Life Hacker [Japanese version] Reprinted from the article published on September 5, 2021
There are a number of excellent Bluetooth headphones in the world.
AirPods Pro, Sony WF-1000XM4, and Jabra Elite Active 75T are swollen in the earphone market, and Sony WH-1000XM4 and Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 are particularly excellent among the overseas type.
However, although these headphones can provide advanced sound quality in various situations, the sound quality is not as good as wired headphones.The reasons are explained below.
Streaming services have recently improved audio quality.
In the past year, other services such as Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Spotify (scheduled to be released soon) have also provided high -bit rate losses, all of which can be used at the same price as before.
What is audio quality?
I will explain it a little more for those who do not come to the end of such buzzwords.Digital music is composed of digital information (1 and 0), like other digital products.
The more information that can be stored in one file, the higher the audio quality.It would be ideal if you could get as much information as possible and enjoy the charm of the song.
However, information occupies capacity.The more files you have, the greater the capacity of the file and the larger the load on the streaming.
To solve this problem, streaming services compress and delete information.
It is a strategic that many people leave enough information to reduce the quality of the songs while deleting sufficient information and reducing the file size.
This is related to bit rate.Bit rate is the amount of data that can be transferred in a certain file.
The higher the bit rate of the file, the more information you can transfer, often improving the quality.The lower the bit rate, the lower the transfer amount and the lower the quality.
Loseless streaming allows you to listen to this compression as close as possible to the original recording material.
Why wireless headphones can't beat wired headphones
Bluetooth has a limit to the process that can be processed.
Even if you set up streaming services such as Apple Music in lossless, those files will be compressed as much as possible with their Bluetooth devices, so they will not be roseless.
However, the sound quality of the song does not deteriorate, but rather the opposite.For example, Apple Music uses AAC Bluetooth codec when playing music with Bluetooth headphones, and its bit rate is 256kbps.
The maximum bit rate of Spotify is 320 kbps.With such bit rate, Bluetooth headphones also have high sound quality.
Even with Sony's main product, WF-1000XM4, the maximum bit rate is 990 kbps.This is about three times the bit rate of the conventional Bluetooth audio, but it is not yet enough for lossless.
On the other hand, wired headphones have no problem with this compression.
The signal from the device that is the sound source can be fully processed, but in some cases, the device that is the sound source may not be able to handle headphones.Some headphones require even more power to bring out their goodness.
So you need a DAC -like unit to support both the quality of the file and the quality of the headphones.For example, you need a DAC to enjoy the highest bit rate lossless loseless with Apple Music.
However, wired headphones also have from pins to drills.
Fairly, there are various wired headphones in the world.Just because it is wired does not necessarily mean that sound quality is better than AirPods.
Many wireless earphones and headphones are equipped with technologies to make it great.
Inexpensive wired headphones without such functions are more likely to be much higher sound quality of AirPods in compressed formats, even if the streaming service sends a lossless signal.
It is also important how the headphones make sound as well as bit rate.
Someday, the wireless technology may be able to directly reach the Lossless signal to the ear.But for now, the technology is limited to wired headphones.