“Dear John”. I’ve been asked about Apple Music and hi-res more than any other topic in 2023. The general gist is always the same: “How can I get hi-res audio out of Apple Music and into a hi-fi or headphone system?”? And how do I do it without losses? It is generally accepted that high-resolution audio means 48kHz and above, with most content aimed at audiophiles reaching 96kHz or 192kHz. Additionally, those higher sample rates almost always come with 24 bits per sample, eight more than CD quality’s sixteen.
A couple of years ago we made a video about Apple Music and high-resolution audio. In fact, we made two.
Back then, we learned that: 1) Apple TV caps at 48 kHz and resamples all incoming streams to 48 kHz;
2) Sonos devices cannot exceed 48 kHz;
3) MacOS Audio Midi settings do not offer automatic sample rate switching (we have to do it manually);
4) Bluetooth is always lossy with high-resolution audio. The only way to get high-resolution audio from Apple Music without worrying about resampling or transcoding was with an iPad or iPhone connected via USB to an external DAC.
More recently, we’ve seen streaming Apple Music from an iPhone to an AirPlay receiver produce some unexpected results. If the network endpoint is AirPlay 1, we get a lossless stream that is CD quality, but not better. High-resolution audio? No. We could expect AirPlay 2 terminals to correct that error, but that is not the case. They force the iPhone app to first convert the stream to lossy AAC (256 kbps) before sending the data. And let’s not forget: on the source side, AirPlay is only compatible with Apple devices.
What about Android? Recent experiments with Android smartphones (a Sony and a Pixel) revealed that 24-bit/192 kHz and 24-bit/96 kHz content “cast” wirelessly to Google’s Chromecast Audio from the Apple Music app was converted to 24-bit /48 kHz by the Chromecast disk before being powered. to the downstream DAC. The WiiM Pro Plus’s built-in Chromecast support takes this conversion one step further: to 16-bit/44.1kHz. I had to double-check that the WiiM’s digital outputs were set (in the WiiM Home app) to 24-bit/192kHz. They were.
It has been suggested to me that Chromecast not supporting ALAC, Apple’s preferred codec for lossless music delivery, could be causing Chromecast-equipped streaming endpoints to drop AAC streams from Apple Music servers. I can’t confirm or deny this, but Google’s support page on using the Chromecast audio codec supports the idea.
Despite offering it at no additional cost to subscribers, high-resolution audio doesn’t seem to factor into Apple Music’s worldview. Everywhere we look we find leaking pipes. According to the video above, two relatively new Android devices, each selling for iPad money, remind us that we don’t have to live with the drip-drip-drip.
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