Apple has just released the latest product from their subsidiary, Beats. The new Beats Studio Pro’s, which retail for $349.99, ironically still comes with wired connections. Despite Apple being the company that inspired many others to drop any connection holes from smartphones in the first place. This has been done to allow users to stream lossless audio from Apple Music without having to incorporate aptX (which has the ability to stream lossless audio) from Qualcomm.
Another surprising feature of these headphones is the lack of LE Audio and the LC3 codec, however, SAR believes that Apple will be saving this upgrade for their own AirPods later this year.
Today, nearly all headphones purchased are wireless, and so as the use of lossless streaming grows consumers are going to need new ways to access high-quality streaming. So either we go back to wired connections, which I very much doubt, or the demand for a 3rd party losses codec on the LE audio platform will grow. In the meantime, consumers will need to either buy wired devices or find devices that are aptX lossless compatible.
