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Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by tombert on Monday May 17, 2021 @02:52PM (#27186794)
Couldn't they have invented a non-standard codec that used data transfer to support this though?

Like, I know this isn't trivial, but I could send a FLAC file between computers right now, and this is hardly a recent thing. Couldn't they conceivably use some HLS-esque thing on top of bluetooth to accomplish this?

Granted, I suspect the issue might be bandwidth being too low to make this realistic.

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by _djo_ on Monday May 17, 2021 @02:55PM (#27186868)
Possibly. That's the route Sony went with LDAC, which goes up to 990kbps.[0]

It still isn't proper Hi-Res and won't be enough for Apple's Hi-Res Lossless, but it's a lot better than standard BT audio.

[0]https://www.soundguys.com/ldac-ultimate-bluetooth-guide-2002...

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by rasz on Monday May 17, 2021 @03:27PM (#27187303)
>Hi-Res

heh, audiophool market is so incredibly stupid. Wooden knobs, extra special power cables, and now audio recordings for Bats. All you gain as a human are aliasing artifacts.

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by adrusi on Monday May 17, 2021 @03:38PM (#27187436)
Sony's headphones do digital signal processing of the incoming signal. For instance, there's a user adjustable equalizer. This happens in the headphones themselves, rather than on the device they're connected to. This stuff does truly benefit from a higher bitrate.
Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by rasz on Monday May 17, 2021 @03:53PM (#27187636)
How do you benefit from the recorded signal in bands humans are unable to hear?
Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by smoldesu on Monday May 17, 2021 @04:20PM (#27187951)
That's not how audio codecs encode audio though. If we directly cut off bands that were difficult to encode, most codecs would stop writing anything above 1500hz, and then you'd be listening to a useless mumbled mess. A lossy audio codec will use the FFT algorithm to encode the entire spectrum, and the quality controls how aggressive the algorithm quantizes the waveform (through a process called sampling). On a lossless file, the compression will decode to an identical representation of the original master.
Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by rasz on Monday May 17, 2021 @06:06PM (#27189001)
>If we directly cut off bands that were difficult to encode

not difficult to encode, inaudible to humans

>entire spectrum

oh boy, so why does Hi-Res stop at 192KHz? clearly its not the entire spectrum. We should be encoding at least to couple MHz, right? more better!

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by goalieca on Monday May 17, 2021 @06:34PM (#27189232)
Hehe. You jest but MHz is the range of ultrasound and is pretty useless in air.
Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by cush on Monday May 17, 2021 @03:52PM (#27187617)
It makes sense that creative license is taken in the engineering of electronics targeted at people who love the art of music.

Wooden knobs are fun. People like things that are fun. Chill out.

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by rasz on Monday May 17, 2021 @03:55PM (#27187659)
http://bobbyowsinski.blogspot.com/2012/05/485-volume-knob.ht...

"Dynamics are better and overall naturalness is improved. Here is a test for all you Silver Rock owners. Try removing the bakelite knobs and listen. You will be shocked by this! The signature knobs will have an even greater effect…really amazing! The point here is the micro vibrations created by the volume pots and knobs find their way into the delicate signal path and cause degradation (Bad vibrations equal bad sound). With the signature knobs micro vibrations from the C37 concept of wood, bronze and the lacquer itself compensate for the volume pots and provide (Good Vibrations) our ear/brain combination like to hear…way better sound!!"

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by cush on Monday May 17, 2021 @04:05PM (#27187773)
A 2012 blogspot opinion piece? Alright bud.

"Now to be fair, I couldn't find the actual website for the above as the link now provides an error message"

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by rasz on Monday May 17, 2021 @05:55PM (#27188918)
Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by cush on Monday May 17, 2021 @08:52PM (#27190147)
I will only accept your rebuttal in the form of an e-postcard

https://web.archive.org/web/20000511085018/http://www.askjee...

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by Forbo on Monday May 17, 2021 @04:18PM (#27187932)
> Wooden knobs are fun. People like things that are fun. Chill out.

When someone is selling snakeoil, that's not fun. That's just shitty.

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by cush on Monday May 17, 2021 @04:26PM (#27188009)
What is snakeoil about wooden knobs?
Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by DanBC on Monday May 17, 2021 @04:30PM (#27188056)
https://boingboing.net/2005/11/07/astronomically-overp.html

> Dynamics are better and overall naturalness is improved. Here is a test for all you Silver Rock owners. Try removing the bakelite knobs and listen. You will be shocked by this! The signature knobs will have an even greater effect…really amazing! The point here is the micro vibrations created by the volume pots and knobs find their way into the delicate signal path and cause degradation (Bad vibrations equal bad sound). With the signature knobs micro vibrations from the C37 concept of wood, bronze and the lacquer itself compensate for the volume pots and provide (Good Vibrations) our ear/brain combination like to hear…way better sound!!

Just about all of this is bollocks.

Here's where Boing Boing got the link, https://web.archive.org/web/20051124101630/http://www.ilikej...

And here's the original site: https://web.archive.org/web/20051214132650/http://www.refere...

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by cush on Monday May 17, 2021 @04:36PM (#27188132)
Yeah someone else also replied with this same set of knobs. So what?

I fully understand you are very upset about this 15 year old unsubstantiated post about expensive knobs, but it will relieve you to know that you could easily take 10 seconds and Google "wooden audiophile mods" and see hundreds of kits for stereos, headphones and DACs for $20-50 depending on what you're modding.

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by Forbo on Monday May 17, 2021 @05:33PM (#27188728)
As though wooden knobs were the only snakeoil product targeting audiophiles.

https://old.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/5lzar8/what_do_...

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by cush on Monday May 17, 2021 @06:26PM (#27189163)
I never said that, but keep digging bud...

"wooden knobs are fun"

- "actually one time, 15 years ago, someone tried to sell wooden knobs for $500, therefore wooden knobs are not fun"

You must be great at parties.

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by dTal on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @05:21AM (#27192657)
Care to explain how increased sampling rate can possibly cause aliasing artifacts of all things?
Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by geon on Monday May 17, 2021 @03:26PM (#27187278)
Why though? The sound will be played through a couple of medium quality in-ear ear buds.

It’s not like anything above 320 kbps mp3 will be detectable.

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by KMnO4 on Monday May 17, 2021 @03:50PM (#27187595)
That’s like saying “no video nitrates over 10mbps will have noticeable improvement”. It’s definitely true if you’re watching, say, Khan Academy.

Switch it to a fireworks show and watch the quality suffer.

320kbps MP3 just means the codec allocates 320kb to store each second of compressed signal. Obviously some signals compress better than others and need much lower than that for an acceptable quality (audiobooks are often distributed at 64kbps).

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by geon on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @05:15AM (#27192624)
From my own experience, 320kbps MP3 is enough to handle any music without noticable audio degradation. I have not done double blind tests, and this was in my 20s when my hearing was a lot better, but at 128 kbps I could clearly hear the loss of quality in some spots like cymbal crashes. At 192 kbps I could not tell the difference between the mp3 and lossless, using good over-ear earphones or speakers.

And as I said, the airpods are medium quality earbuds. Not bad, not great. You will NOT hear any loss of audio quality if you play 320 kbps mp3 through them.

I'm sure most people could not hear any quality loss on 128 kbps mp3 (I don't these days), or even 64. But above 320 there is just no way.

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by IndySun on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @07:29AM (#27193335)
Often, when people say 'I couldn't (or cannot) hear the difference' they are not, or have not, been a/b'ing or making other technically meaningful comparisons. It is effectively saying, 'when I listened to the mp3 it sounded the same as when I listened to the lossless'. These are aesthetic remarks, which also count, but they may not be of value for everyone else.
Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by geon on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @08:13AM (#27193608)
While i did not do double blind tests, or even blind tests, I did play the problematic sections (like 1-2 seconds) over and over to be sure I could hear the artifacts. It was not some casual listening. And I could only hear the artifacts in specific places, like crash cymbals in rock music, which I never normally listen to.
Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by IndySun on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @01:06PM (#27197709)
Glad to hear it (pun intended, if puns are allowed).

The practical difference in the listening experience is, as you infer, negligible, to almost everyone. Classical music, or other such audio with large dynamic ranges, suffer the most. And while those frequencies above 12-16kHz are often the most obviously hit, the entire range suffers in other ways, phase, low end smearing, transient loss. And while first generation lossless to lossy conversion really is an excellent trade off, lossy to lossy very quickly produces audibly worse sound, even 320 to 320 conversion. But you knew that.

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by cush on Monday May 17, 2021 @03:58PM (#27187690)
Exactly. Audio codecs for VOIP run as low as 6kbps and sound really good for voices, but completely break down if you try to play any kind of music through them.
Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by itake on Monday May 17, 2021 @02:57PM (#27186881)
My guess is there are power constraints. Higher bandwidth would require more processing power and memory usage which would kill battery life.
Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by tombert on Monday May 17, 2021 @03:01PM (#27186946)
That's fair, I guess they don't really want to force people to have a cell the size of a car battery strapped to their head to listen to music, but it does seem a bit strange to me that a company that prides itself on integrating all their devices to all their other devices didn't see this as a bad PR move.

EDIT:

Added a "don't" to the first sentence.

Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by KMnO4 on Monday May 17, 2021 @03:53PM (#27187639)
I once had an old iPod with 128kbps MP3 copies of my FLAC library. I reencoded everything as 256kbps AAC audio (double the bitrate) and noticed the battery life went way up. Turns out those devices had better hardware decoding for AAC.
Re:AirPods Max don't support Apple Music's lossless songs, A... by viktorcode on Monday May 17, 2021 @03:21PM (#27187219)
There are lossless audio wireless gaming headsets. Astro A40 used Kleer, which is 16/44KHz stereo. And now there's also Audeze Penrose.

It should be noted though, that gaming headsets have different priorities. They usually sport bulky design enabling bigger batteries, and low audio latency is a must, so whatever codec is in use it must work fast.