can i listen to lossless on my windows pc using iTunes?

Also it’s pretty pathetic that your on a discussion forum, trying to assert your superiority complex on every one.. Most people can’t tell difference regardless of format. Also as I mentioned in the post prior to this, a good HiFi experience can be had with headphones and a dac under a grand.. But here you are bloviating and trying convince everyone that the only way to experience high end audio is to spend thousands. Which is a total load of garbage. Also are you really going to tell me that a digital file streaming online is better than vinyl 🤣.. Yea ok pal sure it is 😂🤣😅

Man you got it all wrong. I didnt ment to flex.... Everyone can buy audio system they want only wallet is limit. Question is just when the sound improvement becomes so little but cost goes up exponentially. That is up to buyer to set the goal....

I replied to user above you who was using AV reciver and multi channel for music listening. I only described that if using only AV reciver as sound output then its not best choice to hear the quality of hi-fi tracks.

Using separate amps and preamps is correct. Not sure why you thought i was flexing jesus...

I wouldnt even flex with 100k grand system because its nothing special ether

Well as an audiophile I want highest possible audio experience when on the move.

The Apple Music app on my iphone 12 streams lossless over personal hotspot via Airplay to my Shanling Q1 that streams the recieved uncompressed Airplay data via APTX to my Koss ksc75 that is soldered to the KZ APTX-HD bluetooth cable. Incredible how good Apple Music lossless content is in this setup. So not bound by multiple cables and even streaming over 5g using this setup is very stable and lots better then over bluetooth in alac !

Hi there, just so you know, I was interested to know what the maximum resolution that Airplay/Airplay 2 supports (as I have a recent Denon receiver with Airplay 2 which I stream to from my iPhone 12 Pro Max) and discovered that Airplay doesn't *transport* lossless audio. You can find the thread here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252848734#:~:text=Answer%3A%20A%3A,protocol%2C%20regardless%20of%20Apple%20Music.

So while the Apple Music app tells you its playing lossless on the iPhone (which is true), it then has to go to the network stack to be transported via Airplay - it is at this point that it is compressed back to AAC (which as others has said is 'good enough' in general terms, particularly as you are starting with a hi-res source).

By the way, in that thread I linked to there is also a reference to a blog post from the head of software development over at Naim audio (who are a long established higher end hi-fi brand, who now also make some lossless streamer products); in this he not only reiterates the point above, but also actually has a screengrab of the Airplay network debug tools showing what is actually happening during streaming - which confirms the compression to AAC.

I just realised you also mentioned Bluetooth, even with APTX (which is an audio compression codec) you will be getting transcoding and compression. So while the source might be ALAC, FLAC or some other ‘Hi-Res’ format no version of Bluetooth will give you lossless and/or Hi-Res audio - it is simply impossible as it will always be compressed (same for the Apple W1 or W2 chips, which gives you their proprietary version of APTX).

I also just looked up the KZ cable you mentioned, it has some slightly dubious language, but clearly says in their product blurb that it’s using AAC compression codec, so that’s definitely not lossless!

Thanks!

i have a Essence STX II 7.1 with a dac s/n of 124 running through his multichannel 7.1 800 watt pioneer AV receiver

and it sounds awesome

Twst

🤨

Come on, Apple. I have a Windows desktop that I need for getting stuff done, and it would be great to be able to listen to clearer music with my nice headphones there.

lol, omg that was great!