This Is Why Apple AirPods Don’t Support Lossless Audio Yet
Apple has been highly vocal about its Lossless audio support for Apple Music. And, while the option to listen to your favorite music in Lossless quality is excellent, not having the support for Apple’s own TWS earbuds — AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, and even the latest AirPods Pro 2 is bizarre.
The company, however, is looking at other possibilities to improve the audio quality of its products without the limitation of audio codecs.
As per a report by What HI-FI Via MacRumors and 9to5Google, Apple acoustics team engineer, Esge Andersen, claims Apple wanted to “give everyone AirPods Max in their pocket” with the launch of AirPods Pro 2. The company has tweaked the internals of the AirPods Pro design to offer cleaner highs and a deeper base. While the design remains identical, the microphones and air vents have been repositioned to optimise airflow.
Apple’s Lossless codec offers uncompressed audio for high-fidelity sound. While the company does offer the feature through millions of songs on Apple Music, none of the AirPods support it.
However, according to Andersen, there are other ways to improve the audio quality, and relying on codecs alone limits reliability. Apple also chose the trusted AAC codec because it’s “more about reliability” for the company.
“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,” Andersen said.
Andersen also acknowledged that better codecs, including LDAC and aptX are available, and Apple is indeed “open for change.”
