Setting to play hi res from Mac OSX inside Apple Music

Hi Guys ok So i have been trying to get hi Res music out of either of my two Mac mini’s with no joy. Anyone have any pointers as to what i may be doing wrong ?

SET UP IS:

i have two Mac mini’s one M1 mac and an older Mac mini. Both running latest OS. Both set to stream and download at Hi Res up to 24/192kHz. I have my iPhone an iPad set to the same. Macs are hooked to seperate DACs. Both macs can output hi res audio through Audiovana and Roon with no issue. However they may well be controlling the audio output rather than OS X.

Ok so i downloaded a hi Res lossless album to all three. In this case the Beetles abbey Road album. All devices set to download at up to 24/192 as above. I did not have this album prior.

On both macs through two different DAC’s ( a cheap topping and a more high end McIntosh amplifier ) the out put is 44.1 CD quality.

using the local file on my iPad and plugging that into both DAC’s i get 96kHz not 44.1. So the variable here is the Mac’s against iPad or iPhone. Same new download files. Same DAC’s This make me believe i may have to manually switch some sort out audio output setting in Mac OSX, however in setting using USB audio on both macs there are no options available in relation to sound quality output?

Any pointers greatly appreciated

Posted on Jun 13, 2021 7:54 PM

Top-ranking reply

Space Ranger

Level 1

75 points

Posted on Jun 13, 2021 8:50 PM

This has been an inexplicable consequence of macOS, maybe Apple considers it a feature. But on macOS the OS controls the system audio, where iPad and iPhone are not limited by this and have 'exclusive mode' built in. and if I understand it right, Roon, Audirvana, and I believe Tidal bypass this and directly use CoreAudio.

In your instance, you will have to manually change the output on your DAC on macOS via the built-in Audio MIDI Set-up.

Now if you have a track that isn't 96khz, it will still play but it may slight resample the track. I havent noticed much degrading when doing this, but I usually keep it at 48kHz or 44.1Khz and 24-bit so the resampling isn't too bad either direction (up or down).

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Setting to play hi res from Mac OSX inside Apple Music

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