Apple Music, 256 bitrate

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Terence

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Dec 22, 2023
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I can't find the solution anywhere here. I use Apple Music/Airplay/ to a Wiim Pro+, but everything is downgraded to 256kps. AAC. Even my hires music gets the AAC treatment. What am I doing wrong? Obviously something; Wiim wouldn't sell a product touting Airplay etc, knowing that it downgrades the music first? Thank you.
 
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Terence said:
I can't find the solution anywhere here. I use Apple Music/Airplay/ to a Wiim Pro+, but everything is downgraded to 256kps. AAC. Even my hires music gets the AAC treatment. What am I doing wrong? Obviously something; Wiim wouldn't sell a product touting Airplay etc, knowing that it downgrades the music first? Thank you.
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Using Airplay, which is from Apple not Wiim.
 
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That makes it useless to me and millions of others. It’s hardly an obscure player etc and WiiM should have mentioned this in its compatibility statements. Thank you for your time to answer!
 
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Terence said:
That makes it useless to me and millions of others. It’s hardly an obscure player etc and WiiM should have mentioned this in its compatibility statements. Thank you for your time to answer!
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You should blame apple for this. AirPlay 2 is the new standard. And unfortunately it is worse sounding than AirPlay 1, because they wanted it to work with surround sound and multiroom solutions.

The solution is Tidal hifi or Qubos. They both sound slightly better.
 
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Terence said:
That makes it useless to me and millions of others. It’s hardly an obscure player etc and WiiM should have mentioned this in its compatibility statements. Thank you for your time to answer!
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Not Wiim it’s Apple that have put the restriction to use AAC and nobody else. It’s part of of Airplay2 spec if using low latency streaming for multiroom. Any device that is Airplay2 compatible will be exactly the same, this has been known since they launch Apple Music lossless. Only way to get lossless is via your phone or a Mac and a usb dac .
 
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Where do you store your HiRes music? It should be possible to use the WiiM app to access it and cast it at full resolution to your WiiM device.
 
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d6jg said:
Where do you store your HiRes music? It should be possible to use the WiiM app to access it and cast it at full resolution to your WiiM device.
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What are you taking about exactly? Apple Music has no way to cast hires music full stop. Airplay doesn’t support above 44.1 for music.
 
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d6jg said:
In which case nothing much has changed since Darko wrote this article has it? Apple HiRes is a bit of a white elephant

darko.audio

The best way to stream hi-res audio from Apple Music | Darko.Audio

The best way is the only way.
darko.audio darko.audio
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It is indeed. Just a tick box, requires Apple hardware or Software utilise it. A few exceptions are the Eversolo DMP A6 which runs the Android version of the app which plays hires natively as do many Android DAPs but you can’t cast to them.
 
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CrystalGipsy said:
It is indeed. Just a tick box, requires Apple hardware or Software utilise it. A few exceptions are the Eversolo DMP A6 which runs the Android version of the app which plays hires natively as do many Android DAPs but you can’t cast to them.
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There is an alpha firmware for the Eversolo that adds Squeeze Connect for use with LMS. I’m not convinced that it would be worth the £ over a WiiM or a Pi though
 
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d6jg said:
There is an alpha firmware for the Eversolo that adds Squeeze Connect for use with LMS. I’m not convinced that it would be worth the £ over a WiiM or a Pi though
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Depends if you want higher resolution music, mulitchannel DSD, a nice touchscreen, the options Android gives you to run any music app more or less, more and better connection options with higher quality components and not a lightweight piece of plastic. One generally gets what one pays for and I believe the Eversolo is as great device for the money or the FiiO R7. We have a lot of choice these days to pick and choose what we want.
 
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GusGusNFT said:
Sonos is the only music streamer that supports Apple Music app.
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Nope any Android based streamer is capable of running it. Eversolo and the Fiio R7 and most DAPs can do so. Sonos is limited to AAC they can’t access the lossless streams as they use the api in their own app or you use Airplay2.
 
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Terence said:
I can't find the solution anywhere here. I use Apple Music/Airplay/ to a Wiim Pro+, but everything is downgraded to 256kps. AAC. Even my hires music gets the AAC treatment. What am I doing wrong? Obviously something; Wiim wouldn't sell a product touting Airplay etc, knowing that it downgrades the music first? Thank you.
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Please do a search in the group for Apple Music and you’ll see this is an Apple, not WiiM restriction.

As well as the Darko article(s) mentioned above, you’ll often see this link mentioned too (at least 14 times the last time I counted):

audiophilestyle.com

Apple Music Lossless Mess Part 2: AirPlay

Earlier this month I dug into Apple Music's Lossless and Hi-Res offerings, running several bit perfect rests on the audio output of my Macs and iOS devices. The results were less than stellar (link). This week I dug into Apple Music lossless over AirPlay. One would think that the results would be...
audiophilestyle.com audiophilestyle.com
 
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It can’t unless the device is not using Airplay2. Never worked when I had my NAD earlier in the year. I bet they are reading the metadata the app shows which will be lossless. This bares no relevance to the stream sent out. What are they basing this on?


Read those links, nobody checked the actual data rate going over the network to the device. This could be bogus metadata from the app to the Blusound or it’s falling back to Airplay and not Airplay2. If you have old Airplay device not updated it will stream cd quality to it. Can’t see why it would work just for Blusound and no others.
 
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