This and they would be shooting themselves in the foot since no Mac or iPad Pro has a Lightning port.
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High Res on AirPods Max when using the lightning cable
- Thread starter H-B0mb
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The DAC that is in the AirPods Max is designed for bluetooth. It doesn't support non-bluetooth codecs. Apple has stated that it doesn't care about "hi res" formats on the AirPods line because the difference isn't audible. And they are right about that. The whole point of "Air" in the name means that it isn't wired. There are hundreds of wired cans on the market. Apple can't compete with that. They can compete in the bluetooth field by offering something that interfaces with the Apple phones easily. You can't do anything special with a plug.
That may be true using Apple’s DAC and headphones, but certainly not across the board.
They'll take your money if you want to buy HD tracks from them, but they aren't going to go out of their way to make sure their AirPods support them. They've done extensive tests and they know that the difference between AAC 256 VBR and HD is inaudible. And tests in the general market at the Audio Engineering Society, a peer reviewed research group has found the exact same thing.
web.archive.org
www.realhd-audio.com
24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed
Researching HD-Audio: The Truth – Real HD-Audio
www.realhd-audio.com
Did you even read the article? It’s about the difference between hi-res audio and CD quality, not lossy and lossless.They'll take your money if you want to buy HD tracks from them, but they aren't going to go out of their way to make sure their AirPods support them. They've done extensive tests and they know that the difference between AAC 256 VBR and HD is inaudible. And tests in the general market at the Audio Engineering Society, a peer reviewed research group has found the exact same thing.
24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed
Researching HD-Audio: The Truth – Real HD-Audio
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Blind Test Results
The file size of an iTunes song is only a fraction of its CD counterpart because it has been compressed discarding data in the process. Is the audio quality degraded? More than a year ago I devised…
cdvsmp3.wordpress.com
I have a sample I set up with three different codecs (Fraunhofer MP3, LAME MP3, AAC) at three different data rates (192, 256, 320) along with a lossless version. The different samples are randomly mixed in to a FLAC file. If you would like to see if you can listen and figure out which is which, I'd be happy to send you a test file to find out for yourself. Of the ten samples, I bet you can't accurately peg more than two or three and that would be spending a lot of time on listening carefully. If you are REALLY good at discerning, maybe 4. Let me know if you would like to take the listening test.
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Again, from the article an individual was able to hear the difference and even knew what it would take to hear the difference. So the inability to hear the difference is only a general average, which I agree with. But your claim that no one can hear the difference is silly.Blind Test Results
The file size of an iTunes song is only a fraction of its CD counterpart because it has been compressed discarding data in the process. Is the audio quality degraded? More than a year ago I devised…
I have a sample I set up with three different codecs (Fraunhofer MP3, LAME MP3, AAC) at three different data rates (192, 256, 320) along with a lossless version. The different samples are randomly mixed in to a FLAC file. If you would like to see if you can listen and figure out which is which, I'd be happy to send you a test file to find out for yourself. Of the ten samples, I bet you can't accurately peg more than two or three and that would be spending a lot of time on listening carefully. If you are REALLY good at discerning, maybe 4. Let me know if you would like to take the listening test.
With studies involving multiple test subjects, you look for patterns. Just picking at random will come up with a correct answer sometimes, and if you do that with lots and lots of people, random chance can be two or three correct. You can't cherry pick results. If one person could hear a difference, why couldn't two? Or three? Or enough to establish that it isn't just random chance?
Even if one person could struggle to discern a minute difference at AAC 256, that doesn't mean they could at 320 VBR.
The fact is, worrying about lossy vs lossless at a certain point is a waste of time. And that point is the threshold of transparency. For AAC, that threshold lies between 160 and 256. The bell curve of people generally hits in the middle of that, but some people can hear artifacting up to close to 256. If you are worried about that, choose AAC256 VBR and it will be completely transparent.
Expectation bias is very powerful. And it can make people very resistant to accepting the truth about this. But just asking people to describe the difference they hear is a good way to tell. If people describe "veils" or "wider soundstage" or "more three dimensionality" it is almost certainly expectation bias. That isn't what lossy compression sounds like. If you take a track and encode it in steps from very very low to high rate, and then listen carefully to them in order, noting the points where the sound artifacts, you can figure out what to listen for. With AAC, beyond 128, it isn't across the whole track. It's in specific spots that artifact with digital splat sounds. Once there are no more digital splat sounds, you have achieved transparency. You can train yourself to listen for these things if you want. But with the AAC codec, if you encode at 320 VBR, there is absolutely no way you can hear a difference. With AAC, VBR can go beyond 320 to properly render a track. But that is overkill. AAC 256 VBR is transparent.
The truth is that the thing that matters with sound quality is the mastering, not the file format. If you want the best sounding version of an album, that might be a particular CD release, it may be the copy on a streaming service, it might be a blu-ray, it might even be an old LP release if the masters have degraded since the LP came out. You have to ask collectors who have heard different versions which is the best. You can't predict by format alone.
Even if one person could struggle to discern a minute difference at AAC 256, that doesn't mean they could at 320 VBR.
The fact is, worrying about lossy vs lossless at a certain point is a waste of time. And that point is the threshold of transparency. For AAC, that threshold lies between 160 and 256. The bell curve of people generally hits in the middle of that, but some people can hear artifacting up to close to 256. If you are worried about that, choose AAC256 VBR and it will be completely transparent.
Expectation bias is very powerful. And it can make people very resistant to accepting the truth about this. But just asking people to describe the difference they hear is a good way to tell. If people describe "veils" or "wider soundstage" or "more three dimensionality" it is almost certainly expectation bias. That isn't what lossy compression sounds like. If you take a track and encode it in steps from very very low to high rate, and then listen carefully to them in order, noting the points where the sound artifacts, you can figure out what to listen for. With AAC, beyond 128, it isn't across the whole track. It's in specific spots that artifact with digital splat sounds. Once there are no more digital splat sounds, you have achieved transparency. You can train yourself to listen for these things if you want. But with the AAC codec, if you encode at 320 VBR, there is absolutely no way you can hear a difference. With AAC, VBR can go beyond 320 to properly render a track. But that is overkill. AAC 256 VBR is transparent.
The truth is that the thing that matters with sound quality is the mastering, not the file format. If you want the best sounding version of an album, that might be a particular CD release, it may be the copy on a streaming service, it might be a blu-ray, it might even be an old LP release if the masters have degraded since the LP came out. You have to ask collectors who have heard different versions which is the best. You can't predict by format alone.
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Curious - Why would you need to do this? Did you read the first few pages of the thread?
And how would a wire achieve that? Even if we somehow enable a USB-C port to output sound signal from a MacBook Pro (currently you cannot given it already has an analog 3.5mm output dedicated), USB-C will give us digital sound signal, and AirPods Max will accept that digital signal via the lightening port and convert to analog before it's finally sent to the speakers in the Max. Digital (sampled) to Analog...the wireless chips have more than enough bandwidth to carry the sound signal, I'd be surprised if there is any perceivable difference! What you CAN try today is get the AirPods Max 3.5mm-to-lightening cable, connect that to the 3.5mm output on your MacBook and compare audio quality. Let us know!
No, I am talking about pushing the digital information to the headphones, not analogue audio, and let there be a one-time conversion to using the inbuilt DAC. Whereas through the 3.5mm headphone jack adapter you are converting twice. Once from digital to analogue in the device itself (3.5mm) and once again in the headset, from 3.5mm to lighting (remember the headphones only accept lighting, a digital only input). My way takes one conversion out of the equation.
Just to be 100% clear the 3.5mm to lighting cable for the Airpods Max converts Analogue to Digital, only to be converted again from Digital to Analogue in the headphones themselves.
If you have any questions let me know.
Are you saying that you want to enable digital transmission, just like wireless, but with the wire so that you can send a digital signal directly from your music source (such as an iPhone's lightening port) to the AirPods Max? I understand that the 3.5mm cable accepts an analog signal and AirPods Max accept digital signal (which that 3.5mm to lightening A2D cable allows).
If you are saying that, then I understand your point now. Although, there are two issues here:
1) We don't have that enabled to begin with today
2) Even if we did, we'd need to do extensive testing to see if it makes any difference over the high bandwidth wireless communication that it currently supports.
If I have to guess, it'll have no perceivable difference. Some people are saying that using the 3.5mm to lightening cable alone makes a difference. I doubt it but I could be wrong.
There is a reason why I am saying that there wouldn't be any perceivable difference.
Assuming your signal is digital, and using the 3.5mm to lightening cable that is available to purchase, you convert that signal to analog, that's much easier to do than A2D. The D2A converters won't introduce much loss, if any at all. So, the one conversion that you are trying to eliminate, is practically a lossless one. So, it might be a "wash"
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