Malcolm Owen
Owners of the AirPods Max will soon be able to enjoy lossless audio and low-latency audio with their headphones, enhancing the premium headphones' capabilities.
Apple's audio hardware offers various features to enhance the musical and theatrical experience, but there are feature blindspots. In an inbound software update for the AirPods Max, the premium headphones will gain two missing functions.
Confirmed by Apple in Monday, an update for USB-C AirPods Max in April will add support for both lossless audio and ultra-low latency audio.
For the update, the lossless audio addition will enable 24-bit, 48kHz support, which Apple says preserves "the integrity of original recordings" on many Apple Music tracks. The support also extends to Personalized Spatial Audio.
While you could connect the AirPods Max to an analog source, which could be lossless in its own right, the analog-to-digital conversion via the cable didn't result in lossless playback. However, according to Apple's announcement, using the USB-C to 3.5mm audio cable or a USB-C to USB-C cable will enable support.
Consequently, the update will mean the AirPods max will be the only headphones to allow musicians to create and mix with Personalized Spatial Audio with head tracking, in Apple's opinion.
The change won't just affect lossless audio support, as the AirPods Max will also get ultra-low latency audio. The feature lowers the lag time between audio playing on a connected device and it being played and heard through the AirPods Max into the user's ears.
Apple claims the reduction, which benefits gamers and livestreamers, is on par with native built-in speakers on a Mac, iPhone, or iPad.
The update will be included as part of the update to iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4 and macOS Sequoia 15.4.
At the same time, the announcement says there will be a USB-C to 3.5mm audio cable available to purchase from Apple's online store, priced at $39. This is different from the USB-C to 3.5mm Headphone Jack Adapter, which is already being sold for $9.
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14 Comments
Was hoping they would support Hi-Rez.
So only the USB C models despite the fact that they were selling ones with Lightning not long ago? :/
Hopefully this will fix the latency issues when using MIDI on the Mac. It is horrible on the AirPods Max and if you use a set of HomePods as speakers for your Mac.
To be clear, unless I'm misreading this article, the lossless and low latency modes will only be available when the headphones are connected by wire to a lossless audio source. When the headphones are used wirelessly, nothing changes from the current lossy audio formats.
They could have avoided the need for any of this and had a better solution by simply using hte H2 chip when they refreshed the headphones. So annoyingly strange that they didn't do that.