Apple Music Discussion Thread

[betty boop]

9 hours ago, LHC said:

This may be one reason why Apple has delayed announcing their new Airpods 3 model - hopefully it will address this

yep... wouldn't be surprised ... as with release of a new AirPods max... only just shortly after current one released  if lucky perhaps a firmware or other update so can "airplay" to them ... thats probably a hope as per the article... but otherwise a bit of a blunder in my books with such close releases if doesn't happen...perhaps a case of large company left hand doesnt know right hand... streaming side not talking to headphone side or something

 

10 hours ago, LHC said:

Not sure this is correct according to this https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/17/22440788/apple-airpods-max-lossless-music-explainer-spatial-audio

 

"Apple tells The Verge that when you play a 24-bit / 48 kHz Apple Music lossless track from an iPhone into the AirPods Max using both the cable and Lightning dongle, the audio is converted to analog and then re-digitized to 24-bit / 48 kHz. That re-digitization step is the reason that Apple can’t say you’re hearing pure lossless audio; it’s not an identical match to the source."

nice find... how very interesting that is very curious indeed and what seems as an un necessary step... I am so glad i have separate headphone rigs for more  critical listening giving how resolving those things are  that said the AirPods max are a $800 plus headphone so hardly chicken feed ...i do hope they work out how to get lossless through to them... truly...

[davewantsmoore]

11 hours ago, betty boop said:

 if lucky perhaps a firmware or other update so can "airplay" to them

They don't have the hardware for "airplay" ... just bluetooth.

 

It's possible that apple could do lossless (16@44/48) audio over bluetooth.... but that's pushing the limit of BT.

 

11 hours ago, betty boop said:

nice find... how very interesting that is very curious indeed and what seems as an un necessary step

 

AM does all its internal processing in digital.... so the analogue input must be converted digital.

 

[Dropbear67]

On 26/05/2021 at 8:51 PM, betty boop said:

 

see this as a massive fail...

 

 

How on earth is it a fail? it's bluetooth - which does not have the bandwidth to support lossless .. It's hardly Apple's fault.

[blybo]

On 27/05/2021 at 7:40 PM, Chill3 said:

Shame none of the current ATVs have optical out, they lost it after series 3, Using current ATV you will need a HDMI DAC

 

I'm using my TV's optical out to get around this with a 4K ATV. It does mean FTA TV does have some lipsync issues, but I mostly watch FTA via ATV apps now to solve this issue.

 

Tidal and Spotify still sound better directly from my streaming integrated amp than from ATV apps. Waiting patiently for Moon to add Apple Lossless integration. They said they would never add Spotify but did so a few months back.

Edited May 31, 2021 by blybo

[blybo]

On 28/05/2021 at 4:02 PM, Lil Caesar said:

I've already looked into this for ATV and apparently they've baked some trickery into the HDMI out which can detect intermediary devices and kills the signal.  It may depend on the generation of ATV and HDMI splitter / extractor in question but tread carefully.

 

See above.

[davewantsmoore]

5 hours ago, Dropbear67 said:

 

How on earth is it a fail? it's bluetooth - which does not have the bandwidth to support lossless .. It's hardly Apple's fault.

It actually does, since BT v5  (only 16bit @ 44/48khz) .... but there are no protocols for it yet.

[warweary]

I keep an eye on the kbps on jriver of my losslessly ripped cd's in flac and most of the time it does read under 1000 kbps, so lossless transmission is possible at that kind of bitrate.  Sometimes it dips down to 600 kbps.

 

[betty boop]

6 hours ago, Dropbear67 said:

 

How on earth is it a fail? it's bluetooth - which does not have the bandwidth to support lossless .. It's hardly Apple's fault.

let us know if you hear  when apple manages to work out how to get lossless to their new release air pod max headphones... it is a fail if you cant get lossless to what are $800+ wireless headphones  I know if i had just bought a pair and then found out lossless was being released only shortly after , I'd be a bit disappointed...  to not be a able to take advantage of this with these expensive headphones. There is an out if read the article quoted. if they can setup the AirPods max for airplay 2 as you can send lossless via airplay 2 even now from say iPhone to blue sound node 2i and such ....

 

if have not read articles posted on the topic read below,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2021/05/23/apple-warns-airpods-max-users-with-critical-apple-music-details/?sh=34b0d90f5417

 

see what it says on the AirPods max

 

"So, how about AirPods Max?

Sorry, no. The thing is, there’s no 3.5mm headphone socket in the AirPods Max, only a Lightning connector, so while there’s a cable that connects the headphones by Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack, it won’t work. Apple says, “The Lightning to 3.5 mm Audio Cable was designed to allow AirPods Max to connect to analog sources for listening to movies and music. AirPods Max can be connected to devices playing Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless recordings with exceptional audio quality. However, given the analog to digital conversion in the cable, the playback will not be completely lossless.”

Not completely lossless, huh? I’d have thought something was either lossless or not. 

Well, that’s all a lot clearer than it was, even if it’s no more hopeful, for AirPods Max at least."

 

below is the potential out... 

 

"As you may have heard, there’s a rumor that Apple may be about to make things much better, though, by announcing its own system to overcome this problem, using AirPlay instead of Bluetooth. We’ll see."

Edited May 31, 2021 by betty boop

[blybo]

17 hours ago, betty boop said:

Let us know if you hear  when apple manages to work out how to get lossless to their new release air pod max headphones... it is a fail if you cant get lossless to what are $800+ wireless headphones 

Bluetooth headphones are not designed for lossless playback. People buy them for the totally wireless freedom of movement they give and file format is irrelevant if the purchaser is happy with playback sound quality. The price paid for them makes no difference. Personally I couldn't care less, but equally I wouldn't pav over $800 for headphones either.

[sir sanders zingmore]

29 minutes ago, blybo said:

Bluetooth headphones are not designed for lossless playback. People buy them for the totally wireless freedom of movement they give and file format is irrelevant if the purchaser is happy with playback sound quality.

Agree. 
No one seems to be upset that you won’t be able to play lossless Spotify to your Bluetooth headphones (or tidal for that matter). 
 

The question I have is can I play Apple lossless through my main system and control it fully from my chair (as I can with Roon or Spotify)?

[Lil Caesar]

22 minutes ago, sir sanders zingmore said:

Agree. 
No one seems to be upset that you won’t be able to play lossless Spotify to your Bluetooth headphones (or tidal for that matter). 
 

The question I have is can I play Apple lossless through my main system and control it fully from my chair (as I can with Roon or Spotify)?

It would seem Apple do not have an elegant solution for this.  Say you have an HDMI ATV, and use Blybo's method (as I do in the living room) of running the HDMI to the TV and then optical out to a DAC - the signal is conformed by the TV (Samsung in my case) to either 16/48 or 24/48 - lossless, hi-rez yes - but not bit perfect.  At least you have the full functionality of the ATV / Apple Music service.

 

The workaround I'm using in my main system is to run Mac Air via USB to DAC etc and iPad for full control.  This is NOT using the old "remote" app which only gives access to your downloaded/stored library.  I've resorted to the Google Chrome remote desktop extension - you need to download the app on the 'Pad and load the extension in Chrome on the Mac.

 

This mirrors the Desktop on the 'Pad screen to allow full functionality of the Apple Music Cloud Service BUT its not elegant.  What we still don't know is whether Apple Music will even output bit-perfect - it never has in its past life as iTunes, and just adopts whatever bit depth/sample rate you have set in Audio Midi.  The compromise might just be leaving it @ 32/192 to capture whatever is actually coming down the pipe.

Edited June 1, 2021 by Lil Caesar

[betty boop]

1 hour ago, blybo said:

Bluetooth headphones are not designed for lossless playback. People buy them for the totally wireless freedom of movement they give and file format is irrelevant if the purchaser is happy with playback sound quality. The price paid for them makes no difference. Personally I couldn't care less, but equally I wouldn't pav over $800 for headphones either.

its fine you couldn't care less... thats your choice... but for a flagship headphone released just prior to the lossless announcement its all very strange... balls in apples court as there is potentially a work around. ive been using headphones for decades and particularly with sound quality achievable they are revealing to the extreme ! you can spend many multiples more on a headphone than $800...but even more humble headphones like my daughters sennheiser momentum is revealing enough to tell lossy vs lossless... so well worth implementing for apples flagship headphone and for folks buying into it... i do hope comes ...

 

 

[betty boop]

14 minutes ago, Lil Caesar said:

t would seem Apple do not have an elegant solution for this.  Say you have an HDMI ATV, and use Blybo's method (as I do in the living room) of running the HDMI to the TV and then optical out to a DAC - the signal is conformed by the TV (Samsung in my case) to either 16/48 or 24/48 - lossless, hi-rez yes - but not bit perfect.  At least you have the full functionality of the ATV / Apple Music service.

its not ideal... why i went the blue sound node 2i... which is far more easy and can do lossless via airplay 2 to feed dac of choice ... the other means i mentioned was my A&K dap... that does have pretty serious dacs on board, or can feed digital to external dac to any system and runs apple music natively on it... no airplay or bluetooth or anything needed ....

 

the atv just stays in the av side of my system feeding dac and av processor which has pretty good dacs and output stage and good enough if wanting to feed any audio off atv be it AV or the odd bit of music, watching some YouTube and such... though i'll go to 2ch system for any serious music listening  

[Steffen]

11 hours ago, sir sanders zingmore said:

Agree. 
No one seems to be upset that you won’t be able to play lossless Spotify to your Bluetooth headphones (or tidal for that matter). 
 

The question I have is can I play Apple lossless through my main system and control it fully from my chair (as I can with Roon or Spotify)?

 

My music players (Audirvana, Roon, Music) all run on a headless Mac mini, connected to the DAC via USB. I control them from my iPad using screen sharing on the Mac and the Screens app on the iPad. Except for Roon, that is, where the UI doesn’t run on the Mac, only on the iPad. That is actually worse than screen sharing, because Roon cannot be bothered to make decent native iPad app…

[jymy]

this is interesting. Need the latest stuff so that old mac mini of mine that doesn't run big sur wont get this new format

 

"But not everyone will be able to enjoy these formats; you’ll need specific hardware for each of them. (And software: you have to have your Apple device updated to iOS 14.6, iPadOS 14.6, macOS 11.4, or tvOS 14.6 in order to use these new formats.) Here’s a simple breakdown of what you need to use these new formats."

from https://www.macworld.com/article/346837/apple-music-lossless-hi-res-lossless-spatial-dolby-atmos-iphone-airpods-homepod-dac.html

[Steffen]

1 minute ago, jymy said:

this is interesting. Need the latest stuff so that old mac mini of mine that doesn't run big sur wont get this new format.

 

 

I don’t think there will be any new formats for 2-channel music, it’s just going to be ALAC up to 192/24. Old Macs have been able to play this for a long time, using either iTunes/Music or 3rd party players. Not sure what they’ll do for spacial audio – that is of little interest to me, and I’m sure the AppleTV will handle it just fine when necessary

 

It is however entirely possible that the new version of the Music app that streams lossless/hires content from Apple Music will only be made available for macOS 11.4+.

[Hi-Fi Whipped]

20 hours ago, betty boop said:

its not ideal... why i went the blue sound node 2i... which is far more easy and can do lossless via airplay 2 to feed dac of choice ... the other means i mentioned was my A&K dap... that does have pretty serious dacs on board, or can feed digital to external dac to any system and runs apple music natively on it... no airplay or bluetooth or anything needed ....

 

the atv just stays in the av side of my system feeding dac and av processor which has pretty good dacs and output stage and good enough if wanting to feed any audio off atv be it AV or the odd bit of music, watching some YouTube and such... though i'll go to 2ch system for any serious music listening  

yeh if I end up going with Apple it looks like a dedicated iPad to send the signal via Airplay 2 to the C658 will be the way to go. Shame you cant get hi-res this way but thats another story.

 

That said if Spotify and Apple are the same price for lossless, I'll be going with Spotify and use Spotify connect.

 

Could we see "Apple Connect" being the integration of choice into mainstream streamers for them given you still need to use thier app which I'm tipping is the thing they don't want to give up like Spotify. Not a bad thing IMO.

[aussievintage]

Liked this bit  

You don’t need any special hardware at all to take advantage of Apple Digital Masters—it’s all about Apple creating its files starting from a really high quality source, that’s all.

 

take that MQA!!    

[jymy]

updated my iphone OS to version 14.6 and looks like I it is showing ADM now. Wasn't there before the update. Not sure if this meant anything, still new to apple music

 

The author of the article above however has got lossless shown. So maybe it is not here yet?

 

 

 

And one macOS catalina, 10.15.7 nothing shown. Unfortunately this is the latest my mac mini can run on. WIll get my mac pro updated to big sur when i have time and see if I get adm and lossless.

[BugPowderDust]

My understanding is they haven't flicked he switch just yet.  You'll see mention of high res in the various interfaces, but no hope of getting lossless audio out just yet.

[blybo]

23 hours ago, betty boop said:

ts fine you couldn't care less... thats your choice... but for a flagship headphone released just prior to the lossless announcement its all very strange

Yes I couldn't care less, but that was not the point I was making. I also said most people do not buy wireless headphones for absolute best SQ. I have Air pods pro and I also have traditional HD599 Sennheisers (which I'm using right now while kids are home schooling), and Bluetooth (or corded) over ear active noise cancelling PXC550 Sennheisers. Each have a primary function and that's what I use them for. If I had Air Pod Max it would be an expensive replacement for my PCX550's, not the HD599's.

 

Having said all that, my Air Pods Pro get by far the most use because of their convenience more so than the SQ.

Edited June 2, 2021 by blybo

[Dropbear67]

On 31/05/2021 at 3:58 PM, davewantsmoore said:

It actually does, since BT v5  (only 16bit @ 44/48khz) .... but there are no protocols for it yet.

 

real world performance almost never matches the specs.. LDAC promises 900kbps but falls off to 600kbps and then 300kbps very very quickly with any kind of mild obstructions between sender and receiver.

[davewantsmoore]

2 hours ago, Dropbear67 said:

real world performance almost never matches the specs.. LDAC promises 900kbps but falls off to 600kbps and then 300kbps very very quickly with any kind of mild obstructions between sender and receiver.

 

Yep.   It will need to be close range to work for sure.

 

Apple have some patents re: this stuff.

https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2019/0104424.html

 

They may not get it to work .... but in theory it could.   Especially given a not-potato SoC on both ends, letting them send/burst/buffer audio  (ie. send lots more of the song(s) when the going is good).

[John0001]

Looks like release is imminent...

 

 

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/06/apple-music-event-june7-after-wwdc/

 

[Lil Caesar]

...as expected they're more interested in promoting Dolby Atmos for headphone listeners (still don't quite understand how that is going to work - next gen HRTF perhaps ?) than lossless stereo.