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Comment by hnburnsy | Hacker News Reader

>Ultra-low latency audio and Lossless Audio listening requires a wired USB‑C connection and compatible content from supported apps and services. (5)

>(5) Ultra-low latency audio and Lossless Audio listening requires a wired USB‑C connection and compatible content from supported apps and services.

Soooooooo Apple, you gonna tell us which content, apps, and services are compatible?

On another note, it seems excessive that your marketing page for this product needs 22 footnotes, disclaimers, and legalese consisting of 1,252 words.

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Most offerings (eg Apple Music) already has lossless audio for a while, as does Spotify, as it has been supported for the previous generation of AirPods Max already (ie this is not a new feature) and wirelessly on the AirPods Pro 2.

Why they don’t support it wirelessly on the AirPods Max 2, which should be a superior product to the AirPods Pro 2, is beyond me.

If I had to guess, I think it’s marketing — just like adding weights to the insides to make them feel more “premium”.

I’d guess that the target audience would argue that real lossless music experience requires high-bandwidth wires, and is not possible over the air without degradation.

But that’s the thing, apparently it’s not using Bluetooth but actually uses their new wireless chips to transmit the data over radio (maybe it uses WiFi, maybe something else). So it’s not using Bluetooth, which doesn’t have enough bandwidth for lossless.

I don’t think “it’s just marketing” is the reason, Apple always positioned themselves as the premium option with these things. Being the only wireless lossless headphone would be right on Apple’s expected feature list.

Without reading anything further into it “data over radio” describes bluetooth, and wifi, and 2.4GHz proprietary protocols and… basically everything.

You could still be talking about bluetooth and it would still be “data over radio” technically.

I just meant to convey that I don’t know what protocol they’re using, what I do know is that it’s not regular Bluetooth.

Why would Lossless Audio require a wired connection in 2026 - do they realize high bitrate Bluetooth formats exist already? My QC Ultra's claim to have lossless over Bluetooth

Well, lossless over Bluetooth is a mess currently.

Only 1 codec is capable of that — aptX Lossless. Then, your transmitting device, phone / laptop / etc., needs to be compatible with it, and that's often not the case. Samsung and Apple don't support it.

I bought USB-C Bluetooth dongle that I use with my iPhone for that exact reason. It looks janky, but I think it's worth it.

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