Play 24bit ALAC audio on iPhone / iPad

Bumping this up 😉.I have flacs,converted to alacs.I can import them to itunes,but when I transfer them to iphone ( I have Apple music, so Icloud music library is active),I tunes create a AAC version of them. This means,if I choose to have any of my alac files available on Iphone (6,ios 10) ,it will be transfered to phone at Aac format,loosing ofc the "loseless" condition!

I want to have those songs in alac,to be played via BT to a HI-def car audio with DSP (Mosconi on a BMW).

Any chances to tell itunes NOT to downgrade my alac files to aac when transfer them to Iphone`s Apple music library?

Use the Onkyo HD Player app., use a good DAC if you want to pass the HD audio out, otherwise enjoy it downsampled by the device's audio section to approx. CD quality (16/44) for output through the headphone jack, the iphone 7 dongle does the same, works well. iTunes may catch up one day, who knows?

This is how I play HD music on my iPad Pro 13 inch.

I have an HD iTunes library set Up separately on my MacBook Pro. I open it with home sharing on. The iPad sees and it just plays the tunes through the headphone jack BUT downsample to CD.

The simple solution I'd to get an external DAC and Headphone amp that doesn't need external power. Dragonfly red, latest version will work this way. If the DAC/amp needs external power a powered hub will work but the new USB 3 lightning camera connector is easier. It has a power cable connection so hook up the charging cable to. Audioquest had an article to show the hookup but I've seen on other sites also. The music will be HD to the DAC so there is no downsampling.

But to be portable you need to load your HD music into a third party app, from the App Store. Onkyo and TEAC have an HD player. BUY ONLY ONE: THEY ARE THE SAME APP! Any third party app needs to be connected to an external DAC that plays HD. Onkyo/TEAC will play DSD if the connected DAC will handle it. Try VOX from the App Store also.

Can you play to a desktop DAC and then into your HiFi? Yeah. I connect the USB port from TEAC UD-301 to my iPad and play DSD with the TEAC or Onkyo apps. I have both.

What about a wireless drive storing the HD music? Hit or miss in my testing. The wireless connection may not support the necessary bit depth, or there are syncing problems, or the media player that ships with wireless device won't play the music directly. I've tried the app "FileBrowser" to connect to my wireless Kingston but not with great success.

So far my best results have been loading the music into the HD player and using an external DAC.

This is an addendum.

I have a Kingston wireless MobileLite Wireless G3. As I said in my first post the connection was quirky using FileBrowser or the MobileLite application from Kingston.

There is no "Connect to Server" function in iOS as far as I know that works the same way as on a Mac. BUT VLC has the equivalent capability to connect to the Kingston Wireless via an SMB protocol connection using the IP address of the Kingston MobileLite G3. If you have used Connect to Server then you will see this sets up the same way. You can browse the SD card in the MobileLite or a USB Drive connected to it. I had no problem streaming, YES, streaming HD music via VLC to my DAC/Headphone amp connected to the lightning port via the USB 3 camera connector kit.

By the way, the internal DAC/AMP in the iPad sounds pretty good through expensive, high end, low impedance (32 ohm) headphones. So spend the money on CDs, convert them to ALAC to save space and get a great set of headphones!

Speaking of Connect to Server. If you MacBook doesn't have an SDXC card slot and you have a few SD Cards around a mobile wireless device that holds them will work beautifully if you use Connect to Server to its IP address. You can drag and drop any file to the SD card or USB disk attached to it. It will be slower than a direct connection but it will work.

Read through this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2494325

If on a Mac, get this:

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23430/x-lossless-decoder

You can then convert your high-resolution files to—Apple Lossless, AAC, or MP3—and sync those files to your iOS device.

You can't. If you want them on your phone, you'll have to convert them.

It is what it is.

It's simple just search in appstore alac, flac, dsd