DavidMcRoy
Addicted to Fun and Learning
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Pardon the “public radio vocabulary.” (Agglomeration = a bringing together, sort of. I had to use Google to find a single word for that.)
Given the arduous and frustrating lengths that ASR members and others around the world have taken to get Lossless and/or Hi-Res audio out of the Apple Music App, Apple having made its Byzantine requirements to make that happen so mysterious, I created this thread to establish, at this late date, exactly what it takes to deal with this half-baked rollout:
I mean, “how hard can it be?” I know that some of this rudimentary information is scattered around various threads on ASR and elsewhere around the web, but I think it would be helpful to summarize what has been discovered that works and what doesn’t work.
NOTE: This thread is meant to focus on Lossless and Hi-Res audio and to ignore that other issue, Dolby Atmos playback, a good topic for another thread.
To begin, I have tried Apple’s instructions for listening to Lossless and Hi-Res audio from Apple Music via an external DAC that supports such data, as they appear to apply to my own setup. (I am only using Apple phones and pads, not my Mac Mini nor my Windows-based PC.) The signal and power paths are as follows:
iPhone or iPad Lightning Port > Apple Camera Connection Kit (CCK) Lightning Plug
Apple CCK USB-A Port > USB Port of a self-powered external DAC
USB AC (Mains) power > Apple CCK Lightning Port
In the above configuration, the external DAC gets its power independently from the circuit. The iPhone or iPad receives power through the Apple CCK’s Lightning Port.
Now, this all produces some kind of audio, and Apple strongly implies that it’s Lossless and/or Hi-Res audio, being passed into the external DAC. My DAC, a Topping D30, has no display except for “power” and “signal present,“ so I can’t verify what it is. Others have stated that the Apple CCK converts everything to something other than the original data, so who knows? Does that just pertain to what’s feeding the CCK’s own 3.5mm stereo audio jack? I suspect that it does.
To further complicate matters, there are nearly a dozen different types of “Apple CCKs” featuring various combinations and numbers of connections. Mine has a Lightning Plug for the iDevice on one end and 3 Ports: Lightning, 3.5mm stereo audio and USB-A. I don’t think they even maker that one anymore, but they’re probably pretty common.
Am I getting Hi-Res audio into the external DAC, or not?
Given the arduous and frustrating lengths that ASR members and others around the world have taken to get Lossless and/or Hi-Res audio out of the Apple Music App, Apple having made its Byzantine requirements to make that happen so mysterious, I created this thread to establish, at this late date, exactly what it takes to deal with this half-baked rollout:
- Play Lossless audio 44.1kHz/16-bit PCM into non-Apple headphones, earbuds or into a loudspeaker-based sound system
- Play Hi-Res audio into non-Apple headphones, earbuds or into a loudspeaker-based system
I mean, “how hard can it be?” I know that some of this rudimentary information is scattered around various threads on ASR and elsewhere around the web, but I think it would be helpful to summarize what has been discovered that works and what doesn’t work.
NOTE: This thread is meant to focus on Lossless and Hi-Res audio and to ignore that other issue, Dolby Atmos playback, a good topic for another thread.
To begin, I have tried Apple’s instructions for listening to Lossless and Hi-Res audio from Apple Music via an external DAC that supports such data, as they appear to apply to my own setup. (I am only using Apple phones and pads, not my Mac Mini nor my Windows-based PC.) The signal and power paths are as follows:
iPhone or iPad Lightning Port > Apple Camera Connection Kit (CCK) Lightning Plug
Apple CCK USB-A Port > USB Port of a self-powered external DAC
USB AC (Mains) power > Apple CCK Lightning Port
In the above configuration, the external DAC gets its power independently from the circuit. The iPhone or iPad receives power through the Apple CCK’s Lightning Port.
Now, this all produces some kind of audio, and Apple strongly implies that it’s Lossless and/or Hi-Res audio, being passed into the external DAC. My DAC, a Topping D30, has no display except for “power” and “signal present,“ so I can’t verify what it is. Others have stated that the Apple CCK converts everything to something other than the original data, so who knows? Does that just pertain to what’s feeding the CCK’s own 3.5mm stereo audio jack? I suspect that it does.
To further complicate matters, there are nearly a dozen different types of “Apple CCKs” featuring various combinations and numbers of connections. Mine has a Lightning Plug for the iDevice on one end and 3 Ports: Lightning, 3.5mm stereo audio and USB-A. I don’t think they even maker that one anymore, but they’re probably pretty common.
Am I getting Hi-Res audio into the external DAC, or not?
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