Apple releases lossless audio, can it be played on AirPods?
Apple releases lossless audio, can it be played on AirPods?
Apple added lossless audio and Dolby Atmos features to the Apple Music service. Can it play on AirPods?
Lossless audio on Apple Music has a higher bitrate with the Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) format. Quality is from 16bit / 44.1kHz, 24bit / 48kHz, up to 24bit / 192kHz.
For the Dolby Atmos feature, it can indeed be enjoyed via AirPods and Beats devices with the H1 or W1 chip. However, for High-Resolution Lossless, it turns out that it cannot be played on any AirPods, including the most expensive AirPods Max.
Indeed, playing high bitrate audio via Bluetooth headphones does not make sense. This is because the audio bitrate that can be sent via Bluetooth is limited, including the AAC codec used by Apple.
But actually AirPods Max can be used in wired mode, namely by using a 3.5mm to Lightning audio cable. But in this mode, the audio files will be converted to analog, sent via cable, then digitized again in AirPods Max, and that makes lossless quality in Apple Music is not optimal.
So what does it take to be able to listen to the highest quality music from Apple Music? Chances are what you need is a DAC device and amplifier connected to the source, be it an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or any other device that can play Apple Music.
Or there are also things that are simpler, namely headphones or earphones that are connected using a data connection, USB-C, for example, as quoted by detikINET from The Verge, Tuesday (18/5/2021).
Meanwhile, for wireless use, aka via Bluetooth, Apple may need a new codec, a kind of Sony's LDAC codec. At least Apple still has time until next June to solve this problem, which is when this lossless audio becomes available to users.
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