CD-quality music is still the benchmark for decent audio; it's not quite hi-res, but it's noticeably better than the lossy, compressed music found on the internet. It can be difficult to listen to CD-quality music on a phone. Once the source material reaches your phone, you need a way to get it to your headphones without the extra audio quality being compressed away. It's easy with wired headphones, but harder with wireless earbuds.
The AptX Lossless standard is supposed to close the gap between the fidelity of CD-quality audio and the compression ofBluetooth. It's not easy to get it, but after having compared it to its predecessor, the difference in quality is very much there.
The earbuds have 8 hours of charge left.
An extra 24 hours of battery life can be obtained by using the charging case.
It has taken a bit of time for hardware to support the new standard. In June of this year, audio company Nura announced the first pair of earbuds with support for AptX Lossless, but only a few of the phones on the market are compatible with it. It is finally starting to change, with phones such as the Zenfone 9 shipping with built-in support. Nura gave me a sample of the phone to make sure I could properly use it.
The NuraTrue Pro are a standard set of earbuds. They offer 8 hours of charge from the earbuds themselves, an extra 24 hours from the case, and four microphones on each ear bud to handle calls and noise cancellation. Nura has a trademark personalized sound technology which it claims measures your ears to improve audio for them. The earbuds are expected to launch in the fourth quarter of this year, according to Nura, who is currently funding the earbuds through a crowd funding platform.
Nura's wireless buds support a lossless standard. According to the chip manufacturer, the new technology is able to transmit CD-quality audio without any loss of detail. That is in contrast to its previous highest-resolution codec, AptX HD, which is still heavily compressed even though it claims to be able to transmit audio that sounds on a par with 24bit or 96kHz.
It isn't completely compression-free despite its branding. There is still some compression that needs to be done to bring the CD-quality audio down to 1Mbps. There is a difference between the compression being used and the data being lost. It is the same as the original after it is compressed. When it came out, it was exactly what it was.
I used Apple Music for my tests. I checked the audio resolutions listed for each track and verified that I had all audio quality settings set to their highest option. It shouldn't matter if the tracks are higher-resolution than the CD-quality audio that AptX Lossless can transmit.
The test should be relatively easy, but it isn't easy to see when you're streaming. The new codec is an extension of the existing one that scales your audio's bitrate according to your environment. When I connected the NuraTrue Pro earbuds to the Zenfone 9, a tooltip popped up stating that I was connected via "Snapdragon Sound" and "aptX adaptive" without mentioning the lossless part. Between Nura's confirmation and the fact that the device supports AptX Lossless, I'm pretty sure that I'm hearing a good sound.
You don't have an easy way to switch between different versions of AptX if you want to take anAB test. Campbell suggested that I use the NuraTrue Pro to compare listening via an aptX Lossless compatible phone with a regular aptX HD compatible phone. I could have Apple Music streaming losslessly to both phones, and then have the NuraTrue Pro connected to each one to see what difference it made in audio quality.
The impact on audio quality appeared to be small. The kind of minor differences that are enjoyable to pick out in familiar tracks are not a night and day difference. There is a little more clarity here.
The benefits of Lossless seemed to be most apparent in the high frequencies. Every instrument throughout the track felt more present and audible, and the plucked guitar notes in the song's introduction had more brightness and sparkle. The Honor 70 didn't sound bad, but the Zenfone 9 had a little more detail.
The quality of the mastering of the track has a lot to do with the differences. It was difficult to tell the difference between the two audio formats when I listened to "Lithium" by Nirvana. I don't think I'd be able to tell the difference in a blind test. The difference was more apparent in a busier trick called "Territorial Pissings," which sounded muddier on the non- AptX Lossless device.
I tried some techno with the song "ELliptic" by Vessels. The Zenfone 9 gave it a much more balanced sound, with higher pitched audio sounding much more prominent in the mix, and gave more space to breathe. It felt like Lossless was helping to bury the song.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' song, "Maps", was given to me finally. Each instrument felt three-dimensional when it was streamed. They sounded like instruments that had been recorded in a studio.
I wouldn't call the improvements offered by AptX Losslesstransformational. It felt like it gave me a little extra detail that I didn't know I was missing. It is almost like that moment when you start streaming a video, and it looks okay until you get to the point where the video is focused. It wasn't bad before, but the second you saw it in its best quality, you realized it wasn't good.
I wouldn't want to draw any conclusions from my time with the NuraTrue Pro, as there are lots of variables when testing audio gear. A more pronounced impact could be made on higher-end and over- ear headphones with different songs. I wouldn't buy a new phone to get support, and I wouldn't buy a new pair of headphones because of the impact the lossless had on my listening. If I had to choose between two pairs of headphones, I would probably pick the one with the better audio quality.
If enough phones and headphones supported it, it would become one of those audio features that you don't know about. While it is broadly supported across many wireless headphones and phones, it is not included in the Apple products. It might be a good upgrade for people who hate listening to lossy audio, but it might be hard for more mainstream people to like it.
The field of crowd funding is chaotic. One in 10 successful products that reach their funding goals fail to deliver rewards, according to a study done by Kickstarter. There is often disappointment in store for those products that do get done because of delays, missed deadlines, and overpromised ideas.
Use your best judgement when defending. Do you know if the product looks legit? The company is making claims. There is a prototype that is being worked on. Is the company planning on manufacturing and shipping finished products? Is this the first time it has completed a crowd funding campaign? You don't necessarily buy a product when you back a project on a site.
Jon Porter is a photographer.
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