I’m just excited that I’ll apparently be able to use smart playlists with hi-rez music. I know I’m not the only person who likes to listen to my music library on shuffle, but I can’t believe Apple Music is the only service that lets me create my own algorithms for what songs get served up on that shuffled playlist. I can add hundreds of songs to a playlist and tell Apple Music I only want to hear those I haven’t heard in the last month, haven’t skipped in the last month, and haven’t marked as disliked. To me, this has always put Apple Music heads above every other service, but maybe that’s just because I’m a nerd.
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This here is why every time I try and switch I don’t. The apple experience is just so much better. With lossless I will no longer bother with my intermittent amazon membership for sound tests.
Still makes picking a dap hard. ;p
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That’ll be an iPhone now 
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I wish! Amping an iphone is a surprisingly frustrating process. ;p
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I believe AK will support Apple Music.
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A fair number “support” apple music. Very few do it well. It’s a tough sell to someone who picked apple music for the user experience. Not sure if the AK experience is a side loaded venture, but I do know full google play and associated services are a requirement for longevity. Thus far, the best experience has been the zx507. The only one I have tried that was 100% google integrated out of the box. Problem? My qudelix 5k beats it in power. And I got as little as 4.5 hours of battery on the sony. 
I have two AK DAPS. The software is good. The music player SQ is excellent.
It’s side-loaded, but supported via their special side-loading capability.
This, of course, means you have to manually track app updates and install them yourself, so it’s not perfect, but it does work.
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My concern isn’t so much the side loading, but what these daps abandon in the process. As far as I could tell, 3rd party apps tended to have really weird issues. I have thus far assumed it is the lack, or possibly not fully present google services. For example, the zx507 didn’t just integrate well, it also didn’t crash. Most others crashed pretty regularly. (Specifically apple music in this case). I didn’t dig into it much because I had other reasons not to like these daps.
Full google support as an open android device is the best way to make sure apple’s own choices won’t eliminate some daps.
A great example here is apple music does not function on fiio daps. I don’t remember the reason at this point, but it is at least partly apple’s choice not to fix it. So, the closest one can get to “android phone” the better.
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Cost will go down until all competition is squeezed from market and then price will go up like we had with streaming wars.
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Unless Spotify didn’t want to sell it or Apple wanted to avoid antitrust lawsuits for buying a company that would give them close to 50% market share.
Spotify is market leader but they can’t compete with Apple’s infinite cash flow and ability to operate a streaming service at low cost and no profit for a long time.
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It’s funny, some of Apple’s information today references needing a DAC for high-res playback, and now I see a lot of people in my Twitter feed who are wondering what the heck a DAC is…
There’s also a claim that even with a wired cable the AirPods Max won’t support lossless, which makes very little sense to me from a technical standpoint. If it takes an analog input, what does it matter the encoding of the original digital file? I suspect the cable or the AirPods Max do an ADC conversion on that input, but only if that was then compressed internally would there be a loss from CD quality. Strange… I suspect a miscommunication/misunderstanding between Apple and the journalist that reported that, but hopefully someone who understands this stuff will dig into it.
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Indeed. That’s the course of a monopoly. The current period resembles Detroit in the 1920s and 1930s. The big car companies bought up little ones and created dominant/monopolistic positions. GM was the master of this strategy, and marketed its many brands by adding small styling changes. Planned obsolescence forced rapid car buying in the 1950s (errrr…a new iPhone every two years…). The strategy fell apart in the 1970s, as the now fat, lazy, and weak US companies were crushed by imports.
Anyone want to buy a AMC Pacer? A Chevy Chevette? A slant-back Cadillac with a V8-6-4 engine?
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That’s probably what happens with my Sony noise canceling headphones too. I hear no quality changes on wired versus wireless.
Wireless and noise canceling headphones do an awful lot of local processing. They have to handle Bluetooth audio first and foremost, and fit an amp and power supply in the chassis too. They are optimized for the standard use case, which has limited quality potential. Cables are likely seen as a necessary work-around feature for connecting to non-Bluetooth sources such as airplane entertainment systems.
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This is the only thing that has enticed me thus far…I hate the shuffle feature on Spotify. So many songs buried away and never played. Never new about the customizable playlists in Apple Music!
Apple claims an external dac is required for high resolution lossless. This means the internal dac won’t do it. So an analog cable to said mac’s dac that won’t do it wouldn’t help.
That’s my guess.
I’m definitely interested in seeing how this affects Roon. I use it every day, strictly with my local collection. While there are minor annoyances, overall it’s a very stable and enjoyable listening experience. I could see them partnering with Spotify and/or Apple Music, which would be awesome.
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According to Danny, the CEO of Roon, neither Spotify nor Apple are interested in the kind of integration that would be necessary for either service to work properly with Roon.
They’ve stated this multiple times … as the question comes up repeatedly on the Roon community.
It’d be great, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.
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The downside of the smart playlists in Apple Music is that they can only be created and edited on a Mac. Perhaps that will change in iOS 15, but I keep worrying with each new OS that they’ll do away with them altogether. For now, there are third party apps (Soor is one I’ve tried), that plug into Apple Music and let you create smart playlists directly on the iPhone, but they’re not as powerful.
Thanks for the reply. I don’t visit the Roon community too much. There are some really helpful people with tech support issues, but I find most of the topics to be pretty negative with complaints about the software.
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