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Apple TV and bit perfect / native sampling rates

darmok

Member
Joined
Mar 19, 2023
Messages
18
Likes
16
I'm putting this here as a cautionary tale in case anybody else wants to try to cleverly fix this particular problem. It's well known that the current Apple TV models will only output 48KHz, even when streaming lossless music in Apple Music that originated at 16/44.1. I had the bright idea of using a programmable EDID emulator to only offer the Apple TV 44.1KHz in the hopes that it would force the operating system to operate at that sample rate natively. Most of the music I'd want to stream is 16/44.1 and if I had to pick a direction for sample rate conversion, it would be to convert the "hi res" stuff down rather than upsampling all the 44.1KHz content. I used a gofanco Prophecy emulator for my testing and confirmed that it was indeed working by changing the allowed resolutions and verifying that the Apple TV followed what the emulator presented it. Following the emulator in the signal chain was an HDMI audio extractor, which fed into a Topping E30 II where I could check the sample rate coming out of the hardware.

Well, so deep is Apple's devotion to 48KHz that if your EDID only allows 16/44.1, the Apple TV will just ignore it and output 48KHz anyway. Shucks. So much for that idea. I can only hope that this will be fixed in a future version of the operating system, even as an optional mode.
 

Dumdum

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
338
Likes
219
Location
Nottinghamshire, UK
How bad is the Apple TV’s upsampling?
It’s not bad… likely everyone who claims it is will be objecting on principle rather than actual legit testing, and I’d put money on it they couldn’t identify an upsampled 44.1khz track vs the original in a blind abx test

I get the whole principles thing, I don’t like mqa so I don’t buy tidal… Apple Music from an iPad mini 6 in my car and I get whatever the source files bitrate and sample depth is
 
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