Lossless USB audio is coming to the Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro and other Android phones،
Mishaal Rahman, technology enthusiast
posted on regarding a comment made on Reddit by Google VP of Engineering Dave Burke. According to Burke, lossless USB audio is coming to the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro and other Android handsets. With this feature, audio skips the typical audio mixer and processing pipeline, ensuring that “bit-perfect audio” is heard by listeners.
Without using any compression and without any modification, the music comes from your phone to your
headphones in its original, uncompressed state. As you can imagine, this means your favorite music will sound clearer because each instrument will stand out. Vocals will sound better and all the little things that get lost in a compressed mix will be easier to hear. USB lossless audio will arrive on the
Pixel 8 line in a future update.
Not all Pixel users care about audio fidelity and listening to lossless USB music requires the user to wear a wired headset. This is because Bluetooth, with its wireless connectivity, is “lossy,” meaning you will have to ditch your wireless headphones to take full advantage of this technology. Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Tidal are among the music streamers that already stream lossless audio.
Burke says that with support for lossless audio added to Android 14, the next step is for phone makers and app developers to support this feature. Although lossless audio has been around for a while, there are certain factors that prevent it from being in higher demand. First of all, even those who are music fans aren’t interested in tearing down every song, noticing every tambourine hit in the background, or hearing every time their favorite band’s singer strains to hit a note .
Keep in mind that when you listen to lossless audio on your phone, you will use more data, so if you have a cellular plan with some sort of cap (even some unlimited plans can reduce the speed of your data under certain conditions if you consume more data than allowed during the month), you may want to keep an eye on your data consumption if you listen to streaming audio using a lossless format. And you should note that downloading lossless audio takes up more storage on your phone than compressed audio.
