Apple engineers who work in the audio sector want more throughput for radio protocols like Bluetooth. Gary Geaves, Vice President of Acoustics at the company, now expressed himself accordingly in an interview. Opposite the British magazine What HiFi he indicated that the development of the new AirPods 3 had reached the limits of current technology.
Where to take and not to steal?
“Of course wireless technology is critical for content delivery (…) but also things like latency when you move your head (…) we focus and very much on getting the most out of bluetooth technology and there are a number of tricks we can use to get around the limitations of Bluetooth, “said the manager. But there is something to the fact that Apple “wants more bandwidth and … I’m not going to go into that any further. Yes, we would like to have more bandwidth,” he grinned.
Complete catalog also lossless
Apple now offers free lossless songs as part of its Apple Music streaming service – the goal of making the entire catalog available in its own ALAC format was probably achieved at the end of 2021. However, neither AirPods 3, AirPods Pro nor AirPods Max have so far mastered ALAC – precisely because of the said bandwidth problem (the Max models could also use a cable, but there is still no support).
How to implement technically?
Recently there were rumors that the “AirPods Pro 2” will come with lossless support for the first time. They are in the pipeline for 2022. How Apple intends to implement this, however, remains unclear – the company may be using a proprietary protocol. So far, however, lossless has also been supported on Android devices and CarPlay systems. Alternatively, it would also be conceivable that Apple would use the aptX lossless format announced by Qualcomm – but this would contradict Apple’s usual approach to keeping important technology in its own hands.
(bsc)