I'm really unsure what to say.
It's really difficult for me to comment on this article without seeming adverse, negative or hypercritical.
The first point that needs addressing is the furry mammoth lurking in the corner of the room.
Hi-Res audio - I'm sort of making an assumption that your referring to anything greater than Red Book, 16 bit, 44.1khz. What evidence are you able to present which verifies that the difference between Red Book and Hi-Res is audible? What scientific principles can be drawn on to backup any evidence you provide?
I normally ignore all references to Hi-Res audio in your reviews but when it comes to an article which basically says 'we need this', I can't let it go unanswered.
Secondly, the article contains the following paragraph.
'The chip will also reportedly have an intelligent auto switch feature which will make the headphones transition from Wi-Fi 7 to Bluetooth “seamlessly” with no noticeable loss in quality when the listener goes out of range of the stronger source.'
Surely I don't need to point out the obvious inference that there is no requirement for Wi-Fi 7 based audio because Bluetooth is just as good.
If you're going to write articles like this then you need to be able to:
1. provide backup for any claims made in the article.
2. analyse claims made by manufacturers and question those which seem erroneous.
In other words, a touch of reality wouldn't go amiss.
While I agree with you that there is nearly no discernible difference between Red Book 16-bit 44.1kHz LPCM and Hi-Res Audio to the normal human (dogs may differ), please note that Bluetooth (Traditional or Low Latency) implementations today are unable to reliably transport uncompressed stereo LPCM in a typically crowded 2.4 GHz ISM band.
This then points towards the argument that lossy audio (over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB, Lightning, Ethernet, etc) is “just as good” as lossless audio.
If this was the case, Mini Disk (ATRAC3) would have won in the market over CDs.
MLP, ALP, FLAC and other lossless audio algorithms would have never been invented.
If any lossless was just as good, would we still be listening to 128kbps encoded MPEG 1, Layer 3 audio instead of MPEG 4, AAC.
Dolby TrueHD (essentially rebadged MLP) and DTS-HD Master Audio would have never been brought to market.
Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 allows for transport of these lossless encoded as well as even LPCM using the 1.2 GHz of highly unused bandwidth in the 6 GHz band.
Wi-Fi 6E supports up to 160 MHz bandwidth channels while Wi-Fi 7 supports up to 320 MHz channels.
When you start to consider moving of mutichannel uncompressed or lossless encoded audio, Bluetooth simply cannot compete.
Regardless of the audio format over Bluetooth being AAC or MP3 or SBC or APT-X HD, they are all still lossy in nature.
That is not to say that for the average listener that the audio experience they are capable of delivering isn’t quite amazing, I would not bet that there aren’t humans on the planet that can still quickly discern between lossless and lossy audio.
IMHO, that should have been the key focus of this article.
The fact that uncompressed or lossless audio is capable of being moved over Wi-Fi (red book 16-bit 44.1kHz stereo or 384kHz 24-bit LPCM or 512 DSD or Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA or MLP) which are all superior to any of the lossy audio format moved over Bluetooth (or Wi-Fi).
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