AirPods Max flaw means you might not be listening to lossless audio, but there's a fix

Digital Trends

2 days ago

When Apple announced that it had added lossless, USB Audio to the USB-C version of the AirPods Max, I was very keen to try it out. Especially given that Apple launched the USB-C version without the feature (or an analog input), a move I couldn't understand at all.
As soon as Apple was kind enough to send me a review unit, I checked for the latest firmware, plugged the AirPods Max into my iPhone 16 and … it sounded exactly the same as Bluetooth.
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Something's not right
As an audio reviewer, this is the kind of moment that can create a professional crisis. I have been extolling the virtues of high-quality Bluetooth codecs like LDAC and aptX Adaptive for years, on the basis that they sound better than lower-quality ones like SBC and AAC. When wireless headphones began to support lossless audio via USB-C, I cheered that development for the same reason.
So when I failed to hear a difference between the AirPods Max's lossy, AAC-based Bluetooth connection and their lossless, hi-res USB Audio connection, I seriously began to question myself.
After all, the AirPods Max might not be everyone's preferred set of cans, but most would agree that they sound very good. There's no reason why they shouldn't let me hear the improved detail, depth, and smoothness that I've come to expect from lossless audio.
Maybe my ears are going? I'm not a 20-something anymore, and as we age, a certain amount of high-frequency loss is nearly unavoidable. I kid you not, I started to wonder how much longer I could realistically continue to call myself an audio reviewer.
The greatest source of my doubts didn't come from my ears, however. It came from Apple's audio output menu in iOS.
Do you believe your ears or your eyes?
Normally, when you connect the AirPods Max, AirPods Pro, or any other Bluetooth headphones or earbuds, and then open Apple Music on an iPhone, at the bottom of the Now Playing screen, you'll see your connected device listed. If it's an Apple device, you'll see a custom icon plus the model name. If it's a third-party device, it shows a generic Bluetooth icon instead.
When you connect the AirPods Max via the USB-C cable, that icon doesn't change. But if you tap on it, it brings up the full audio output menu. That's where you'll now see the words 'USB Audio' under the entry for the AirPods Max. If you unplug the cable, those words disappear.
The audio output menu in iOS shows USB Audio when a cable is connected (left).
Seems pretty straightforward — the iPhone clearly recognizes when the AirPods Max are connected via USB-C and changes the audio path from Bluetooth to USB Audio. Except that's not what happens. The audio path stays with the Bluetooth connection.
How do I know? I disabled the iPhone's Bluetooth and listened again. The difference isn't night and day (going lossless rarely provides a massive boost in quality), but it is noticeable when listening critically.
My favorite tracks for testing improved fidelity are those where you can pay attention to individual instruments or vocals. Rap, hard rock, and EDM aren't great genres from that point of view, but classical, jazz, and singer-songwriter tracks can expose lossless nuances (and conversely, they can expose lossy degradation). Tracy Chapman's Fast Car — a favorite for audiophiles ever since Dr Sean Olive began using it as a primary test track for evaluating speaker performance at Canada's National Research Council in the late 1980s — is a great example, as is Silver Springs by Matt Berninger and Gail Ann Dorsey.
In both cases, vocals become smoother when listening losslessly, with less emphasis on just the high frequencies. Bass notes, particularly those created by string instruments, possess a texture and tonality that often gets flattened by lossy compression.
That's the subjective way of evaluating it. There are objective indicators, too.
Trust, but verify
Qobuz won't confirm that the AirPods Max are connected via USB Audio unless you disable Bluetooth.
Apple Music and Tidal use iOS's built-in output menu as described above, but Qobuz uses its own output menu, and it reports very different information. Before you plug the USB-C cable in, Qobuz shows the AirPods Max as connected via Bluetooth. It should change to USB Audio after you plug the cable in, but instead, it continues to show Bluetooth as active.
However, if you disable the iPhone's Bluetooth connection, Qobuz accurately reports that the AirPods Max are connected via USB Audio. Strangely, in both modes, Qobuz claims the headphones can support up to 24-bit/192kHz, which is impossible when using the AirPods Max's AAC Bluetooth codec.
MacOS also suffers from a similar inconsistency when reporting the connection type. When you pull the AirPods Max out of their case (which wakes them from their low-power mode), they automatically connect to your Mac. If you check the Mac's sound settings, it reports the AirPods Max as an output device connected via Bluetooth — as you'd expect.
Plug in the USB-C cable, and the Mac's sound drop-down menu changes to say USB Audio, but tellingly, the full sound settings menu continues to report a Bluetooth connection.
Once again, the Qobuz app is our canary in a coal mine. It doesn't report that the AirPods Max are connected via USB until you shut down the Mac's Bluetooth connections.
At that point, all three menus (Qobuz, macOS sound settings, macOS sound output drop-down) agree that the AirPods Max are connected via USB.
Bizarrely, the switch from Bluetooth to USB audio seems to work correctly (if not quite as seamlessly) on Android. Plugging the USB-C cable into a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, for instance, instantly disconnects the AirPods Max's Bluetooth connection and pauses any playing music. When you hit play, the audio is sent via USB-C. The other notable difference is volume level, which is no longer indexed correctly. Even when the phone says you're at max volume, the volume dial on the headphones can still push volume higher — they work independently. When you unplug the cable, the BT connection resumes.
Qobuz on Android before (left) during (center), and after (right) you use the USB-C cable to connect the AirPods Max to a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.
Of course, because it's Android, each handset works differently. On my Galaxy S23 Ultra, Qobuz correctly identifies the AirPods Max when in USB mode, but on my Motorola ThinkPhone, it never recognizes them as an output device. Instead, it routes audio to the ThinkPhone's audio drivers, which send it to the AirPods Max — very hard to tell whether the resulting audio is bit-perfect at that point, but it still sounds better than Bluetooth.
I reached out to Apple's AirPods team with my findings and asked if they could confirm and/or reproduce these results, but so far, I haven't received a response.
I acknowledge that much of this is geeky, audiophile-level obsession over small details. However, lossless audio is, for many headphone fans, the gold standard for digital music. If you decide to buy the AirPods Max with USB-C in part because it can deliver lossless audio, you should feel confident that you're getting it — even if you may not be listening critically enough to appreciate every single subtlety that lossless provides.
And most importantly, it should just work. Not only should you be able to hear the difference, but you should also be able to use the built-in menus and settings within iOS and macOS to verify that your connection is lossless. And it should all work without having to shut down your device's Bluetooth connections manually — a workaround I hope we won't need for much longer.