The app once in exclusive mode just has to explicitly set the bit depth/sampling rate.
There are more lines of code enumerating the possibilities from the device than there are in actually setting it.
The Qobuz App (which I haven’t used since I moved to Roon), had a bug in it and used to set it wrong, it would set to the sampling rate to what was queued, not what was playing.
I suspect the Amazon app is developed by a “team” that doesn’t understand what their audiophile customers want, so I consider it the exception rather than the likely rule.
Right, Tidal and Qobuz do the right thing. However now that apple and amazon and soon spotify are doing HD, I don’t know that I consider them the big players in the streaming market.
I’m good with the app setting the bit rate and not having to think about it for every song or album we choose.
I’ll stick with Tidal then. I’d prefer Apple as I’d rather download and play from local (until I run out of room) unlike Tidal where I’m forced to stream. (I hate the idea of constantly streaming large amounts of data, kind of like I drive a hybrid, why drive a pickup truck when I can get to the same location with a fraction of the cost?)
I didn’t stick with Qobuz as I thought the recommendations and the way the player was set up was lacking compared to Tidal and Apple.
I tried Audirvana but I didn’t need that additional layer of complexity that didn’t offer any value other than another monthly or yearly fee as I don’t use a nas or roon.
Yes, in 2020 Qobuz had a bug and would drop down to the lowest rate (16/44.1) or crash. I haven’t used it recently.
Amazon is an old player in digital music. Around 10 years ago they gave away free singles when you used a slower shipping option or bought specific products. I accumulated about two dozen tracks that way. They were all compressed MP3s, with HD coming out only recently. It’s not their core business and not a “prime” focus.
So far this seems buggy to me on the Mac. When I first tried it I couldn’t get anything to play if I enabled lossless, even after restarting Music. Today it seems fine playing lossless but I can’t find anything that plays over 44.1khz even if I set my DAC to 192khz and know that there are hi-res versions on Qobuz.
Also the Spatial Audio stuff doesn’t show the lossless icon or any other icon and when I Get Info → File it doesn’t show “available: Lossless Audio”. It doesn’t show the “available” field at all. It doesn’t sound Spatial (special?) either.
Still at least it is lossless. I already planned to continue using Roon for music I care about. I’m going to download a few and see what I get.
FYI if I had previously downloaded a track, it plays the original download (AAC compressed) and does not download the lossless version automatically. So we’ll have to “Remove Download” and then download again any track you want as a lossless download.
Somebody once told me that upsampling 44Khz files wasn’t a good idea. I don’t remember why. The optimal setting in Midi Setup for my music file collection was no more that 24-bit/44Khz.
If I go messing with that setting, just to get hi-res feature playback, am I going to degrade the playback of all my CD-ripped and Amazon store-bought files?
It very much depends on how you’re doing it, and the characteristics of your output device (DAC).
If you’re just letting the OS fiddle with the bits then it is probably not optimal (OS dependent). Using something like HQPlayer, SoX, an M-Scaler … etc. … can be a very different affair. Though, again, it’s dependent on the DAC as well.
Currently, all but one of the DACs I own (the RME ADI-2 Pro FS R BE) does some level of upsampling. All of them doing it using precise, wide and deep, algorithms, that are much better than those built into the OS (be that Windows, macOS or Linux). The principle benefit is simply a more accurate reconstruction filter/process.
Coming to it about 18 hours late, due to some delightful soul sticking a spade through my fiber line, my lossless Apple Music experience has been pretty straightforward so far.
The quality is clearly improved vs. AAC256.
Yes, there are niggles …
The Apple Music player doesn’t automatically switch the output sample rate to match varied content. It is not clear to me that it ever will. And the macOS Core Audio re-sampler is audibly transparent, so just setting the max-rate your DAC supports is going to be inaudibly different in all but the most pathological of cases/high-end setups.
If you’ve downloaded something already, you’ll need to remove the download and re-download on your new settings to get the lossless version. On the downside, it’s a few minutes work to do. On the upside, you don’t suddenly wind up with a full device.
On the upside, I’ve had no issues with any of my output devices. All of which, by luck of the draw, are all AirPlay compatible (Roon compatibility was something I planned, AirPlay not so much).
If I hadn’t dropped Spotify ages ago for both quality and lack of Roon integration issues, this would kill it for sure. Amazon HD went the same way, mostly because it’s inconsistent and brain-dead in handling output bit depth/rate (a fix I could do for them in 15 minutes).
So …
A welcome change. Something I will use. And it now means my music subscriptions are just Apple, Qobuz and TIDAL.
AirPlay seems to have a different view on the volume settings relative to my Linn gear. It runs at half what the native settings are. Very likely a Linn issue, rather than an Apple one, and easily overcome with the use of the Linn remote … but a bit of a surprise at first.
Wow, that is a vote of confidence! Since I have a military discount to Tidal, I am not there yet. I have yet to be convinced about Apple Lossless.
The next year will be interesting as Apple, Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon, Deezer, Spotify, etc. duke it out over high resolution SQ, user interface, catalog and Roon compatibility. It will take some great features to pry me away from Roon.
The oddest thing I encountered was an album that was 3/4 lossless with the last movement in 256 I imagine. It was a bit startling as the 3 movement transitioned to the 4th - thought something broke.
Its lossless does sound good to my ears. Comparable to what I hear elsewhere.
They do need to up their high res classical game as less than one quarter of the albums I can stream in high res via other services were available as lossless on Apple Music. It is admittedly a small sample size but I wont be giving up my classical streaming service; however, Tidal is done for me, it offers nothing over Apple Music for my use case.
All iOS devices will facilitate auto-switching, macOS does not allow that .
I tried using Bit Perfect app, forgot I had it. Did not work on auto-switching as Audio-MIDI still had control.
I had not thought of that, you are on to something as I am remembering it did require local tracks to function. It has been that long since I’ve used it.
I canceled my tidal after 3 years too. I can’t justify double the price. My Roon expires in July and I didn’t want to commit to another year if I might switch to Apple. Tidal needs to act fast to compete.
No dice on downloading, I do not think Bit Perfect has been updated in some time either. It is not engaging with Apple Music at all. I tried, might set up a spare iPad I have laying around to connect.
Thanks for the suggestions.
