead for lossless streaming. I know I've argued against this in the past, but it would make sense if Apple isn't increasing the price.

I feel like the Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio versions of songs can become industry changing. Especially with the latter, that's something that really doesn't exist currently. It would be cool to see a lot of binaural recordings turned Spatial Though I doubt that'll happen. There might be a way to turn these off though.

Lossless streaming would require AirPlay. Although the AirPods likely have WiFi radios built in, they'd need to connect to the same network as the phone which would be a little more tricky to do (especially with the ways that network security can be set up). I still feel like the current state of BT doesn't have high enough bandwidth to transmit any existing lossless compression. So either bandwidth is needed (hardware issue) or a new lossless compression algorithm needs to be derived so it can be done in a real-time streaming environment.

 

[mammal]

Lossless streaming would require AirPlay. Although the AirPods likely have WiFi radios built in, they'd need to connect to the same network as the phone which would be a little more tricky to do (especially with the ways that network security can be set up).

Do you have a reference for this? You are right that AirPlay would allow for CD quality no issues (no high res though, unless they release updated AirPlay 3). But I don’t think any current AirPods have a wifi chip inside. Setting it up on the same network would be trvial though, it could re-use credentials stored on your iPhone, the same exact way as when you set up Apple Watch for the first time (you also don’t need to enter WiFi password on the watch, it gets it from the phone) and then can stay on the network even if you turn off your phone. So if future AirPods have WiFi chips, we are golden and can stream lossless.

 

[mainguy]

Or sell the first one and buy the next one .___.
That would be me.

Like a girl who gets back together with the guy who cheated on her. c’mon man

 

[MayaTlab]

I remember instances of people testing what was being sent to the headphones and found that the transfer isn't a fixed 256 AAC. I could be wrong though and be thinking of something else. I've seen numbers hitting the mid to high 300's though.

You can check that with Bluetooth Explorer in the Xcode suite. The Qudelix 5K also has a bitrate counter for AAC. It can drop below 256kbps depending on the content being played but I've never personally seen it go above 256kbps - at least with the default settings.

Here switching between the first few seconds of two different tracks, Girl I Love You by Massive Attack (the lower data rate) and UTA 1 - Making Of Cyborg by Kenji Kawai (the higher data rate) - so polar opposite in terms of spectrum.

But the bitrate isn't that important for audio over bluetooth - or at least it only tells part of the story. The algorithm is more important.

Kenji Kawai's aforementioned track above, for example, can easily make aptX fail, even with its higher bitrate (because of how aptX handles high frequencies) while AAC won't be affected.

Although the AirPods likely have WiFi radios built in

I have seen no mention of Wifi chips and antennas in the various teardowns I've seen of Apple's AirPods.

 

[tinyman392]

Do you have a reference for this? You are right that AirPlay would allow for CD quality no issues (no high res though, unless they release updated AirPlay 3). But I don’t think any current AirPods have a wifi chip inside. Setting it up on the same network would be trvial though, it could re-use credentials stored on your iPhone, the same exact way as when you set up Apple Watch for the first time (you also don’t need to enter WiFi password on the watch, it gets it from the phone) and then can stay on the network even if you turn off your phone. So if future AirPods have WiFi chips, we are golden and can stream lossless.

I have seen no mention of Wifi chips and antennas in the various teardowns I've seen of Apple's AirPods.

Hm... I might be wrong with the inclusion of a WiFi chip. For whatever reason I thought I had seen a MAC address listed for my AirPods, but upon further inspection I am definitely mistaken.

You can check that with Bluetooth Explorer in the Xcode suite. The Qudelix 5K also has a bitrate counter for AAC. It can drop below 256kbps depending on the content being played but I've never personally seen it go above 256kbps - at least with the default settings.



Here switching between the first few seconds of two different tracks, Girl I Love You by Massive Attack (the lower data rate) and UTA 1 - Making Of Cyborg by Kenji Kawai (the higher data rate) - so polar opposite in terms of spectrum.

But the bitrate isn't that important for audio over bluetooth - or at least it only tells part of the story. The algorithm is more important.

Kenji Kawai's aforementioned track above, for example, can easily make aptX fail, even with its higher bitrate (because of how aptX handles high frequencies) while AAC won't be affected.

I do agree that algorithm is more important than pure bitrate. Specifically the compression algorithm being used and how well it's been implemented.

I guess I was thinking of something else having higher bitrate transfer then.

 

[retskrad]

The Airpods Max is just as detailed as my Hifiman Sundara while at the same time being Wireless, ANC headphones.

I feel like audiophiles who discredit the Max aren’t looking at the big picture. An open back audiophile headphone is useless the moment there are others living with you or when you are outside your home. The fact that Apple managed to reach the performance of a mid-fi audiophile headphone in a ANC headphone is something to be celebrated.

The sound quality and engineering gap between the AirPods Max and the rest of the audiophile world is monstrous. Just ask Sennheiser how hard it is to create a good sounding ANC headphone.

 

[mammal]

The Airpods Max is just as detailed as my Hifiman Sundara while at the same time being Wireless, ANC headphones.

I feel like audiophiles who discredit the Max aren’t looking at the big picture. An open back audiophile headphone is useless the moment there are others living with you or when you are outside your home. The fact that Apple managed to reach the performance of a mid-fi audiophile headphone in a ANC headphone is something to be celebrated.

The sound quality and engineering gap between the AirPods Max and the rest of the audiophile world is monstrous. Just ask Sennheiser how hard it is to create a good sounding ANC headphone.

+1 on this. We need companies like Apple (and Bose, Sony) to keep pushing the envelope. ANC headphones are a serious use case (travel and work) and wireless is just super convenient. I love my APM and listen to it more hours a day than AB-1266. And if you pressed me and told me I can only own one pair of headphones, I would keep APM.

 

[MayaTlab]

I guess I was thinking of something else having higher bitrate transfer then.

Theoretically AAC over bluetooth can use slightly higher bitrates, but it also depends on the receiving device. There is an option in Bluetooth Explorer on the Mac to increase AAC's bitrate... but it's been broken for a while and sometimes make the app crash. I doubt that the AirPods would be compatible with higher bitrates than 256kbps though.

 

[tinyman392]

The Airpods Max is just as detailed as my Hifiman Sundara while at the same time being Wireless, ANC headphones.

I feel like audiophiles who discredit the Max aren’t looking at the big picture. An open back audiophile headphone is useless the moment there are others living with you or when you are outside your home. The fact that Apple managed to reach the performance of a mid-fi audiophile headphone in a ANC headphone is something to be celebrated.

The sound quality and engineering gap between the AirPods Max and the rest of the audiophile world is monstrous. Just ask Sennheiser how hard it is to create a good sounding ANC headphone.

I don't have the Sundara unfortunately. Though I'd have to go back and AB, but from memory the APM doesn't seem like it's more detailed than my HE-400i (V1 with SMC connectors), Audeze Mobius, or Audeze Sine. The closest planar I have to match detailing is the Drop Panda (no EQ) which is pretty close but I felt the Panda edge out the APM; though some have disagreed with that assessment. My other full-sized orthos are not in the same ballpark though, HE-560 (V1 with SMC connectors) and Ananda BT. Though surprisingly the Ananda BT is quite similar in tonality to the APM in some ways.

I will admit that the APM is great for what it is and is very well done. I always put it in the price range of 2-300 based on audio quality alone though, hitting higher than that it tends to fall short.