An Apple engineer has explained why the AirPods Pro 2 does not support lossless audio. Apple launched the second-gen AirPods Pro at its Far Out event in early September, along with the iPhone 14 series, Apple Watch Series 8, and Apple Watch Ultra. It succeeds the first-generation AirPods Pro that was launched in 2019 and brings a few thoughtful upgrades over the original model. Along with the AirPods Pro 2, Apple's current earbuds portfolio includes the 3rd-generation AirPods that was launched late last year.
The new features in the AirPods Pro 2 include a low-distortion driver and a custom amplifier, the H2 chip to handle on-device processing for noise cancelation, Personalized Spatial Audio for a more immersive listening experience and up to 6 hours of battery life with ANC on. The second-gen AirPods Pro can also be charged using an Apple Watch charger, making it the only model to support this feature. All said and done, the AirPods Pro 2 definitely offers many small improvements that make them a worthy buy, but they still have some lingering issues, like the lack of lossless audio support.
In an interview with What Hi-Fi, Apple engineer Esge Andersen said that the second-gen AirPods Pro - like all other AirPods models - does not support lossless audio because the company chose to focus on reliability. However, Andersen, who is part of Apple's acoustics team, denied that the choice of codecs negatively affected sound quality in the AirPods, saying that it is possible to deliver great sound quality without changing codecs. According to Andersen, "We want to push the sound quality forward, and we can do that with a lot of other elements." He also claimed that for Bluetooth products, at least, the choice of codec is not a limiting factor for audio quality.
AirPods Pro 2 Doesn't Support Lossless Audio
While it is understandable that Apple needs to make the AirPods Pro work seamlessly with as many devices, it is more than possible these days to ensure reliability while supporting hi-res audio. As pointed out in the report, Sony’s LDAC, MQair and aptX Lossless codecs can transmit more audio data over Bluetooth, which makes Apple's policy on this subject a little difficult to fathom.
It is worth noting that Apple Music already offers Spatial Audio and lossless audio to its subscribers at no extra cost. While the AirPods Pro 2 does not support hi-res audio, it does support Spatial Audio, and users can enable it on their iPhone, iPad and Apple TV for the perfect audio experience.
Source: What Hi-Fi