Latest news with #losslessaudio
Digital Trends
2 days ago
- Business
- Digital Trends
AirPods Max flaw means you might not be listening to lossless audio, but there's a fix
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. Recommended Videos 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.
Digital Trends
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
How to experience lossless audio
There's been a lot of talk lately about lossless audio, and that might have led you think that you need special equipment or an expensive streaming music service to get it. But that couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, you probably already own everything you need to hear lossless audio. So let's take a quick look at what lossless audio is, and maybe more importantly, what it isn't, and how you can listen to it. Recommended Videos What is lossless audio? Simply put, lossless audio is any type of digital audio that hasn't been processed using a lossy, destructive form of compression. Lossless doesn't necessarily mean hi-res audio (though most hi-res is often lossless), and it doesn't even mean CD quality (though the term CD quality is used, it implies audio that is lossless). And lossless isn't a special format that belongs to any company or streaming service. Any streaming service that chooses to offer lossless audio can do so (we'll talk about why some services don't offer it, later). Why does lossless audio matter? When audio is recorded and turned into huge collections of zeroes and ones in a studio, engineers use uncompressed forms of digitization. This means that every detail of the audio is captured digitally, at the highest resolution possible. This creates a near-perfect digital recording. Unfortunately, uncompressed digital audio is massive in file size, so it's always compressed before it gets turned into a file that's ready for distribution. There are two kinds of compression. Lossy compression can make audio files truly tiny — up to a tenth of their original size. But to do that, it discards some of the original information. The best versions of lossy compression discard info in a way that most people wouldn't notice. You'd never listen to good lossy compression and say 'this sounds bad.' Lossless compression, on the other hand, makes a smaller audio file without discarding any of the information needed to recreate the recording on your listening equipment. I won't get into the math behind it, but it works. However, there's still no such thing as a free lunch: Lossless files are smaller than uncompressed audio, but still much bigger than lossy — often four times as large. For those who want to know they're getting the best possible listening experience, lossless is worth that tradeoff in file size. How can I tell the difference between lossless and lossy audio? The hope is that you'll be able to tell the difference simply by listening to both, but realistically that may not be possible — especially if you're listening in a noisy environment. The easiest way to tell is look at the audio file on your computer. If the filename ends in .mp3, .aac, or .ogg, it's a lossy file. If it ends in .alac, .aiff, .wav, .flac, or several other extensions, it's lossless. Since most folks listen to streaming music these days, you need to rely on some knowledge about the formats each service uses plus the display in your streaming app's now playing screen. Apple Music, for instance, will show you an indicator when it streams in lossless, hi-res lossless, or Dolby Atmos. If you change the settings to reduce the amount of data it uses, these indicators won't show up, which means you're getting lossy compression. Each music service has its own version of these labels and the ability to control the maximum quality used when streaming. However, not all services offer lossless. Spotify, for example, has so far resisted the lossless trend. Even with a premium subscription, Spotify only streams music using lossy formats. How do get lossless audio? The first step to hearing lossless audio is making sure you have a source of lossless content: A streaming service that offers lossless audio A CD, SACD, or DVD-Audio disc and a working player Blu-ray or UHD Blu-ray with audio recorded in Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio Digital music files saved to your computer, phone, or portable music player, in one of the lossless formats mentioned above The next step is to make sure you have a way to play that lossless content. Streaming service apps like Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music, and Qobuz all have built-in decoders that can transform lossless streams into something that can played on your phone or computer. For disc-based music, the CD or Blu-ray player performs the same task. For lossless music stored locally (perhaps ripped from a CD or purchased from a download site), you'll need software that can decode and play it. There are many free apps that do this, regardless if you're on a Mac, PC, iPhone, or Android. Finally, you'll need to make sure that you aren't inadvertently introducing lossy compression because of your choice of headphones, speakers, or earbuds. As convenient as wireless listening is, even the most expensive Bluetooth headphones, earbuds, or speakers use some form of lossy compression when they receive that wireless stream from your phone or computer. There are some rare exceptions, like Qualcomm's aptX Lossless codec, but even then, it can be hard to guarantee that the connection is truly lossless. To ensure your lossless audio stays lossless, you'll need: A wired connection between your disc player, amplifier, and speakers Wireless speakers that use Wi-Fi and receive a direct stream from a platform like Sonos or Tidal Connect, Qobuz Connect, or Alexa Cast, but not Apple AirPlay 2 A computer or smartphone with a built-in headphone jack or, An external digital-to-analog converter (DAC), plus: wired headphones or earbuds Headphones that support USB Audio via USB-C You probably already have what you need If you already own wired headphones or earbuds, plug them into your laptop or amplifier/receiver and you're good to go. Even if you don't have dedicated wired devices, most wireless headphone also come with a cable you can use for analog wired listening. Because most smartphones don't have headphone jacks anymore, you'll need to buy an external DAC if you want to use your wired headphones or earbuds. The good news is that as long as you aren't fussy about getting audiophile-level hi-res audio compatibility, even something as inexpensive as Apple's lightning- or USB-C-to-3.5mm adapter (typically $9-$11) will do the trick. Gotchas to avoid Here are a few things that can get in the way of lossless listening and should be avoided. Apple AirPlay2: As noted above, your wireless speaker or soundbar may use Wi-Fi, and it may offer the ease and convenience of Apple's AirPlay 2 for wireless streaming, but AirPlay 2 is not lossless audio compatible. It downconverts any audio to 256kbps AAC before sending it to the target speaker. As I said earlier, no one will hear 256kbps AAC and say 'this sounds bad,' but it's not the same as say, 1,411kbps FLAC. Transcoded files: It may be tempting to simply run a lossy MP3 file through a converter and turn it into a lossless format like FLAC or WAV, but unfortunately, that doesn't result in a lossless audio file. All you've done is created a much larger file that still contains no more information than it had when it was an MP3. There are ways to make lossy files sound better — Sony has an algorithm that called DSEE that can 'restore' some of the quality that lossy compression loses, but it can't magically put back the info that was discarded when the MP3 was created. Dolby Atmos Music: This one seems really unfair. We've been led to believe that Dolby Atmos Music represents an entirely new way to enjoy music — one that is more immersive and cinematic. And though that's true, here's another truth: if you're listening to Dolby Atmos Music via the three music services that currently support it (Apple Music, Tidal, and Amazon Music), you're listening to lossy audio. The reason is similar to Spotify's reason for avoiding lossless stereo so far: lossless Dolby Atmos requires huge file sizes. Bigger files mean more bandwidth requirements and that adds up to higher streaming costs for the services. So instead of using the lossless Dolby TrueHD format to transport Dolby Atmos, these services use the lossy Dolby Digital Plus. Again, just like no one is going to complain that Apple's 256kbps AAC sounds bad, you're unlikely to mind how lossy Dolby Atmos Music sounds. But if you ever get a chance to hear lossless Dolby Atmos, I suspect you'll agree it sounds better. You can get lossless Dolby Atmos Music as a digital download, or by buying music on Blu-ray (make sure it specifically says it has Atmos in TrueHD).
