I find Spotify is by far the easiest to use. If they offer a high-res tier I might drop Amazon. Then again, I have my old library all uploaded there - granted as high-bitrate MP3 files, but still. It's nice to be able to stream those when I want - a bunch of that stuff isn't available online anywhere at the moment.
Again, we're talking about more than ten years ago, so I am content to blame some older version of iTunes for Windows as the cause of my issues with ALAC ripping. I am glad that the rest of you haven't had similar problems, and I'm glad that I ended up standardizing on flac instead, since I have no current need for ALAC on any of my devices. I came to this thread to see if there was anything that would attract me to Apple Music now, and I have concluded that there isn't. Too many other options.
...because the 30% Apple Tax charges to Spotify, Tidal, Deezer, YTM etc us being used to fund improvements in the Apple service and drive the others off the platform. Everyone pays the 30% except Apple themselves. Obviously. Walled garden, user lock in, lack of rivals === $$$
I think at the time FLAC was still quite new, so Apple probably didn't want to build and sell hardware that would play 'someone else's format' in case the next year a FLAC version 2.0 were to come out and be incompatible. As it turns out that never happened, both have been open sourced and become established as standards, I don't think there is any risk that you wouldn't be able to convert from one to another in the future. Right now FLAC has a slight edge of maybe 5% in compression performance, ALAC has the advantage they can be played on iDevices, though I doubt anyone can hear the difference between an mp3 and a FLAC file when listening on an iPhone.
ALAC started out proprietary and FLAC would not play on Apple devices. That all changed years ago; now the important difference is that ALAC only has one compression ratio compared to FLAC’s 8, and ALAC does not play well with Windows.
Bluetooth 5.0 and higher supports speeds of over 2Mbps and over longer distances, but iPhones and AirPods max out at 256 kbps for Bluetooth. So it isn’t the fault of Bluetooth itself but rather Apple’s current implementation.
I should have said some Windows audio apps. For most, though, there are plug-ins available if ALAC isn’t natively supported
One thing I find odd is the report from MacRumors, among others and apparently verified with Apple, that the HomePods don’t support the new lossless audio service via Apple Music. The odd aspect to it is that HomePods [full size and Mini] support AirPlay. The AirPlay protocol uses 44.1K / 16 bit ALAC as its transmission protocol, though some devices like the Apple TV’s with optical outputs resample that to 48K / 16 bit for output. That means that if I have 44.1K lossless files on my iPhone or iPad, either within the Music App, a third party app such as Foobar, or another lossless streaming service like Qobuz, I can send the audio without quality loss via Airplay to my HomePods [and I use the latter two options in this way regularly], but I can’t do the same with Apple Music lossless files in an all Apple system. The AirPods Max appear to be flawed, too. Several wireless headphones or DACs can connect using a USB cable to an iPhone or iPad, sometimes with the Camera Connection Kit needed, but all allowing lossless or high resolution audio via digital connection. Yet, the rather expensive AirPods Max have no ability to form a wired digital connection with an iDevice or Mac. Upgrading Apple Music to allow lossless or high resolution streaming is progress, for sure, but Apple seem to be shooting themselves in the foot by not enabling its own hardware to take full advantage of it, despite the fact that there are long standing third party solutions that have been doing this for years. Looks like my iPhone / Oppo HA2 / PM3 combination and iPad / pair of HomePods combo with either Foobar or Qobuz providing the tunes might remain in use a little longer.
I’ll be interested to see if it works with Apple TV considering there is only a single HDMI output. My DAC has HDMI inputs but doesn’t pass HDR, so I hook up directly to my TV and run toslink to my DAC. Will my TV pass the hires audio?
Just wondering how high a bit rate I can get from my current AirPort Express setup into my DAC. Probably only 16/44.1 right? How do I output higher resolution from Apple Music to the DAC?
I subscribed to Spotify using a Web browser. Guess how much Apple gets of my $9.99/month? 0%. Some people act like Steve Jobs barged into their homes and tore the Xbox out of their tween hands and smashed it in front of their eyes. And that they are passive victims of Apple's creeping corporate greed. There are a lot of Android phones out there, and you could live your whole life without paying Apple's onerous taxes. Yes, Apple loves money. Who doesn't? What business isn't looking to maximize profits? Google? Amazon? At least Apple doesn't squeeze all the data they can out of your online behavior. It's the consumer's choice. And what Apple is really marketing is a safe, easy platform, and to maintain that platform they have to build walls. Do I always like it? No. But I'm not irrational about it either.
Well put; that is how I feel about it. I think Apple gives pretty good value for money. If you don't like their offerings you have other options.
This is great! We got Apple Music to be able to play whatever for our kids at bedtime. Now I’ll have to get the new AirPods to listen to high res.
I've ripped many thousands and thousands of CDs to Apple Lossless, but I use dBPowerAmp and check the AccurateRip comparison status to make sure it's bit-for-bit identical to the original CD itself. All kinds of alarms and flags go off if there's an issue (and it does occasionally happen with damaged or scratched CDs). I have yet to hear or see a problem. I also keep a written record of the rip as a text file within every CD folder on the drive. I agree that "Lossless Is Lossless," regardless of format (FLAC, Windows Media, Apple Lossess, etc.). Of course, it's always possible that the playback engine of the software could be adding artifacts, or something could be happening in the D/A stage... but that could potentially happen with any file.
This is the question. I use Qobuz via UpNP and a Raspberry Pi. As far as I know there is no easy way to get full hires Apple Music into my system. I could hook my iPad to my USB DAC, but that’s not a great option. I’d have to keep getting up to change tracks. Might as well spin my vinyl if I have to do that.
I just signed up for Qobuz as well. $13/mo ain’t bad and it’s easier to use in my main system and get full resolution via my raspberry pi streamer.
FLAC wasn't that new - the beta came out in January of 2001 and the V1 release was in July of 2001. It was already widely supported by the time Apple released their proprietary - and utterly redundant - ALAC in April of 2004. They finally made it open source in 2011, which was nice of them but way too late to displace FLAC outside of the Apple ecosystem. My gripe is that they've never supported FLAC on iDevices, even though it would be trivial to do so since it's already so similar to ALAC and far more widely-utilized.
Exactly. For all of those people who are mad at Apple for charging them money for their products, there's always Google and Android. Where you're the product. Enjoy getting pimped out to the highest bidder.
Yes, 16 / 44.1. The AirPlay protocol used by the Airport Express uses ALAC at 16 / 44.1 for audio transmission. To get higher resolution audio from Apple Music using a computer as source, you would either need a USB connection to your DAC or a optical / coaxial output on your computer (e.g. earlier MacBooks have optical out integrated into the 3.5mm audio out, just like the AirPort Express). Note that on both a Windows PC and Mac, getting bit perfect output may involve a bit of tinkering with various audio settings. If you are using an iOS device, you can connect a USB DAC using the Camera Connection Kit. A smaller number of USB DACs allow direct connection to an iOS device without said kit. There don’t seem to be many ways of getting an optical or coaxial digital out from an iOS device out there. I’ve no experience with Android or other mobile devices, but I believe many support connection to a USB DAC without any extra bits needed.
Thanks. All Apple devices here. I have a recent model Intel-based MacBook Air I can try USB-out. I also have that iOS camera connection/lightning dongle. I believe I tried that in the past without success, but I’ll check it again. This is going into a McIntosh C2600 preamp.
