New Apple TV 4K and hi-res lossless

It’s a huge deal. There are enough Hi-Res tracks on Apple Music to listen for the rest of your life and never hear the same song twice. The AppleTV is a great piece to stream content, and maintain the Apple revenue chain. It is built with remote control being a top feature. Using a dongle to connect your phone or iPad into your audio system is ridiculous in that you lose much of the remote control capacity, and more importantly-use of your phone. Had the new ATV had the ability to stream Hi-Res, which is a top feature of Apple Music, then I’d have bought one for every room and maintained an Apple Music subscription.

Since this is not the case, I’m using streamers and moved to Qobuz.

[Edited by Moderator] 

That’s been answered already for Apple Music, see About lossless audio in Apple Music - Apple Support

it is a big disappointment. May I ask what other options you are considering? So far all I am aware of is using a modern Mac mini via HDMI. or buying a USB DAC which is frustrating if you already have a good receiver Amp with DAC in it.

If your speakers and amplification are up to the task, there is a noticeable difference between 24/48 and 24/192 and I agree it seems strange that the one device Apple sells that would probably already be connected to a device like a receiver capable of decoding Apple Music's s HI-res offerings is the one device that can't do it. If you are interested in higher resolution, DSD and even higher PCM bit rates are even more noticeably different.

Except... HiFi Rose themselves say - as of October 18 - that Apple Music doesn't do hi-res yet, and that their implementation of Apple Music is limited to 256kbps AAC... see Information about Apple Music service - ROSE NOTICE / Notice - HiFi ROSE (roseaudio.kr). But at least they seem to be trying to persuade Apple to give access to ALAC/ high resolution.

I agree 100% with this. If they can’t fix this I will start shopping for a solution that can access Tidal with convenient smart phone control that can be fed into my receiver.

what is the point of only offering high res lossless if the only way (most) people can listen to it is through expensive headphones and portable dac. Surely the vision would be to enjoy music in a lounge room setting as it was recorded! 24 bit 96khz.

I have a bunch of albums in 24bit and they sound amazing. The fact that we can now steam using apple is brilliant. There is surprisingly a huge catalogue of hi-res already available.

common apple tweak the last bit we are 98% there.

just as a clarification for anyone interested if you do play a hi res track through Apple TV it will play it at 24bit 44khz.

@1RS - don’t buy a Mac Mini for this purpose, unless you have a TON of your own downloaded music. Even then there have to be better options. I hooked mine up to my TV and AV Processor. I got Roon going and have the Apple TV still hooked up for TV. It’s harder and more frustrating to get HiRes from the Mac Mini M1. Apparently the older ones supported HiRes, but this does not, and requires a bunch of obnoxious workarounds, and even those cause frequent issues. I think the takeaway is: Apple hates HiRes, and having Apple in the mix at all makes it nearly impossible. Stream natively through other hardware. Use AppleTV for TV only.

It’s there in the spec - Apple TV 4K supports FLAC, AIFF, and WAV = High resolution lossless.

Yes, it will play ATMOS music. No, I will not play hi-res.

See the following from Apple TV 4K - Technical Specifications - Apple

Audio Formats

HE-AAC (V1), AAC (up to 320 Kbps), protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (up to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Apple Lossless, FLAC, AIFF, and WAV; AC-3 (Dolby Digital 5.1), E-AC-3 (Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 surround sound), and Dolby Atmos

I assume you’re referring to the Apple Music? It comes with limitations as already noted. Try playing a non-Music, non-ALAC high resolution file (FLAC/Wav) using a 3rd party player like File Explorer.

1. It’s technically accurate - if a 24 bit AIFF or WAV file is converted to ALAC and then back to AIFF/WAV, it gets truncated to 16 bits by the Apple CoreAudio engine. Apparently it’s by design. Hence my statement “Apple High Resolution as defined by Apple for its Music App is another animal entirely”
2. In that same post I state “high resolution music as the rest of the world knows it - uncompressed FLAC or WAV or AIFF files, accessed and played outside of the Music App (using a third party player App)”. FLAC files can be uncompressed, look it up.
3. I was referring to the spec which contains no qualifiers or settings for the formats supported. Apple only limits its comments to what the Music App outputs. Additionally, there is also no way of measuring/verifying bit-speed output other than by listening, which is subjective and depends on not just the external gear, not just the headphones involved, but also the content i.e. that particular file.

A Mac Mini is IMHO the only remote controllable suitable solution for living rooms so far. I use it to play high res up to 24k/192kHz via USB into a Cambridge Audio DAC (but HDMI will also be possible). Using the tool "Lossless Switcher" Music is played with original sample rate of the file regardless the settings in "Audio Midi Setup".

https://github.com/vincentneo/LosslessSwitcher

It's also better to disable loading "Dolby Atmos" in Music preferences. A high res file is not loading if it's enabled and the music has Dolby Atmos concurrently, then the DA file would be saved.

Qobuz and Tidal represent about 10% of the number of subscribers Apple Music has. Considering Apple Music revenues are almost $10billion this year, that not an insignificant number of user or revenue.

You can play Amazon Music, Tidal, or Qobuz (all Hi-Res) from a Wiim Pro for $150. It reportedly works extremely well.