It may sound too good to be true that Apple Music will offer lossless streaming and spatial audio at no extra charge, but AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max don't allow you to enjoy lossless audio It is

Apple confirmed to T3 that lossless Apple Music content cannot be played over Bluetooth, ruling out all three pairs of wireless headphones

Even stranger, this limitation requires wired headphones to play lossless songs, while AirPods Max are not compatible when connected via a Lightning - 35mm cable Apple told 9to5Mac that the AirPods Max "currently does not support digital audio formats in wired mode"

This means that while you can use AirPods Pro and AirPods Max to take advantage of the spatial audio that will be added to Apple Music in June, you cannot use the same headphones for the streaming service's other big new feature What does this mean?

Basically, it comes down to Bluetooth codecs and file formats: the AirPods family is currently designed to use Apple's proprietary AAC Bluetooth codec, which can produce sound quality there, but lossless and high-resolution audio To support the high quality sound content introduced by Apple Music, Apple developed the Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), which is not compatible with headphones that can only use the more basic and lossless AAC

This is true not only of Apple's headphones, but also of all the best wireless headphones that cannot switch to a wired connection, such as the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds and Master & Dynamic MW08 according to the Verge, the best Bluetooth speakers, even the Apple HomePod and HomePod mini, cannot play ALAC-encoded content

Furthermore, if you want to listen to Apple Music's absolute highest quality high-resolution songs on your mobile device, you'll also need an external DAC - something you may already be familiar with if you've looked into how to play high-res audio on your iPhone before

To be fair to Apple, most wireless headphones cannot handle true lossless audio without a cable However, with such a major update to Apple Music, it would not have been beyond the realm of possibility for something like Sony's LDAC codec to actually enable high-res audio over Bluetooth

This development also raises questions about the oft-leaked AirPods 3 We understand that they will not be high-end headphones like the AirPods Pro or AirPods Max, but it is an opportunity for Apple to improve wireless technology and enable higher quality This would be an opportunity to enable wireless listening Contrary to rumors, the AirPods 3 were not unveiled at the same time as the Apple Music lossless/spatial audio announcement