Why do you say that? I read the article, they are transmitting digital data to a DAC that resides in the headphones.
Does anyone think they’ll be transmitting 24/192 PCM or DSD256 to these headphones? Or that these headphones will contain a DAC such as you would find in an expensive standalone DAC?
I agree and need to add that the sound has to go to electrical analog sometime to make the head phones work... even with the best output dac, if the output pre/post analog amps suck and the head phone dynamic elements are inferior then what you have is expensive crap!
No, of course they are not going to transmit 24/192 PCM. That is not even something that most tech people would try with a desktop computer unless it was setup specifically for that purpose.
The iPhone, iPad, and all Android systems are using Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) which is at the system level. These are NOT devices on which anyone should expect to listen to 24/192 perfect sound files, which are NOT what you get from CD level quality which is 16/44.1, which 99% of most music listeners are perfectly satisfied with.
Wikipedia says that AAC is part of the MPEG-4 Audio standard and is capable of carrying 48 full-bandwidth (up to 96 kHz) audio channels in one stream. The quality for stereo is satisfactory to modest requirements at 96 kbit/s in joint stereo mode; however, hi-fi transparency demands data rates of at least 128 kbit/s (VBR). The MPEG-2 audio tests showed that AAC meets the requirements referred to as "transparent" for the ITU at 128 kbit/s for stereo, and 320 kbit/s for 5.1 audio. . . and this is MPEG-4, the higher standard. Apple has designed a new processor dependent wireless system where each of the earbuds has an independent Apple W1 System on a Chip computer IN the earbud.
The new wireless system that Apple has created will be a huge increase in sound quality over what people have been used to before, yet everyone, without even hearing what the new FREE earbuds are capable of doing, much less the $159 Airbuds, which are 20% LESS EXPENSIVE than the lowest priced competitors' earbuds, can do are piling on with bad mouthing something the know nothing about based on hearing from other people who know nothing about it as well!