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Apple Music vs Tidal

bevok

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Yes AirPlay isn’t mentioned at all. I think it’s probably too complicated to go through the whole ‘if it’s AirPlay 1 then, if it’s AirPlay 2 …system-wide…” etc

Be interesting to see if they make it available officially via AirPlay anytime soon. They don’t seem in any rush- it will be challenging to get a consistently good experience with the variable of wifi networks in the mix.
 

Zensō

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I’m pretty sure Apple chose to default to 256 AAC for Airplay 2 because of the multi-room capabilities that were added. The typical Apple customer who might be running perhaps a Sonos speaker in one room, a HomePod or two in another, and a Google or Amazon smart speaker in the kitchen is not likely to have the high bandwidth WiFi needed for streaming lossless and hi-res to 3-4 rooms without causing dropouts. From Apple’s perspective, it makes much more sense to downsample to 256 AAC (which let’s be honest, is fully transparent for almost all normal listening) to avoid their support lines being inundated with calls due to network dropouts that are beyond their control.
 

bevok

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I’m pretty sure Apple chose to default to 256 AAC for Airplay 2 because of the multi-room capabilities that were added. The typical Apple customer who might be running perhaps a Sonos speaker in one room, a HomePod or two in another, and a Google or Amazon smart speaker in the kitchen is not likely to have the high bandwidth WiFi needed for streaming lossless and hi-res to 3-4 rooms without causing dropouts. From Apple’s perspective, it makes much more sense to downsample to 256 AAC (which let’s be honest, is fully transparent for almost all normal listening) to avoid their support lines being inundated with calls due to network dropouts that are beyond their control.
Yes it makes sense and as it has remained this way through a number of iterations of iOS, seems intentional. There are any number of ways to get lossless anyway - all my listening is lossless via AirPlay or the Apple TV which is an excellent streamer + device (well apart from on Sonos which sounds fine using AAC anyway!)
 

flz

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From Apple’s perspective, it makes much more sense to downsample to 256 AAC (which let’s be honest, is fully transparent for almost all normal listening) to avoid their support lines being inundated with calls due to network dropouts that are beyond their control.
I do believe that 256 AAC would be totally fine in ideal conditions over Wifi. What I'm trying to figure out now is whether the transcoding involved in transmitting AAC 256 over bluetooth makes it audibly inferior to AAC 256 over Wifi. Nobody seems to know for sure and I don't have the equipment to do a direct comparison.
 

Liya

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Airplay always use Apple lossless codec called ALAC and for music it is always at 16-bit 44.1kHz CD quality. This is explained on Apple developer documents.
Have you got any links explaining this?
 

Liya

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Hello,

Am contemplating changing from tidal to Apple Music

Read a lot about Apple Music being better in terms of sound quality in comparison to Tidal.

Also i dont like tidal’s approach to mqa and their deceiving tactics.

Additionally is half the price where i live and it would integrate perfectly with my Apple products.

That being said, i have a hegel amp and I dont see a way to stream to it lossless…

Does anyone know a way?

If there is not, would it be worth to switch to apple
Music and stream to hegel via airplay considering that airplay is fairly good on hegel?

Is apple music lossless that much better to justify using airplay instead of tidal?
I would be surprised if Apple Music wouldn't integrate perfectly with Apple products. Apart from that it is the worst supported streaming service on platforms other than Apple.
You already have a problem to integrate it into your rig.
To get bit perfect and lossless Apple Music to your hifi, the only way at the moment is camera adaptor from iphone or ipad to dac and it's got to stay on that cable, so operating it - say - from your sofa wirelessly isn't going to happen.
Why not get Tidal streamer with Tidal Connect? Their CD Quality service is for $10, same as Apple.
 

NiagaraPete

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I use Airplay 2 and my tells me it’s playing 16/44.1.
 

telemike

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I would be surprised if Apple Music wouldn't integrate perfectly with Apple products. Apart from that it is the worst supported streaming service on platforms other than Apple.
You already have a problem to integrate it into your rig.
To get bit perfect and lossless Apple Music to your hifi, the only way at the moment is camera adaptor from iphone or ipad to dac and it's got to stay on that cable, so operating it - say - from your sofa wirelessly isn't going to happen.
Why not get Tidal streamer with Tidal Connect? Their CD Quality service is for $10, same as Apple.
Tidal Connect has been stuttering for me. Spotify connect has been smooth and no issues
 

Zensō

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I do believe that 256 AAC would be totally fine in ideal conditions over Wifi. What I'm trying to figure out now is whether the transcoding involved in transmitting AAC 256 over bluetooth makes it audibly inferior to AAC 256 over Wifi. Nobody seems to know for sure and I don't have the equipment to do a direct comparison.
Do you hear any difference? When we’re talking about perceptual codecs that’s all that really matters.
 
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flz

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Do you hear any difference? When we’re talking about perceptual codecs thats all that really matters.
As I said, I don't have the equipment to do a comparison. So I don't know.
 

Zensō

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Tidal Connect has been stuttering for me. Spotify connect has been smooth and no issues
That’s not surprising since Tidal is streaming much larger amounts of data than Spotify. Apple lossless and hi-res would likely also stutter on the same network.
 

Zensō

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As I said, I don't have the equipment to do a comparison. So I don't know.
My point is that it’s not possible for someone else to tell you what is or isn’t audible when listening to perceptually coded audio, you’ll have to listen for yourself in this case. This isn’t like testing hardware.
 

flz

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My point is that it’s not possible for someone else to tell you what is or isn’t audible when listening to perceptually coded audio, you’ll have to listen for yourself in this case. This isn’t like testing hardware.
I simply don't have any airplay supporting hardware. So how do I listen to it?
 

Liya

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sarumbear

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