New Apple TV 4K and hi-res lossless

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.

Speakers and amp are well up to the task, I suspect; various set-ups including Quad 34/306, MF X-series, Audio Note M-Zero, Pass Labs Aleph 3, Piega Co-ax, Tannoy Autograph Signature, KEF LS50, Mordaunt Short Performance 6. It’s my ears, as I say. Or the earwax.

I bought a WiiM Mini. It's a funny little sweet thing. Witch much streaming services. Amazon, Tidal, Spotify, Qobuz, Deezer, Napster, SoundCloud, TuneIn, vTuner (without subscription) and a few more. It plays hi-res up to 24/192, but it's not a high-end device. I think I will use it to pimp up an old stereo radio. The WiiM Pro would be the better solution for HiFi.

The App is good. Amazon Music makes more fun with the WiiM App, than with the original.

To compare Amazon Music and Apple Music I installed Amazon on my Mac mini too. Amazon Music is less intuitive and the search is worse. Also, any piece of music that is 24k is classified as "Ultra HD", even if it is 44.1kHz. Amazon Music also seems to me to be less curated. In terms of sound, I couldn't find that the same resolutions sounded worse on Apple. In both cases I saved the music as files on the Mini and then sent it to the DAC via USB.

In the meantime, I think Apple should release not only an ATV with hi-res output, but also an only audio device that provides storage and also SPDIF and USB out. Or they finally license Apple Music to other manufacturers, like Apple TV. On the WiiM website the Apple Music logo was already visible beside Amazon....

Sonos are only speakers like HomePods - not a streaming device. And Rose can not support hi-res because the Apple SDK does not support hi-res.

"The reason we decided to support Apple Music in the first place was to make it possible to listen to the high-resolution lossless sound sources of Apple Music from Hi-Fi Rose device.

However, the currently released SDK does not support lossless sound sources."

And there are much more problems for Rose to implement it:

https://community.roseaudio.kr/t/information-about-apple-music-service/2892

As I said. A Mac mini (or other Mac) is the only practical solution today to stream Apple Music hi-res to a good DAC.

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.

"To repeat myself - I didn’t say they played HiRes."

But this is a thread about the possibilities to play Apple Music hi-res lossless up to 24/192 - I think. I wish Rose can offer it in the future, like WiiM or Apple on ATV itself. But this is not the situation in Dec. 2022.

I'm sure I got Hi-Res audio from my MacBook pro hooked up via HDMI running Apple Music. And when testing my iPad Pro with a dongle (Apple Lightning Digital AV Adapter) I'm pretty sure I got Hi-Res there too (24/192).

I don't understand why the Apply TVs of 2022 don't - technically. Financially I understand why.

This is a genuine question and is not meant to be antagonistic...because discussion is easy to misunderstand in text vs voice:

I just want to make sure I understand your current setup. You state that you don't subscribe to Apple Music. I assume that you subscribe to another music service that provides hi-res lossless streaming. If so, what device are you playing it on so has to avoid losing the benefit? I'm absolutely in agreement with you that I want an AppleTV that supports hi-res lossless...as well as a rewrite of Apple Music on the Mac that supports it natively as well.

This is a long and complex issue that Apple could fix if it was a high enough priority.

Perhaps you're using another streaming service that provides hi-res lossless and you're feeding that into a DAC that then feeds your amp or pre-amp? Some DACs may provide the music service built in. I have a Linn DAC that has Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify, etc built in. Although I'd love for Linn to also include Apple Music in that list, I feed the hi-res lossless stream from Apple Music into my Linn DAC, connected to McIntosh MC1.25k's. Using a cabled iOS device works perfectly for this solution. However, I use a Mac to do that only because I can do remote control of the Mac in order to control the music. The problem on a Mac is that you set the output to 24/192 and it will play that stream. For streams that aren't, but are still hi-res lossless, such as 24/48 or 24/96, Apple Music doesn't automatically reset to that rate as iOS does. I assume it's upsampling.

Apple needs to fix this. But I don't want to keep separate setups (playlists, profiles, etc) for different music apps. Apple Music is on my phone which means it's in my car and everywhere else.

But the bottom line, as far as I know, is that EVERY streaming service has this issue, right? At some point, there's a piece of hardware that has the appropriate DAC. What hardware are you using for the alternative service? Can't it also be used by Apple Music?

Honestly I do not even understand the "financials"... ATV is struggling to grow and this feature wouldn't cost anything in terms of hardware (the HDMI with Atmos supports everything), but only software - probably not even licensing rights.

Maybe Apple will give us a nice hi-def Merry Xmas present at the next update that will include the karaoke features?

@crofford

I told in this thread that there is a Mac App that setups the output rate on the fly. It is called "Lossless Switcher".

https://github.com/vincentneo/LosslessSwitcher

There is a ready DMG file to install it on github. But you can also compile a newer (beta) by yourself.

https://github.com/vincentneo/LosslessSwitcher/tree/1.1.0-beta7

@std_ren

Yes. You got hi-res with a MacBook over HDMI or USB. But to use Mac hardware (and iPad via USB-C) is the only possibility to play 24/192. And many people want more, above all to play hi-res with an ATV.

Well… yes, I want more: not only the great sound, but also a good (wireless) user interface. So that I can sit back in my chair, browse Apple Music on my iPad - and it plays at 24/196 on the Apple TV over my stereo…

Dreams!

It’s a disgraceful shambles if you ask me. Apple Music streams some music in 24/192. But it’s own Apple TV 4k and Airplay 2 reduces that to 24/48 ! And if you use iTunes on Windows you only get 256kbs at best. So you need an iPhone or Mac or iPad, with a dongle connected to an external dac ( that can decode 24/192) to hear what they are streaming as it was intended. How I’d Love to see Apple enter the hifi separates world, with a streamer that outputs whatever is input to my amplifier. Nice screen for artwork, outputs for hdmi, rca, fully balanced headphones ….

…but if we don’t use Airplay, but directly Apple Music on latest ATV4K with latest 16.2?

Does it allow to output (via hdmi) a dolby atmos track (like for movies)? And - especially - a lossless hi-res track?

Maybe they’ve released some new year presents for us… 🤭

They could even decide to use the Atmos lossless option (True HD) instead of the lossy DD+... But... I feel this would be a partial nonsense, other than for SACD-like multichannel tracks (that I love, by the way, in my large SACD collection). Have you lossless stereo tracks? Exploit them, '****! :)