I truly apologize if this has already been asked /posted but I can't find anything as of this moment. I just snabbed a pair of barely used (returned) Airpods Max and am looking for YOUR suggestions. Especially around what Apps do you recommend for listening to Music for best quality? I also have the lightning to audio cable (Apple official) if that makes a difference for you. I'm not so much interested in video as there IS another thread for the delving into spatial capable apps (but does not apply to music). Looking forward to hearing from this wonderful community!
Qobuz CD quality music sounds very good. I cannot say if it's because of the higher bit rate or because they use better masters*
Primephonic has Hi Res Western Classical Music.
These are my impressions on bluetooth. I do not have the cable. I have come across a couple of accounts from people who used the cable and a DAC. They say that the DAC+cable sounds better then bluetooth, but the cable on it's own without DAC is not really distinguishable from bluetooth.
* - Probably better masters. I ripped a couple of CDs to ALAC into iTunes. These are songs that are not available on Apple Music or the iTunes store. They sounded extremely good via bluetooth on my PC. Much better than Apple Music AAC songs. I then listened to them on my iPhone via bluetooth. They were added to my Apple music library via iTunes Match. It is my understanding that iTunes match uploads the ALAC and converts them to AAC and them streams them to the iOS devices (they were not replaced with Apple AAC files since those songs do not exist in their catalogue anyway).
The AAC versions of those songs from my phone sounded identical to my ears to the ALAC in iTunes on my PC. Which leads me to conclude that it is the better quality mastering that made them sound so good rather than the bit rate itself.
Thank you for your reply Atom Ant! I definitely want to test out Qobuz now! I've tried Deezer in the past and noticed the difference in my car alone so I do wonder if the APMs will be even better.
I'm currently utilizing a trial of Amazon Ultra HD and can sometimes notice the difference but barely. I know there's a lot of debate around whether our ears can even distinguish past that HD mark into Lossless and what not but I definitely want the best quality and no better way than asking you all what you think!
No worries! I appreciate the candor. I have Apple Music so that's totally usable but was worried the quality wouldn't be there (I'm unsure what the bitrate is from that on iOS). I've been doing some comparison of tracks and the differences are hardly noticeable as well (which gives me more leverage to just stick with Apple Music and cancel my trial of other apps). But still particular curious if anybody has some great discoveries they have found.
