If you would have made this comment 20 years ago, I would have agreed. Nowadays, I'm not so sure about the superiority of Apple for audio use, I think it's mostly a myth and Apple is resting on its laurels.
For example, there's quite a few cross platform DAWs (e.g. Cubase) which perform better on macOS than Apple's first party DAW Logic Pro. And features like ARA2 are still broken in Logic 12 on Apple Silicon.
There are many studios running just fine on Windows. Where Apple still is popular probably is songwriters and producers, mainly because they have nice laptops.
Also, when Apple introduced their Apple Silicon architecture and their new DriverKit, they had huge performance issues with USB audio interfaces. Basically exactly like what you blame Windows for. I'm actually not even sure if this has been fully fixed by Apple in Tahoe (but I think it has improved). But I think people still have issues with USB 3 interfaces with a large channel count, devices like a RME UFX III for example. Things are better via Thunderbolt, as this bypasses Apple's USB architecture.
For the DPC problem, Windows has the Multimedia Class Scheduler Service, which helps a bit (but doesn't fully solve the problem).
Lastly, Microsoft has been quite open in communication recently, for example one of the authors of the article linked is active in various audio engineering forums.
This is a refreshing contrast to Apple to be honest, which are always very secretive and seem to have the attitude that Apple cannot do wrong. So if there are problems like the above mentioned USB issue or the ARA2 issue with Logic, you never actually hear something official.
Yeah, at least for certain kinds of music. Don't get me wrong, I'm not soapboxing out here against folks who enjoy lossy music (my flatmates enjoy our local library transcoded to MP3s), nor am I going to praise-be the "high-res" audio movement. I just happened to have someone sit me down for a critical listening session on quality kit with a CD I had ripped before and my iPod with the MP3, and it was night and day to my ears.
Am I some golden-eared savant? Heck nah. I still listen to electronic mixes in shitty YouTube audio, because a lot of it isn't mastered in CD quality anyhow; I also enjoy leaning back with a good CD rip of classic rock or orchestral jams on my HD800s or my B&W 684s. I like the different experiences these setups offer, but my preference is always for lossless just as a matter of preservation regardless of whether I can hear it or not.
But have you tried the ABX test I linked to with a proper set up, e.g. your HD800?
If you compare a CD on a proper system with an MP3 on an iPod, you're really comparing Apples to oranges. Also depending on with which encoded the MP3 was created. The iTunes encoder for example was infamous for rather bad quality.
Yes. I've done ABX testing on my HT, and my HD800s, repeatedly. I do ABX testing with album versions on occasion to determine if, as an example, the 1989 release of Pretty Hate Machine actually sounds (subjectively) better (to my ears) than the 2010 remaster, or that the original issue of Garbage 2.0 sounds better than the 20th Anniversary remaster.
The original test that got me into the scene way back in the 00s was toggling between a CD player and my iPod on the same Hi-Fi setup, with different kinds of material to cover my tastes at the time. First it was done blindly by the store owner (so I couldn't see which was which), and then he let me take over to see for myself for a while.
I get the skepticism, really, and I'm not making claims that I'm some golden-eared savant (because I have medical confirmation I'm very much not, at least when it comes to audible speech). I am saying that for me specifically, I find the differences in the files on my equipment to generally be noticeable enough to warrant the increase in stored quality.
Would I recommend the HD800s to folks? Hell no, I bought those because I wanted them, Colorware paint job and all. That's the secret to most audiophile kit in my experience: we're all just paying for stuff we think looks and sounds cool, and that comes with a premium over function alone.
Well, in the market segment of Bluetooth ANC headphones, there's not that much. Bowers & Wilkins and Focal come to mind, both audiophile luxury brands and similarily overpriced.
On the other hand, the flagship Sony is quite a bit less than AirPods Max.
Doesn’t Sony have the best codec on Bluetooth? It definitely has worse noise cancellation than my AirPod, but afaik it should have better audio quality on paper.
Yeah, but if you're using Apple phones/tablet/computers they only support AAC Bluetooth anyway unless you add a Bluetooth dongle, which kinda defeats the purpose of ever using Airpods.
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