09-07-2016, 11:11 PM
This I like about AirPods: Songs do not get sent through a second sausage grinder.
Bluetooth is seriously bandwidth-limited no matter the version number. Default "Bluetooth sound" is uniformly horrible, which is why aptX has been an improvement. It compresses the song file even further for better transmission, while avoiding the yucky default Bluetooth audio codec.
But aptX isn't lossless. Not a big deal if you start with a lossless file such as AIFF, WAV, Apple Lossless or FLAC, but *most* users store lossy files on their phones. If that's an MP3 you're out of luck; it'll get reprocessed for even crappier sound. But if it's an AAC file, an iPhone can now stream it unfettered (avoiding aptX's second meat grinder compression) all the way to the AirPods.
Last I heard, LOTS of iPhone users (iTunes Store customers) have AAC files on their iPhone, or stream from iCloud. That's a large and ready market.
iPhones could already do this to *other* Bluetooth headphones/speakers, because Bluetooth does support streaming AAC files directly. But unsurprisingly, Apple hasn't pushed (marketed) this capability, which is why *virtually no* 3rd-party Bluetooth headphones/speakers work with streaming AAC files, preferring instead the proprietary aptX, additional processing and all.
Bluetooth is seriously bandwidth-limited no matter the version number. Default "Bluetooth sound" is uniformly horrible, which is why aptX has been an improvement. It compresses the song file even further for better transmission, while avoiding the yucky default Bluetooth audio codec.
But aptX isn't lossless. Not a big deal if you start with a lossless file such as AIFF, WAV, Apple Lossless or FLAC, but *most* users store lossy files on their phones. If that's an MP3 you're out of luck; it'll get reprocessed for even crappier sound. But if it's an AAC file, an iPhone can now stream it unfettered (avoiding aptX's second meat grinder compression) all the way to the AirPods.
Last I heard, LOTS of iPhone users (iTunes Store customers) have AAC files on their iPhone, or stream from iCloud. That's a large and ready market.
iPhones could already do this to *other* Bluetooth headphones/speakers, because Bluetooth does support streaming AAC files directly. But unsurprisingly, Apple hasn't pushed (marketed) this capability, which is why *virtually no* 3rd-party Bluetooth headphones/speakers work with streaming AAC files, preferring instead the proprietary aptX, additional processing and all.