Even analogue out isn't going to get boomy and muffled unless you've set some sort of daft tone control or equalisation, or something else messing with the frequency response. No amount of jitter or noise is going to do that.
Erhm. No.
Did that too. Blind-tested it as well. Extremely easy to pick up which is which.
I was hoping this thread was going to be measurements of AppleTV 4K.
I assume the MiniDSP U-Dio8 is used to interface between Mac Mini USB-out and Genelec AES-in without a redundant AD/DA step, which looks like a good method. Unfortunate that you don't like the sonics. Like others I'm curious about how/why/if that's happening.
I have considered/hesitated mildly about adding a MiniDSP device in the chain, but haven't need to in the end. Some of them measure better than others. I don't have issues using a Mac as a sound source SQ-wise (ignoring the M1/M2 memory thing). I no longer have an AppleTV device but it used to work well (HDMI-out, of course).
You must have a faulty chromecast.
I was hoping this thread was going to be measurements of AppleTV 4K.
I assume the MiniDSP U-Dio8 is used to interface between Mac Mini USB-out and Genelec AES-in without a redundant AD/DA step, which looks like a good method. Unfortunate that you don't like the sonics. Like others I'm curious about how/why/if that's happening.
I have considered/hesitated mildly about adding a MiniDSP device in the chain, but haven't need to in the end. Some of them measure better than others. I don't have issues using a Mac as a sound source SQ-wise (ignoring the M1/M2 memory thing). I no longer have an AppleTV device but it used to work well (HDMI-out, of course).
That looks great. What HDMI to SPDIF device did you use?
With my Apple TV 4K playing to my Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar, I get 10 channels of "Dolby TrueHD ATMOS ". I use the HDMI connection to my TV. The notation is important because as I understand it, Dolby Atmos is an extension and depends on, one of two Dolby codecs, "Dolby Digital Plus where it is compressed/lossy and Dolby TrueHD where it is uncompressed/lossless.", (ref: Dolby Atmos vs DolbyHD: what's the difference.).Having been exposed recently to spatial sound, I’m considering embarking on that path. Apple TV 4K as the source, playing tracks either off their service or Tidal and into a reasonable quality pre-processor.
...
What can I expect from the Apple TV 4K?
I’m going to spend quite a bit to augment my current system ($10k – $17k, depending on the Atmos layout).
It’ll be a shame if I get a sour apple pie at the end of the rainbow
That only is you have ATMOS disabled.
Not sure what you mean; I am describing the files that are in the cloud, i.e., the data at rest. It has nothing to do with ATMOS as they are not being streamed.
Apple Spatial Music are Atmos encoded tracks (DD+ essentially). If your being served AAC, it’s a stereo downmix.
Thanks for the information. Minor point, DD+ is lossy, Apple Spatial music is lossless, e.g., the highlighted portion of image below.
Yes, it was not, I did repeat your steps on my Mac and had similar results.
Confusing I agree. I think we are primarily different use cases, e.g., I was using a preview of Apple Music on Windows to send music to a DAC and headphones, and it came through as the file you saw (now below on the right), however when I downloaded the file, we've been looking it it came down as lossless and I played that. It is on the left, the streamed version, which is lossy is on the right (AAC) vs HLS, the encoded ALAC is on the left.
Not sure what "Atmos" means in this context; e.g., when I play Apple Music on an Apple TV and send it to an ATMOS capable sound bar I get 10 Channels of Dolby TrueHD ATMOS (image on the left below). Since Dolby TrueHD is lossless is the whole payload (Dolby TrueHD stream + the ATMOS bit) lossless or does the ATMOS bit come in lossy or lossless versions or is it simply embedded in the lossless stream? On the right is my iPhone over AirPlay to the soundbar which sees 2 channel PCM (right image), I don't know if its lossless or not.
