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Music Apple

Apple Engineer Says Lossless Isn't the Be-all And End-all of Audio Quality (theverge.com) 208

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Despite Apple Music supporting lossless streaming, wireless AirPods only support lossy Bluetooth codecs. Apple engineer Esge Andersen tells WhatHiFi that's not really an issue: "We want to push the sound quality forward, and we can do that with a lot of other elements. We don't think that the codec currently is the limitation of audio quality on Bluetooth products."
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Apple Engineer Says Lossless Isn't the Be-all And End-all of Audio Quality More

Apple Engineer Says Lossless Isn't the Be-all And End-all of Audio Quality

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  • Shit hi-fi (Score:3, Funny)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Friday November 25, 2022 @07:18PM (#63079966)
    So... he's basically saying that Apple audio hardware products aren't hi-fi enough to hear the difference.

    • Re:Shit hi-fi (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dogsbreath ( 730413 ) on Friday November 25, 2022 @07:59PM (#63080042)

      Warning: curmudgeonly old guy rant. Feel free to mod down.

      I would go so far as to say almost all consumer sound products are crap today and not just Apple. You can still get quality equipment that delivers great audio but most music is consumed through mobile devices over bluetooth and the end result is dreck to my ears. Then again, I am old so my hearing isn't what it was but bad sound is still bad sound. Frankly, nobody except some aficionados care.

      Frick, most of the turntables aimed at the vinyl crowd look like chisels on sticks. Again: good products exist but they don't seem to be in demand.

      Audio over Bluetooth is like sending your music through a compost pile. Bad codecs, bad DACs, and bad transducers.

      Quality doesn't stand a chance against portability and convenience. Plus there is no interest in "HiFi" like there was; people don't know the sound could be way better because the online reviews don't inform them adequately.

      In fairness, back in the day there was a lot silly nose in the air stuff like expensive "crystal copper" speaker cables, and other shit that was expensive but didn't make any difference to the quality of audio delivery.

      • Frankly, nobody except some aficionados care.

        I think that's the thing. I can hear the difference between bad and hi-fi, but mostly I don't really care. I also happen to like vinyl, because I like being offline. Nothing quite like the sound of a warped old 45, with the groove all wallowed out from a decade of use before it wound up in a damp garage for 50 years.

        hiss... crackle... [anticipation] then it starts.

        I mean you can get hi-i sound with vinyl, but you're skating uphill at that point.

        In fairness, back

        • High pressure hydrogen environment - Wow, could you perhaps tell which planet you are on?

          • High pressure hydrogen environment - Wow, could you perhaps tell which planet you are on?

            Earth... for now, but what other uses could they possibly have? It's not like you could listen to sound in an ultra high vacuum or temperatures at which helium liquefies.

      • Today, most people listen to streaming internet services on their phone speakers or tinny little bluetooth speakers. Back in the "hi-fi" era most people listened to public broadcasts on tinny radios. I'd say not much has changed in terms of what people listen to music on.

    • Re:Shit hi-fi (Score:5, Funny)

      by ebonum ( 830686 ) on Friday November 25, 2022 @08:12PM (#63080080)

      If they only had a way to connect a wire from the phone to your ear buds so that you didn't need this crappy blue tooth step in the middle. Users could use lossless codecs! My desktop speakers are really nice, and I'm not connecting to them via bluetooth.

      I love it when you take a simple idea add tons of complexity and a much higher price tag for very little marginal gain.

      • Yeah, so that they can hear the full dynamic range of their tinny little speakers or earbuds that don't really fit well enough to make the necessary air-tight seal so that you can hear the bass. Apple gear really isn't for audiophiles & their product designers really shouldn't be talking about CODEC audio quality. I suspect that this "announcement" was thought up by their marketing department to vacuously associate Apple products with conversations about hi-fi.
      • There are actually some bluetooth speakers that sound pretty good. Here is a valve amp with a BT receiver - https://www.aeronetworks.ca/20... [aeronetworks.ca]

    • Not sure why you're getting modded down for this. That's exactly what he's saying.

      "We don't think that the codec currently is the limitation of audio quality on Bluetooth products."

      i.e., the bottleneck lies elsewhere, and there's only one possible "elsewhere" in this case. That's not saying the audio quality of Apple's bluetooth offerings are (or are not) garbage -- that's a separate discussion -- merely that a tiny speaker cannot flawlessly reproduce audio signals, which should come as a surprise to almo

  • .... in high-quality recordings through high-end headphones via AAC, and compared them to the lossless original, I have a bridge I'd like to sell him.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      If only audio researchers had your insight. I'm sure they never considered using "high-end headphones", "high-quality recordings" or challenging source material. You set them straight, though.

      • Re:After listening to cymbals ... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday November 26, 2022 @08:05AM (#63080928) Homepage Journal

        What engineers have or haven't thought of is immaterial. Anyone Apple is permitting to speak to the media about their future directions has been coached and directed. This is just marketbabble that's being presented from the mouth of an engineer so as to give it credence with dumbfucks. In particular, this particular propaganda supports Apple's removal of the headphone jack to induce sales of their wireless earbuds.

        When I switched from using shitty headphones on mv PC's internal audio device to Sennheisers on a M-Audio Mobile Pre USB, I suddenly discovered that I could hear a lot of stuff I could never hear before. By doing tests with different bitrates I discovered that I can in fact hear the difference between a 128kbps MP3 and a 320kbps MP3. More importantly though, some audio just gets hosed when it's compressed, pretty much no matter what scheme you use. This guy is just lying on behalf of his employer as instructed.

    • Re:After listening to cymbals ... (Score:4, Informative)

      by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Friday November 25, 2022 @10:46PM (#63080284) Homepage

      I think this myth that people can tell the difference between lossless and high bitrate compress audio goes back to the early days of mp3. Way back in the beginning the early reversed engineered mp3 encoders were horrible. Which wasn't surprising given what they were trying to figure out.

      I have some 128Kbps from that era encoded with bladenc 9.x something. They sound horrible. I re-encoded with the latest version of lame at 128Kbps, and you can tell the difference. But I can't tell the difference between the cd rp and the lamed encoded mp3s.

      • It is not a myth. Try testing with Yes's "Roundabout", or Genesis' "Supper's Ready". 128 kbps might be enough for Snooki or Kanye West content (modern content is written for the codec consciously or unconsciously) - but 128 kbps takes huge amounts of content out of complex music like Genesis or Yes. Go test it on some wired headphones, the difference is so plainly obvious, there is just no argument at all.

  • Many can hear the difference between lossy and lossless, even at the higher lossy but rates. But, I think you need to have a trained ear to hear it. I canâ(TM)t.

    CD quality (44.1/16bit) should be at least available as an upgrade. That apple offers it as part of the base package is good.

    All the stuff above that, particularly the MQA stuff on Tidal is just marketing.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Dwedit ( 232252 )

      Even if you don't hear the difference between Lossless and Lossy when listening side-by-side, the differences are very hard to ignore once you perform basic audio processing: Subtract Right channel from Left channel. You get tons of artifacts on Lossy audio, and none on lossless audio.

      • I use FLAC whenever I possibly can and I'm totally on board with lossless. But I have never heard about the kind of artifacts you mention WRT lossy compression, and I'm interested to learn more. Can you recommend a source for some info?

        I might just stick some op-amps on a breadboard and play with sum-and-difference circuits to see if I can hear the difference between lossy and lossless, or see it on a 'scope. In my copious quantities of spare time, of course...

        • Get your hands on the CD single for Moroder's song "The Chase", there's a mix in there of the song that has this kind of square wave sounding noise (it's on the weirdest track, you'll know it when you hear it — sorry, I didn't record which remix it was) and try compressing it. You will be able to tell the difference at pretty much any bitrate.

          For most music it's totally irrelevant, I've been making mp3s about as long as anybody and you can't hear the difference for most songs even on good equipment, w

      • Re:Lossless is still a reasonable goal. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday November 25, 2022 @09:39PM (#63080216)

        As your ears cannot do that subtraction, it is completely meaningless as a quality measure.

    • Re:Lossless is still a reasonable goal. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday November 25, 2022 @09:39PM (#63080214)

      Funny thing. The German computer magazine c't did a hearing test a few years back with different formats and including lossless (as far as possible). They also had the very best headphones and headphone amplifiers they could get (or borrow). What happened is that even the people with the best hearing in there (including a blind "audiophile") could hear differences between the formats. But they could not identify which one was the lossless.

      "Lossless" is bunk. It is an illusion used to separate not so smart people with illusions of superiority from their money. And it works pretty well. My personal favorite are the "audio ethernet cables" with special filters, oxygen-free copper and other irrelevant features. Anybody with the least clue of how ethernet works knows this does not make one bit of difference because it cannot. Not possible. Yet some people pay something like $1000 and more for an ethernet cable of that type.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      Many can hear the difference between lossy and lossless, even at the higher lossy but rates.

      Not they can't. A more accurate saying would be, "Many THINK they hear the difference between lossy and lossless, even at the higher lossy but rates."

      • Yes they can, and provably so. Don't lump everything together under the word "lossless".

        I've yet to see anyone pass a blind test for comparing AAC @ 320kbps (Spotify High Quality) to a lossless original, but it is trivially easy to do for an MP3 @320kbps, and more importantly the AAC codec used for Bluetooth which *maxes* at 256kbps and quite critically is optimised for low latency and low encoding complexity *not* audio quality. AAC over Bluetooth is pretty frigging terrible quality wise and you don't need

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kriston ( 7886 )

      They removed the analog audio jack. Therefore, you can't hear "lossless" audio from Apple devices. All BlueTooth codecs are lossy.

      • Re:Lossless is still a reasonable goal. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by NoMoreACs ( 6161580 ) on Saturday November 26, 2022 @06:38AM (#63080828)

        They removed the analog audio jack. Therefore, you can't hear "lossless" audio from Apple devices. All BlueTooth codecs are lossy.

        Sure you can.

        Lightning to 3.5 mm adapter (simply replaces the internal DAC/amp with the same thing built into a short cable).

        Done. Same as it ever was.

        • Same as it ever was.

          Nope, it's not the same, at all.

          Something else to buy. Something else to break. Something else to lose. Something else to forget. Oh, and I can't charge my phone at the same time unless I use the version that costs four times as much. Whoever's using the cheap version doesn't do any serious traveling with their phone.

          Pass. My 6S (and its headphone jack) is on its 3rd battery and will keep running as long as there is 4G -- another 6-7 years?

  • they are selling to cult followers not audiophiles (Score:4, Informative)

    by kiviQr ( 3443687 ) on Friday November 25, 2022 @07:53PM (#63080030)
    same with Beats by Dre - ZERO specs. When I was kid first thing I would check was frequency range, then db, then after narrowing down audio test.

  • LOL! Yeah, right. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by BrendaEM ( 871664 )
    Even at higher bitrates, some techno music really messes with lossy encoding. There's no reason to use lossy encoding for audio, not one minute longer.

  • Nails the issue (Score:5, Insightful)

    by John Allsup ( 987 ) <slashdot@chal i s q u e.net> on Friday November 25, 2022 @08:19PM (#63080100) Homepage Journal

    "We don't think that the codec currently is the limitation of audio quality on Bluetooth products." -- bluetooth airpods are sh** in terms of audio quality, and giving them lossless audio is basically polishing a turd.

    • The tell-tale signals of audio compression go beyond simply the audio quality a device is capable of. The dumbest comment I hear is "your system simply isn't revealing enough". It's a load of crap. If you know what to listen to then you can identify low quality AAC or high quality MP3 apart from lossless even with $10 headphones. No need for some magic audiophile grade system with power conditioners and other audiophool bullshit.

      And Bluetooth's implementation of AAC is in no way optimised for audio quality.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The sound quality of Sony WF-1000XM4 is top notch, and I say that as someone who has owned Stax and high end Audio Technica gear.

      As for Apple, they tend to say this when they are lacking some feature, like high refresh rate screens. In this case they have a point though, if they did a good job with the software it shouldn't be perceptible. Blind tests suggest that is the case.

  • I think it's very funny that on one hand we have people ranting on and on about how much better vinyl records are than digital recordings, and then we have people saying that Bluetooth is fine and doesn't degrade the sound. Lossy is lossy. Something is missing by definition. On the other hand, if what you're listening on is ear buds of any brand, or even those Bluetooth connected speakers from Apple, Sonos, Amazon or even Google, then you really aren't going to hear the difference. And that's not counting your choice of listening material either.

    The thing you're hoping to hear better in higher quality audio are acoustic instruments and voices. Material that is electronic in origin - electric guitars, synthesizers, beat boxes, etc, have no reference against which to listen. Go to a live performance with such instruments and what you're hearing is the PA system, however it is engineered by the soundman through whatever PA gear he's stuck working with. The nuanced differences between Bluetooth and full rez Redbook will never be heard over earbuds or any Bluetooth loudspeaker if this is the material you're listening to.

    • I think it's very funny that on one hand we have people ranting on and on about how much better vinyl records are than digital recordings

      Vinyl lover here. They *are* better than digital recordings. It is just so much nicer to go through the ceremony of laying down a record and listening to an album without an easy ability to skip songs or hit a shuffle button. It really adds to enjoyment of an artists work at a time where people are all too fucking impatient to sit and listen to music. To say nothing of the beautiful album art you get with a record.

      Yeah there are a few idiots who think the sound quality is superior, but don't lump everyone w

    • Once, vinyl was mastered well. Then it went to shit. Many of the first CDs were also mastered well. Then they went to shit. Consequently most audio is mastered like shit and there's no real difference, except that you don't have dust pops with CDs.

      People can actually tell the difference between compressed audio that was decompressed and then recompressed for bluetooth, though. And I've got some songs where I can tell the difference between the CD and the mp3 of any bitrate in certain parts with specific aud

  • It's the HW (pods) that can't support lossless due to the hardware not having enough bandwidth.

    At least if you had lossless, like FLAC, you can re-encode them into an apple compatible lossy format without corrupting the original, vs. if you start out with lossy and need to re-encode to another lossy format, you get multiplied deviations from the original (not that my ears can likely tell the difference, but at least I won't have to worry about replicative failure after some number of generations).

  • If you're listening via BlueTooth, it's lossless by definition.

    Even the very latest audio codecs and protocols over the latest BlueTooth are lossless.

    This is like saying a $100 HDMI cable gives you better video and audio: it doesn't, and with BlueTooth, it's even worse than you realize (and when you're an audiophile who doesn't realize this, you're a fraud).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kriston ( 7886 )

      Of course, I mistyped. BlueTooth is lossy by definition.
      Even the very latest audio codes and protocols over the latest BlueTooth are lossy.

      My mistake for misstating this, and my point still stands. Apple removed the analog audio output, and, has removed lossless audio enjoyment from all Apple devices.

    • Even the very latest audio codecs and protocols over the latest BlueTooth are lossless.

      *AptX-Lossless has entered the chat.*
      Your typo in the first sentence aside, no, the whole point Apple is going on the marketing train right now is because there now *are* lossless audio codecs available, and Apple doesn't want to pay to license them, just like they didn't pay for AptX-Adaptive, or AptX-HD either despite both being wildly superior to their shitty AAC implementation.

      This is like saying a $100 HDMI cable gives you better video and audio

      Funny you mention HDMI cables. Your price comment aside there are absolutely cables out there that don't support the required HD

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bsolar ( 1176767 )
        AptX is still lossy under bandwidth constraints. This doesn't mean it would not be an improvement compared to the current codecs, but true lossless cannot happen with the current Bluetooth bandwidth limitations no matter the codec.
  • I remember that when iPhones had crappy cameras, Apple would say that megapixels were a gimmick on a phone anyway, and most of the tech press agreed with them. This is true for all the features that Apple products don't have: they're unuseful until the next iPhone gets them, and then they become the best thing after sliced bread.

  • "Apple Engineer" - Apple marketing spokesman.

    "We want to push the sound quality forward" - We want to, but don't want to pay Qualcomm to license the good stuff.

    "and we can do that with a lot of other elements" - We really don't want to give Qualcomm any money at all. We sued them, remember?

    "We don't think that the codec currently is the limitation of audio quality on Bluetooth products" - Our products are so shit that we can improve them in other ways, and it's not like anyone who cares about audio quality

  • Quote: "We don't think that the codec currently is the limitation of audio quality on Bluetooth products."

    Of course, because you can't charge for some codecs that your player reproduces... so you have to blame in the items you sell.

    Let's be clear, there are MANY limitations. First and foremost is Bluetooth by itself (that nasty lag at the beginning, for example), but trying to sniff "quality" as a problem of current compressed audio is funny.

  • 128 kbps mp3 might be just fine for Snooki or Kanye West content, but just try it on complex prog rock like Genesis or Yes. The difference is huge and obvious, there is just no argument. People who contend that people cannot detect a difference are probably saying so based on modern music - produced electronically and perfectly suited to lossy compression. Deep rich audio such as that from complex prog rock or classical orchestras just cannot be captured. It is mathematically and physically impossible - and

  • This 'engineer' is basically saying that good ingredients are not all that important for making tasty food. I'm sure mcdonalds agrees.

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