Apple is lastly giving some like to the customarily ignored AirPods Max. Effectively, the $549 AirPods Max with USB-C anyway—sorry if you happen to’ve bought the older mannequin with the Lightning connector. With the iOS 18.4 replace that is coming in April, Apple is enabling lossless audio and ultra-low latency audio for the AirPods Max. Within the phrases of Lifehacker Senior Tech Editor Jake Peterson, this improve lastly makes the brand new AirPods Max price shopping for.
Oh, however you are in all probability going to want a brand new dongle too.
Why one other dongle in 2025?
Lossless audio solely works when linked to an Apple system utilizing a USB-C cable. With the replace, AirPods Max customers will be capable of take pleasure in greater than 100 million songs on Apple Music which are processed in 24-bit, 48 kHz lossless audio—offered the system they’re listening on has a USB-C port.
Here is the place that dongle is available in: Apple is now promoting a $39.99 USB-C to three.5mm audio cable that goes each methods (bidirectional). This itself is not new; Apple additionally bought an equally costly Lighting to three.5 mm audio cable that is now not obtainable. However that cable didn’t allow lossless or low latency mode within the older AirPods Max, and the brand new one does.
The brand new dongle is designed to work with Beats Studio Professional too, and it allows extremely low-latency audio for any system that is linked. Which means lastly, the AirPods Max can work with any media participant that has a standard audio-out, like a hip cassette participant, turntable, and even in-flight leisure programs.
What do you suppose up to now?
Different makes use of for the dongle
The bidirectional half can be fascinating: Utilizing this cable, you may as well use any previous speaker as an iPhone or iPad speaker. To illustrate you needed to make use of your house theater’s system as an iPhone output, like the great previous days, properly, that’s now doable. In case you’ve by no means been a fan of Bluetooth, otherwise you simply do not just like the latency of wi-fi audio, Apple has simply given you an official solution to flip again time, and for simply $40.
Talking of latency, the AirPods Max with the USB-C cable, or the three.5mm dongle, allow the ultra-low latency audio by default. Apple is positioning this as a win for creators, stay streamers, and avid gamers, as low latency audio might help professionals working in Logic Professional and different skilled apps. And AirPods Max can be useful in creating and mixing audio in Personalised Spacial Audio with head monitoring.
