New Apple TV 4K and hi-res lossless

@1RS

If the mini does no other things than playing Music you could buy an old one at ebay. Mac Mini Mid 2011 works with the "OpenCore Legacy Patcher" and Monterey. - It's not a setup I like. But it works and I get the hi-res for which I pay Apple Music to the hi-fi system.

I called apple and after the tiresome task of finding anyone who even understood my question I was told at first the new Apple TV would support hi-res audio, only to be sent the specs which do not say that at all. Called again and after asking to get a representative who undertstood what I was talking about I was told it does not, but he didn't even know there was a third generation just released.

@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.

@spawn350

Are you sure you have all done right on AudioMidi Setup? And have the right cable?! I think USB is USB is USB and there is no magic on M1 to cut it. You can also try the Losless Switcher that sets it up automatically for you. https://github.com/vincentneo/LosslessSwitcher Also Apple does not "hate" hi-res. But they don't love it until today.

@nitinti… Incorrect @mention on my side, as I see now on a bigger screen: My comment should have been directed at @spawn350 - who wrote, “don’t buy a Mac Mini for this purpose, unless you have a TON of your own downloaded music”.

What I laid out was what to do if you do have that TON of downloaded music: No need to get an additional computer (Mac Mini), as there are better and simpler options to play your own files: DLNA needs almost no setup at all, it “just plays” and can give you a better user experience, no screen mirroring required.

Of course, if you add the Apple Music streaming subscription to the mix, things change: You need the Apple hardware and the loops and hoops you have gone through to make it work until Apple completes their part.

For me - and that is outside of this entire discussion of the Apple TV 4K 2022 - it looks very different: Most “exploring” of new music currently happens on either Spotify or Amazon music. If I have something that seems worthy of keeping I buy it outright, if it is available as SACD (a lot of the more interesting classical recordings are), or Hi-Res download. Righty now, my Hi-Res music is about 95% DSD files, many of them multichannel.

Apple completing their work on the Hi-Res playback chain probably would make me reconsider an Apple Music subscription, which I tried and liked it when they gave me 6 months trial, but I did not like it enough to pay for the semifinished product we now have.

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.

@katsujinken

Thanks for sharing your experience. Which DAC do you use? Has the Denon one built in? Or do you use the internal DACs from iPhone and Firestick? That can make a difference too.

And do you know if Amazon has equal or more hi-res albums on start than Apple?

The Denon AVR has a built in DAC. I don’t rely on the internal DAC of the iPhone or Fire TV Stick because I believe they are limited to 48kHz.

I have found the music library b/w Apple and Amazon to be very good as of late. For the music I listen to I can find the same album/song on either service but I find Apple’s curated playlists to be better than Amazon’s suggested playlists. When I want to just listen to music in the background and don’t want to put too much effort into finding music by artist, I can easily find a good variety of playlists by genre or mood. Apple has a greater variety of playlists to choose from. I also think Apple’s UI is better than Amazon’s.

Very similar situation: I've converted my large SACD collection with an Oppo105 to DSF files (stereo and mchn), plus other terabytes of hires/mchn music in my NAS.

I'd love to play these files through my Anthem 5.1.2 system (Anthem AVM70, Anthem MCA525g2, Rotel RMB1066, Dynaudio speakers). Obviously an ATV would be the easier and less expensive solution, but I'm afraid I'll head to a new Mac Mini with Audirvana Origin.

Has anyone tried outputting DSF multichannel files via Mac Mini HDMI to an external DAC, such as my AVM70?

(in my home office I've a second system with Mac Studio + Audirvana + RME ADI-2 DAC fs + SMSL DA9, and it works beautifully but through USB, not HDMI).

@gmeardi, @BitzgiSF

The "Dune HD Max Vision 4K" mediaplayer can play multichannel DSD files from an attached storage or from streaming servers over HDMI to your receiver. Even the cheaper "Dune HD Pro 4K II" can do it, if you find one on Ebay. Maybe there are also other hardware manufactures.

@gmeardi, @BitzgiSF

I've also read that there is a plugin for "kodi" mediaplayer software the can play DSD multichannel. - But IMHO DSD is a very special theme away from normal hi-res streaming on Apple Music or amazon unlimited or Qobuz.

@ntinti - You are right, DSD is a separate subject altogether.

Thank you for pointing me to Dune HD. In all my research, I did not stumble over them, so I had to take a look. They seem to make interesting devices, but geared more towards video. On the audio front, in the end, they do things similar to my solution, for similar or more money:

They don’t do direct DSD over HDMI: In Dune’s own words, “Multichannel DSD files can be output to HDMI as high quality multichannel PCM (up to 176.4 KHz)”. That’s the same quality I am getting right now, which is good enough (for me).

But - killer criterion: None of their devices does gapless playback. If I could do without gapless playback, I would have just continued to use my Blu-Ray player to send the multichannel music to my receiver.

Kodi: Just like Emby, very powerful software - but supposedly also with problems in gapless playback (Emby does it on iPhone/iPad or Android - but not on any Hi-Fi device… )

For more music streaming I probably should give Amazon HD a spin - and see if I can stream their Hi-Res files directly to my AV receiver - in Hi-Res…

Thanks for your kind reply, @BitzgiSF!

I already had to purchase a Mini M1 for another task , so... I'll go for it + Audirvana!

As soon as I'll try it with the Anthem... I'll post my results!

Other than the excellent musica quality, the AVM70 is still "a bit ongoing" in terms of its software (years ago a Root integration was promised...), but luckily gives the possibility to "see" what it is receiving and decoding... (and eventually pass to room correction).

All the best

Gianluca

Despite the efforts of previous posters to confuse matters, one thing remains clear; we would all like an audiophile version of the ATV that delivers the high resolution lossless audio already available via the Music app. If it’s like previous ATVs, the ATV 4k 3rd gen will downsample everything to 24bit 48khz. Now I suspect that none of us on this thread could tell the difference between that and, say, 24/192; but we are all a little miffed that Apple can’t marry its best-in-class user interface to best-in-class audio performance. Alternatives are soooo much clunkier and more expensive - you probably have to look at the HifiRose RS150b for as slick an interface - and that’s £4 grand… So, I will keep on listening to my ATV. And you know what - when I switch to high-resolution via USB on my Mac Mini, I don’t hear any difference in quality whatsoever. Probably an earwax thing.

I don’t think anyone in this discussion is making a deliberate effort to cause confusion. If you can’t tell a difference b/w 24/48 and 24/198, seems to me you wouldn’t reap any benefits above the current ATV specification.