Apple Lossless and Airplay 2

Hi oihaho,

Can you please comment on this "solved" reply:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252848734

This user says as of right now, everything will be decoded to AAC, which is sad. Can you confirm?

Hopefully is just something "easy" for Apple and soon they'll enable ALAC (whatever quality is) over Airplay 2. Thanks a lot

Yes, but as of today (June 7th), Airplay will be limited to 16/44.1. There are speculations on the bluesound forums that Airplay is technically able to transmit 24/48 and that this will soon be reality.

Hi there.

Had the exact same question as @jinjin19.

@oihaho, can you tell us where that piece of information is coming from ? Did you spot it on any official documentation you could share ?

I also wonder what happens then when streaming lossless music through AirPlay in a 24/48 sampling. Is that converted on the amp to 16/44.1 ?

I’m using a Denon CEOL N10 HiFi system with AirPlay 2 support along with Cabasse wooden speakers. So far, I feel like I can hear the difference in sound definition and clarity.

I’ll still be doing a couple of ABX tests to see if ITS not JUST psychology 🤪. Remember doing them back in the day and being fooled all the time by 256 AAC.

I know from experience that the Airplay 2 protocol so far delivers 16/44.1 (it's reported by my DAC) and the same is reported by many users on various audio forums. Streams with higher bitrates are resampled before transmission, not in the receiving end. However, in the thread below a bluesound representative stated some weeks ago that: "What we do know is up to 24/48 should work immediately when Apple enables it. Please visit apple.com/airplay for full details."

https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360037270313?mobile_site=true

I have asked another hifi producer about Airplay 2 in their products and whether it will be modified to handle 24/48 (it currently doesn't in their products) and they say it's up to Apple what will happen.

An employee at Naim Audio said when tried to stream an Apple Music lossless track over Airplay what he was actually getting was 256k. Hopefully just a temp thing.

https://community.naimaudio.com/t/apple-music-hifi-tier-incoming/16445/437

Cool, thanks for the feedback.