HI-RES AUDIO & Apple Music done right (& WITHOUT an iPad)

[Music] okay so more than any other topic that I get asked about I get asked about Apple music and highres audio the most and the general gist is almost always the same it's how to get high-rise audio out of apple music and into a Hi-Fi or headphone system now we made a video about this a couple of years ago where we found that the only really reliable way to get highrise from Apple music and into our loudspeakers or headphones was to connect an iPhone or an iPad to a DAC over USB but in 2023 things have changed this video is brought to you by Rune 2.0 the Revolutionary music player designed for True music Fanatics click to run labs.com for more information welcome back everybody yes things have changed on the hardware front in 2023 for Apple music and as per our recent video on AirPlay we have begun to dig a little deeper into the software side and this video will among other things address the chomecast whatabouts amongst you but first let's start with a little bit of tech talk to make sure absolute beginners aren't left behind so we need to remind ourselves at CD quality streams come down the pipe at 44.1 k KZ and with 16 bits for each of those samples and anything higher like 48 khz 96 khz or 192 khz is usually by most people classified as high-rise audio now the number of Hertz is essentially the number of samples per second in the audio stream but those higher sample rates almost always come with a higher bit depth EG 24bit SL 96 khz and the bit depth refers to the number of possible values that can be written to each sample so for example a 16bit 44.1 khz stream so CD quality houses 44,100 samples per second with each of those samples sitting at one of 65,000 536 possible values whereas a 24bit 192 khz stream so really the maximum we can get from Apple music features 192,000 samples per second with each sample housing one of I got I'm trying to remember this I think it's 16,777,216 values [Music] d [Music] now one of my favorite Apple music features is its TV OS app but as we covered in our 2021 video the Apple TV resamples all incoming streams to 48 khz before sending the data onwards and even if it didn't do it the TV to which it is attached almost certainly would especially if it's running an Android operating system because Android tends to resample everything to 48 Kilz and this effectively Cuts highres streams off at their knees and it messes with CD quality streams too because it resamples everything from 44.1 khz to 48 khz and what we want is for our CD quality streams to arrive at the Apple TV as 16441 and leave at 16441 no bits changed and this is often referred to as bit perfect playback now we also leared in 2021 that Mac OS didn't have the automatic sample rate switching features of iOS and iPad OS and that tends to keep the bit perfect idealists away from Mac OS because effectively things get resampled and Mac OS still doesn't have automatic sample rate switching this means that everything is resampled to whatever sample rate we have set in our audio midi setup panel now pragmatists won't care that's me really I guess but idealists will say Over My Dead Body and as we covered in our video two weeks ago AirPlay won't cut it for highres or in some cases not even CD quality because Apple music streams travel through the phone on their way to the network streamer in the Hi-Fi rack and the Apple music app will adapt its output according to whatever network streaming endpoint we are using so as we saw it tops out at CD quality when streaming to an AirPlay one device like the now defunct Airport Express hres audio forget about it and apple music streams are dropped down bizarrely to lossi AAC quality when streaming from the Apple music app to an AirPlay 2 device moreover Apple AirPlay transmission is limited to Apple devices right but what about Google chomecast I do get ask this a lot now it can carry CD quality streams from Apple music servers in the cloud to the network streamer in the Hi-Fi rack and it doesn't drag them through the phone in the process which I think is a real win but unfortunately It suffers three limitations from the way I see it number one it's not gapless number two there's no chomecast button on Apple music's iPhone app and then there's Google chromecast's inconsistent Behavior because I dug out my original chomecast Puck from a cupboard a chomecast audio puck now that technically supports up to 2496 but I set it up and no matter what high res I fed it from Apple music I could only get the connected dck in my case a mych Brooklyn Bridge 2 to show the arrival of 24bit SL 44.1 khz streams which was a little bit frustrating I don't know why this is don't shoot the messenger besides the Google chomecast audio Puck is long since discontinued and that really leaves most CH casters with third-party implementations like the wiim Pro Plus that we looked at recently and yet a highes stream sent from an Android phone's Apple music app gets downgraded for some reason to 16441 on its way to the whim Pro Plus again that's what my Brooklyn Bridge 2 deck is telling me and it's also interestingly what the whim home app tells us as well [Music] I want to interrupt this video to bring your attention to the deluxe edition of tricky's maxing Quay that came out last week I think because maxing Quay is one of the finest albums of the 90s and the 2023 reincarnated version was remastered at Abby Road and interestingly though the mastering Engineers that did the remaster didn't dynamically compress The Living Daylights out of the original 12 Songs In fact I would argue that this remaster sounds even better than the 1995 original and because this is a deluxe edition we also get 16 bonus tracks that include re-recorded versions of six songs a radio session which is excellent actually and some other odds and ends so we get 28 tracks all up at least that's what we get if we buy the 3 LP set or the 2 CD set but if we head on over to Apple music or any other streaming service the 20123 edition of maxing Quay is 49 songs long so we get an extra what is it 21 songs and they are mainly made up of alternative versions and remixes but at almost 4 hours of Music That's positively monstrous and well worth checking out now back to the video hey hey hey [Music] heyyyyy hey hey [Music] well okay so how do we sidestep all of this kind of like if buts and maybe's nonsense essentially what we want really to get Bonafide a highres out of apple music into our Hi-Fi system is a network streamer that runs the Apple music app natively and in 2023 that means a network streamer that runs Android now one such example is the F R7 and the R7 really is one of the main reasons that I'm making this video because frankly I made a real mess of showing its Apple music capabilities when we made a review video about it earlier this year now the R7 essentially behaves like a smartphone but with a deck a preamp and headphone amplifier attached and we install the Apple music app on the R7 from the Google Play Store just as we would with a smartphone and that Apple music app plays CD quality audio and high-res audio just as a smartphone would right because essentially we're using a smartphone app moreover the R7 handles the audio streams bit perfectly because F's Engineers have routed the digital audio path Pathways around Android's usual 48k sample rate conversion we just have to remember to specify highres lossless in the Apple music apps settings panel not only that just like a smartphone we can offline CD quality and high- red streams to the F's internal storage and I think that's pretty damn neat and in case you wondering the R7 is an AirPlay one receiver now also an AirPlay one receiver is the R7 rival the ever solo DMP A6 another android-based Network streamer now we don't get the Google Play Store on the DMP A6 but we can install a slightly customized version of the Apple music app from the settings panel inside the ever solo and like the F the ever solo handles CD quality and highes audio streams bit perfectly and it too allows for the offlining of content however the ever solo one-ups the F with a remote control app like a cast app that effectively allows us to control the dmpa 6 from the comfort of the couch and that's the one downside of the R7 is that we have to interface with it directly we have to get hands on with it but I prefer the sound of the R7 especially when fed by F's pl50 linear power supply and also I much prefer the screen orientation the portrait orientation of the F because I think it does better Justice to the Apple music app it's it's closer to what we experience on a phone and I got to say I really can't get used to the Apple music app on the ever solo being super wide or much wider than it is tall however sound quality and user interface judgments aren't really the thrust of this video it's that both of these Android network streamers allow us to sidestep all the nonsense all the ifs and the butts and the wh ifs when playing see DD quality and highr music from Apple music essentially they just work so if you like this video if you found it entertaining and or informative then please give us a like down below if you like my attitude towards essentially coming back to gear that I really didn't think I did Justice to and also using it to answer I guess yeah the most popular question that comes my way or certainly this year like how do I get apple music and high res into my Hi-Fi system I hope this video addresses that question headon I think it does if you think it does then please consider subscribing to this Channel and as always thank you ever so much for watching hello me again you're watching this video on YouTube but if you are watching it on patreon you might might get an extended version with bloopers at the end and extra stuff in in the middle here and there cuz I tend to cut the YouTube version down from the original patreon edit and also over on patreon I provide all of my patrons with playlists for Apple music Spotify tidle and cobos for each video and those playlists cover off all the music discussed in the video and all the music heard in the interludes so if you'll consider supporting me on patreon even if it's just for a single month just to buy me a cup of coffee or something that would be tremendous thank you very much

Channel: Darko Audio

Views: 337,836

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Id: zxCt9cwmqXU

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 22 2023