High Res on AirPods Max when using the lightning cable

[jazz1]

Although I agree, I feel like Apple was pressured to support Hi-Res due to Spotify competition. So any products developed and launched prior to this obviously wouldn't have the functionality.

As much as I wished there was a secret functionality in the APM chip to activate this, I'm afraid the signal path itself of the APM was a missed opportunity. Everything has to go through the internal DAC/Amp. And since there is no by-passing that then it would be moot point to try and feed it lossless signal if the APM can't accept a straight analog connection.

I'm as disappointed as any APM owner. I own two (2) of these. But I'm also a headphone collector. So I've moved on with other headphones and enjoy a wired DAC/Amp connection. So at the very least, I will still be able to benefit from their Hi-Res Lossless - albeit not wirelessly or with the APM.

I can only imagine how much more sales the APM can pick up if Apple only designed this to accept their Lossless signal especially wirelessly to compete with Sony's LDAC. Oh well.

I own the Max, but also own Bowers & Wilkins PX7 headphones. The PX7 comes with a USB-C cable for charging. But it also come with a secondary cable that is 3.5mm end on both ends, and has a round jack hole in one of the ear cups. So why Apple didn't offer this I don't know. And oh, BTW the PX7's came with a full enclosure hard case

Don't get me wrong, the AirPod Max sounds better, to my ears, than the PX7. But each offers a lot, and I'll be keeping both, and will just pick the one that better suits the environment in which I use them.

 

[bsamcash]

Okay, now I'm really going to blow it up. I wish Apple made a cabled only headphone like the current iPod Pro Max. Just so I could use it with my DAC/Amp equipment. I think Apple's design of the current iPod Pro Max is actually ground breaking. I'd love to see what they could do people that go the extra mile for good sounding music. Such as a cabled/DAC/Amp. experience. It is easy to argue that is not Apple's "thing". But, geez they do now offer Lossless!

Apple still sells the Beats Pro. Supposedly that model is more balanced than it’s bass boomy brethren.

 

[bsamcash]

And the AAC codec is audibly transparent. A wire won't make music sound any better.

Man it frustrates me to see this statement over and over. AAC is transparent in some cases. Those cases being mostly modern pop which is already mixed to be transparent using lower a CODEX for streaming. But for a well produced and mixed sample of complex music, AAC cannot translate the soundstage and instrument separation. It just does not have enough dynamic range.

 

[jazz1]

Apple still sells the Beats Pro. Supposedly that model is more balanced than it’s bass boomy brethren.

Yes, good to know. But Beats are something I’ve avoided due to the heavy, sloppy, floppy bass. If the Pro version tones that down that is a good thing (at least to my ears and taste).

 

[JasonHB]

Man it frustrates me to see this statement over and over. AAC is transparent in some cases. Those cases being mostly modern pop which is already mixed to be transparent using lower a CODEX for streaming. But for a well produced and mixed sample of complex music, AAC cannot translate the soundstage and instrument separation. It just does not have enough dynamic range.

So so true.

Apple hi-res lossless through a decent DAC is exceptional and AAC doesn’t come even remotely close.

AAC is the best lossy codec out there, but doesn’t compete with lossless at all.

Jason

 

[jazz1]

So so true.

Apple hi-res lossless through a decent DAC is exceptional and AAC doesn’t come even remotely close.

AAC is the best lossy codec out there, but doesn’t compete with lossless at all.

Jason

I hadn't really used my Apple Music account once I got Tidal over a year ago. However, I am back hitting Apple Music hard. As I listen to my old playlist on Apple Music, I can't believe what fabulous taste I have

I was about to quit Apple Music, and just go Tidal, but since Apple has stepped up to lossless I'm not going to cancel. Also, another reason not to quit Apple Music are my new iPod Max headphones. Yes, I know they don't do lossless, but man I love them when I don't want to be anchored to my desktop DAC/Amp.

So Mr. Tim Cook, you did good!

 

[JasonHB]

I hadn't really used my Apple Music account once I got Tidal over a year ago. However, I am back hitting Apple Music hard. As I listen to my old playlist on Apple Music, I can't believe what fabulous taste I have

I was about to quit Apple Music, and just go Tidal, but since Apple has stepped up to lossless I'm not going to cancel. Also, another reason not to quit Apple Music are my new iPod Max headphones. Yes, I know they don't do lossless, but man I love them when I don't want to be anchored to my desktop DAC/Amp.

So Mr. Tim Cook, you did good!

I love my AirPods Max headphones as well. For me, they’ve been worth every penny.

Jason

 

[bigshot]

I own the Max, but also own Bowers & Wilkins PX7 headphones. The PX7 comes with a USB-C cable for charging. But it also come with a secondary cable that is 3.5mm end on both ends, and has a round jack hole in one of the ear cups. So why Apple didn't offer this I don't know.

Because that would bypass the sound processing feedback between the headphones and the phone. Apple sees spatial audio and dynamic EQ as being the primary features for these headphones. Plugging them in would make them just like any other headphones.

Man it frustrates me to see this statement over and over. AAC is transparent in some cases. Those cases being mostly modern pop which is already mixed to be transparent using lower a CODEX for streaming. But for a well produced and mixed sample of complex music, AAC cannot translate the soundstage and instrument separation. It just does not have enough dynamic range.

I have a test that takes two very complex musical samples, one choral and the other orchestral and runs them through three different codecs (Fraunhofer MP3, LAME MP3 and AAC) at three different data rates (192,256,320) along with a lossless sample. These ten samples are randomly shuffled in a FLAC or ALAC file. The object is to rank the ten samples from best to worst. The results will indicate where your personal threshold of transparency is on all of these codecs.

If you would like to take this test, I would be happy to administer it to you. You can listen to the FLAC file on any equipment you want and take as long as you want to come up with your 1 to 10 ranking. The only rule is that this is a listening test. You can only judge by listening, not pixel peeping waveforms. If you would like to take this test, let me know. I guarantee you that you will be very surprised at the results. I'm guessing you've never done a proper blind comparison of AAC to lossless before.

 

[bigshot]

AAC is the best lossy codec out there, but doesn’t compete with lossless at all.

I'd be happy to administer the listening test to you as well.

 

[bsamcash]

If you would like to take this test, I would be happy to administer it to you.

I'm good. I do it regularly to test headphones.

 

[bigshot]

How do you blind test headphones? Can't you tell which one is which by the way they feel? And how do you deal with the gap in time between one set of headphones and another? Auditory memory for similar sounds lasts only a few seconds. It's easy to conduct blind tests with amps, DACs and codecs, but I've never found any way to eliminate bias and perceptual error with headphones.

Blind testing has pretty much proven that AAC is completely transparent at 256. Most people can't discern 192, and if you use VBR, the codec allows bitrates above 320, so there is absolutely no chance that compression artifacting can occur. At a decent data rate, AAC and lossless are identical to the human ear. And higher sampling rates and bitrates are transparent as well, so AAC, CD, SACD and HD Audio all sound identical.

But the only way to know that for sure is to conduct a level matched, direct A/B switched blind listening test. I've done more of those than I can count. I test every piece of electronic equipment I buy. If it isn't transparent, I don't want it. Never had to send anything back though. Even inexpensive DACs, amps and players produce sound that is beyond the ability of human ears to hear. As I said before though, transducers are the wild card. Every speaker and set of headphones sounds different. Even two sets of the same make and model.

 

[bsamcash]

How do you blind test headphones?

It’s not a blind test. But it doesn’t have to be when the differences are obvious.

 

[bsamcash]

But the only way to know that for sure is to conduct a level matched, direct A/B switched blind listening test.

Look. If you can’t tell, that’s fine for you. But we all hear differently and may have differing levels of equipment.

 

[bigshot]

No, we all hear with human ears. Some may have hearing damage that limits what we hear, but no one can hear the unbearable. And better equipment won't let you hear things that are beyond perceptual thresholds either. However bias and perceptual error can make someone THINK they are hearing differences that don't exist. Every human is subject to bias and perceptual error. That's why we do level matched, direct A/B switched blind listening tests to eliminate that possibility.

It's proven that high data rate lossy is audibly transparent. You can believe otherwise, but without doing a controlled test, it's easy to chalk your subjective impression up to bias and perceptual error. I understand that it's frustrating to you to hear this fact repeated. But if you aren't willing to go to the trouble to find out the truth, you are creating the frustration yourself. It isn't me.

I'd link you to some articles on the subject, but I'm guessing you wouldn't bother to read them!

 

[bsamcash]

It's proven that high data rate lossy is audibly transparent.

I’m not referring to high data rate lossy. I’m referring to 256 AAC.

 

[bigshot]

256 is high data rate lossy. Everything above 192 is high rate lossy. 128-192 is mid rate and below 128 is low rate. Maybe you just aren't familiar with lossy codecs. Psychoacoustic research has made them a lot better than they were back in the early days.

 

[rumz]

I guess Apple figures that the whole point of the APMs is the sound processing, which probably would require more horsepower built into the headphones if you were going to do all the processing in the cans instead of doing it in the phone and pushing the output to the cans. There are lots of normal wired headphones.

And the AAC codec is audibly transparent. A wire won't make music sound any better.

I’ll preface my thought by saying that I don’t know how the cost of the internal parts in the APM break down, especially compared to my other reference point for a very similar design, which I’ve mentioned before— the B&O H95. They similarly require sound processing at the headphone level— there is no bypassing the DSP, they have to be powered on to listen to even with an analog source. As such, I’m not sure if there’s any advantage that could be gained on those either when using an external DAC— sound is still going to be processed by the H95.

The things that set the H95 apart from the Max are that

a) it comes with a standard 3.5mm jack— no special cable required with an ADC in it. It’s likely the ADC is in the headphone itself.

b) you can send a digital signal directly to the H95 via its USB-C port. It shows up on as an external sound device when connected to my Mac.

This is to say… I suspect that the limitations of the AirPods Max are more likely philosophical, intentional design choices on Apple’s part, rather than for a lack of horsepower. I would be surprised if the H95 had more ‘horsepower’— but its possible, I suppose, given the current price difference. ??‍♂️ Since both of these headphones are relatively niche products, it’s unlikely I’ll ever know for sure why they have the limits they do.

 

[bigshot]

The chip in the Apple headphones does much more than we are told right now. I'm sure battery life once the processing is fully implemented figures in there somewhere too. Apple doesn't care at all about lossless or HD Audio. They've stated that publicly. Apple knows that these are features that only impress people who look at numbers on a page. They make absolutely no difference to how music sounds to the ears. However DSPs have the potential to make a huge improvement in sound quality. I think beginning with the new iOS coming in the Fall, we'll start to see the beginnings of more and more sophisticated signal processing. And as it's implemented over the next months and year, it will become more and more of an improvement. And the processing can lean on a powerful chip in the headphones as well as a powerful chip in the phone itself. I'm betting they are working in tandem, handing off data back and forth to efficiently process head tracking and dynamic EQ that no other headphones are able to do. That probably requires a data link, not just an analogue audio one. It's doing more than just handing a digital file across. It's tracking head positioning and how the ear cups are positioned on the head.

If you look at the camera in the iPhone, it isn't that much better than the cameras in other brands of smart phones. In fact, on paper it might look inferior. However the image processing algorithms analyze and break down the image to create some of the best looking photos out there. Apple is working to do that with sound now. Digital sound processing is the future of high end audio, not sound that human ears can't hear. They wouldn't want to implement lossless or HD Audio and then have to explain why their sound processing doesn't work with that. If they have data overhead, they want to make sound better, not just satisfy people who have OCD over zeros and ones that make no difference to the sound quality.

If you want wild speculation, I think head tracking may be something Apple intends to utilize in augmented reality. I think we are seeing Apple rolling in a feature that will become more important later on.

 

[rumz]

The chip in the Apple headphones does much more than we are told right now. I'm sure battery life once the processing is fully implemented figures in there somewhere too. Apple doesn't care at all about lossless or HD Audio. They've stated that publicly. Apple knows that these are features that only impress people who look at numbers on a page. They make absolutely no difference to how music sounds to the ears. However DSPs have the potential to make a huge improvement in sound quality. I think beginning with the new iOS coming in the Fall, we'll start to see the beginnings of more and more sophisticated signal processing. And as it's implemented over the next months and year, it will become more and more of an improvement. And the processing can lean on a powerful chip in the headphones as well as a powerful chip in the phone itself. I'm betting they are working in tandem, handing off data back and forth to efficiently process head tracking and dynamic EQ that no other headphones are able to do. That probably requires a data link, not just an analogue audio one. It's doing more than just handing a digital file across. It's tracking head positioning and how the ear cups are positioned on the head.

If you look at the camera in the iPhone, it isn't that much better than the cameras in other brands of smart phones. In fact, on paper it might look inferior. However the image processing algorithms analyze and break down the image to create some of the best looking photos out there. Apple is working to do that with sound now. Digital sound processing is the future of high end audio, not sound that human ears can't hear. They wouldn't want to implement lossless or HD Audio and then have to explain why their sound processing doesn't work with that. If they have data overhead, they want to make sound better, not just satisfy people who have OCD over zeros and ones that make no difference to the sound quality.

If you want wild speculation, I think head tracking may be something Apple intends to utilize in augmented reality. I think we are seeing Apple rolling in a feature that will become more important later on.

Yeah I totally forgot about the part where they're making a massive amount of computations to try to accommodate for different ear shapes, etc. to try to optimize sound for every scenario. Not to mention the spatial stuff. Good points there. Crazy what those tiny little chips are doing. Maybe that explains why I get so much better battery life out of the H95... not doing nearly as much heavy lifting-- just processing the sound profile and doing the noise cancellation stuff, no spatial / ear shape optimization.

 

[Htsi]

I find the audio quality better wired. For their purpose these headphones are fab.
i do not think there will be a v2, just as the HomePods or iPod hifi and I’m glad to own them.

 

[bigshot]

I find the audio quality better wired.

Do you mean the AirPod Max or headphones in general? There's no reason why wired should be any different with the AirPod Maxes, except perhaps for bluetooth connectivity issues. The sound passes through the same process of decoding and playback as they do with bluetooth.

 

[BigPotatoLobbyist]

Do you mean the AirPod Max or headphones in general? There's no reason why wired should be any different with the AirPod Maxes, except perhaps for bluetooth connectivity issues. The sound passes through the same process of decoding and playback as they do with bluetooth.

No, not the case. This is the one caveat with respect to the whole bit rate debate - there is still remixing that occurs in the transfer process, and it adds a higher noise floor among other things on iOS. That’s even with Apple’s implementation. With Android and other AAC devices the situation is bleak.
And before someone reverberates a tired trope about iOS having some Pure AAC speedway: the AAC audio is still remixed on iOS with system sounds and all. It’s not “directly passed”.

 

[bigshot]

The mixing of system sounds into the audio is done digitally, not in the analog domain. You don't have generation loss or layering of noise. And it's done in the phone or computer, not in the headphones themselves. It would be the same with an analog headphone output. Apple's implementation of digital audio generally has a noise floor an order of magnitude or more below the threshold of perception. You'd have to multiply it thousands and thousands of times for it to reach an audible level at normal listening levels. What you're talking about there is pretty much theoretical. It doesn't have any real world impact on sound quality.

You can't turn the volume up on AirPods high enough to get anywhere even close to hearing the noise floor.

You can pass an AAC file over a wire and play it, or stream it and play it. It ends up the same AAC playback. The DAC in the case of the AirPods is in the headphones. With wifi streaming over AirPorts, there is a slightly elevated noise floor, but still far below being audible.

 

[Zanc]

Would it be possible for Apple to develop a Lightning to Lightning connector for the AirPods Max, offering digital out from iPhone/iPad and digital input to AirPods

 

[LeonPro]

Would it be possible for Apple to develop a Lightning to Lightning connector for the AirPods Max, offering digital out from iPhone/iPad and digital input to AirPods

I'm guessing the only reason they aren't doing this and "crippled" this feature is to promote wireless listening with their codec to prove a point.

Maybe next iteration a "Pro" version with hi-res listening capability.