The AirPodsMax are an outstanding set of wireless headphones that have one fatal flaw. No losslessaudio. A USBC port could fix that. Here's how.
Apple’s AirPods Max are a remarkable set of wireless headphones. They have superb noise cancellation, their ambient/transparency mode is the best you can get, and despite being one of the heaviest headphones on the market, they are surprisingly comfortable. But Apple has yet to address the AirPods Max’s greatest weakness: they’re a $549 set of headphones that only work with compressed, lossy digital audio.
The difference is that other headphone companies acknowledge this limitation by offering users a wired connection that lets them get around lossy compression by going direct to the source. Want lossless? You need a wired connection. USB-C to the rescue? This illogical state of affairs raises the question of why does it exist in the first place? And what can Apple do to fix it? I have some theories.Apple’s Lightning port can’t send analog signals. We know this because if you want to use a set of analog headphones with any iPhone newer than the iPhone 7, you’ll need a Lightning-to-3.5mm headphone adapter. And if it can’t send analog signals, it follows that it can’t receive them either.
If only there were a single, compact, fully reversible connector that can handle both analog and digital audio signals, the AirPods Max’s woes would finally be put to rest. Oh wait, there is: it’s called USB-C. Will Apple add USB-C to the next AirPods Max? That’s the million-dollar question, and I think the answer is yes. But it might not happen as soon as we’d all like. Despite rolling over and adding USB-C to its MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and select iPad models, Apple has resisted switching from its proprietary Lightning connection to USB-C on the iPhone.
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