Apple Music, Audiophiles and Streamers.

Super (audiophile) niche topic.

I want to thank Apple for single handedly turning me into an audiophile by introducing Hires streaming and Spatial Audio to its services.

I have since spent tens of thousands in pursuit of a "perfect" sound system, and as any audiophile knows, a signal free of electrical noise is a necessary step towards audio heaven.

The dilemma: a computer has a very "noisy" environment, and as a streaming source, it is less than ideal. We also know that Apple Music will only connect to 3rd party dedicated streamers via Airplay, which will compress any lossless signal. Also not ideal.

This is not the case with streaming services like Tidal, Qobuz and Amazon which allow you to login to your account on these streamers apps, unlike Apple which is sandboxing Apple Music into its ecosystem for wired playback and potentially turning away audiophiles.

Curious to know how others are using Apple Music in their audiophile rig.

iMac Pro

Posted on Jan 2, 2023 5:14 PM

Top-ranking reply

Mr. Mobius

Level 1

5 points

Posted on Feb 13, 2023 9:11 PM

Yes there is, however not ideal. Using the lightning to USB adapter from an iPhone or iPad to a USB DAC you can get full lossless from Apple Music. Many tutorials online. You can also do this with a computer but, the Sample Rate will not Change dynamically, thus using the iPhone or iPad does this. Airplay does in fact use lossless ALAC compression not Lossy AAC when streaming but is limited to 48khz sample rate.

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Apple Music, Audiophiles and Streamers.

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