Apple says using Max with $35 Lightning to 3.5 mm Audio Cable comes "close" to Lossless quality . . . 95% of Lossless?

[hobsgrg]

What I mean is how does it make the sound quality worse? It’s still encoding and decoding AAC, so how do the other processes affect it?

It means trying to use lossless is pointless because it still needs to be converted down to 256k AAC for the APM to work. However in reality a 256k AAC will have no difference that you’d be able to hear compared to lossless.

Using the cable just adds an extra digital to analog to digital conversion to the process!

 

[rosegoldoli]

reposting this again as this fact from apple themselves is always ignored. this is from the Verge:

Things are a little more complicated with the AirPods Max, which can be plugged into audio sources with a cable. However, it turns out that even if you have Apple’s $35 Lightning-to-3.5mm cable plugged into a device that’s streaming lossless Apple Music tracks, you’re not going to hear the full audio fidelity of the source.

So the natural question becomes... well, what are you hearing in that scenario? Apple tells The Verge that when you play a 24-bit / 48 kHz Apple Music lossless track from an iPhone into the AirPods Max using both the cable and Lightning dongle, the audio is converted to analog and then re-digitized to 24-bit / 48 kHz. That re-digitization step is the reason that Apple can’t say you’re hearing pure lossless audio; it’s not an identical match to the source.

Basically, APM does support 24-bit audio playback when wired BUT apple can't call it completely lossless because its a multi-step reimaging or a digital copy of the source which to a lot of audiophiles isnt good enough (for some reason).

 

[bsamcash]

Basically, APM does support 24-bit audio playback when wired BUT apple can't call it completely lossless because its a multi-step reimaging or a digital copy of the source which to a lot of audiophiles isnt good enough (for some reason).

I’m skeptical of Apple’s response to The Verge here. Even if I were to plug the cable into a high quality external DAC, the Lightning side of the cable does re-digitize the signal, as they claim, but the DAC in the APM won’t try to recreate the lossless signal. It’ll still compress it to AAC, won’t it?

 

[rosegoldoli]

I’m skeptical of Apple’s response to The Verge here. Even if I were to plug the cable into a high quality external DAC, the Lightning side of the cable does re-digitize the signal, as they claim, but the DAC in the APM won’t try to recreate the lossless signal. It’ll still compress it to AAC, won’t it?

from my understanding its playing back lossless audio just a redigitized version which cant be called faithful to the original because its not the original

 

[bsamcash]

Just found this video on Youtube. His second point does clarify the utility of the cable.