Native Airplay 2 on MacOs Fails but Airfoil Works

[daniel.jay]

On MacOs (Monterey) when using Apple Music (formerly iTunes) with my local library, I can see each of my Wiim Pros and Wiim Minis and can check the box to select them as a remote speaker for Airplay. They always fail with the message: "The AirPlay device “[Wiim Name]” cannot be found on your network. Please verify your network settings and AirPlay configuration or select another device."

BUT, I can launch Airfoil (from Rogue Amoeba) and select the Wiims as speakers and successfully stream to one or multiple at a time.

Just to verify and troubleshoot - I can select a Wiim as the system sound destination (as opposed to simply within Apple music) and it does not deliver an error message, but does not send sound. I can confirm this behavior across multiple macs on my home network.

So.... native steaming from Apple Music/iTunes over Airplay fails but Airfoil works using what I believe is the same protocol. Anyone have any ideas?

Edits:
IPv6 is checked on all Wiims (that was the only advice I saw via the forums.
Also, this issue is limited to MacOS. I have no issues streaming from the Music app on any iPhone to all Wiims.

 

[DryTortuga]

On your Mac, are you trying to select the WiiMs from the airplay icon in the Music app or at the system audio out? If the Music app, try the system level. Selecting airplay out in the Music app sends all audio in compressed AAC even if lossless. At the system level it will send up to 24/48 ALAC.

 

[daniel.jay]

On your Mac, are you trying to select the WiiMs from the airplay icon in the Music app or at the system audio out? If the Music app, try the system level. Selecting airplay out in the Music app sends all audio in compressed AAC even if lossless. At the system level it will send up to 24/48 ALAC.

As I noted in my post - when I select system output to WiiM, I do not get an error message but I also do not get any sound.

 

[daniel.jay]

presumably the higher quality is due to the fact that system output is limited to a single destination while music/iTunes can do multiple. Regardless, that’s a good limitation to know about.

 

[DryTortuga]

Sorry I missed the detail - reading glasses not on. But you should have sound at the system level - there’s something else going on. This works for us fine using M1 airs and studios.
I think the limitations from the Mac are Apple bugs/issues with the OSX Music app, because I can send from the Apple TV to several WiiMs at once in ALAC.

 

[daniel.jay]

Yeah something strange about the handshake between music app and WiiM I’d assume. The fact that Airfoil handles it perfectly makes it all the more headscratching.

Does your system sound work on hardwired wiim pros or just Wi-Fi or both?

 

[DryTortuga]

OSX 12 and M1 Mac airplay was causing all kinds of problems with 3rd party airplay 2 devices - Sonos users were complaining like crazy. So I don’t think this one is on the WiiM side. But, I’m using airplay from the OSX 13 Music app on M1’s to WiiM’s wired and wireless no problem. I’m not sure that is was something fixed in Ventura, because Apple wasn’t really open about the bug.
Also, Rogue Amoeba knows more about the OSX sound subsystem than Apple so that’s no surprise. But at the end of the day I use LMS on a Mac (and/or Pi) to play local files on my WiiM’s since it is a much better experience. For Apple Music on the OK stereos I send it over airplay to the WiiM’s. On the good stereos that can actually resolve the differences, the only option is a iPhone or iPad cabled to the DAC with a “camera connection” dongle since they have so far not provided the OSX Music app with an exclusive audio hog mode for switching the clock. And the 3rd party software bit depth switch seems like a kludge.

 

[daniel.jay]

Ok so...
1) Have MacOS sound going to WiiMs on both MacBook Pro and mini (both M1). In troubleshooting I had changed some settings causing that to appear not to work

2) I'm also running running LMS with a dedicated non-Music App FLAC library that works pretty well, but not perfectly. I find that I get occasional <1 sec hiccups. Also, every once in a while it just stops for no identifiable reason (I haven't dug through the LMS logs enough to pin point this)

3) I'm very curious tho about what you're seeing in terms of streaming from iPhone. I would assume that streaming from the iPhone via the Wiim app results in a lossless stream, but using the native airplay2 interface it downsamples, is that right?

 

[DryTortuga]

1) Yeah!
2) That’s a whole other can of worms. Version of LMS, version of UPnP bridge, so on. @d6jg is a resident LMS guru, but forums.slimdevices.com is your friend on this one. My Pi4 server is the only one that goes 24/7 (at 15w) and it has been flawless out of the box with PiCorePlayer.
3) I’m connecting an iPhone or iPad with a dongle and usb A-B cable straight to my DAC for Apple Music > 24/48. Using a WiiM app based service like Qobuz or AMHD results in a direct connection between the service and the WiiM phone isn’t “streaming”. You can get up to 24/192. Anything streaming Airplay 2 directly is capped at 24/48.

 

[d6jg]

I have been away for a few days. In the meantime Philippe has released 2.1.13.5 in his dev channel which I am now using with WiiM Mini. Gapless local flac playback looks to have been restored.
♪ Playing Us and Them by Pink Floyd from The Dark Side of the Moon (1992 Shine On Box Set) (1973) (Local • 784kbps VBR 16bit 44.1kHz FLC)

 

[daniel.jay]

Cool - I'll check that out.

 

[daniel.jay]

3) I’m connecting an iPhone or iPad with a dongle and usb A-B cable straight to my DAC for Apple Music > 24/48. Using a WiiM app based service like Qobuz or AMHD results in a direct connection between the service and the WiiM phone isn’t “streaming”. You can get up to 24/192. Anything streaming Airplay 2 directly is capped at 24/48.

This is interesting... and I guess disappointing. I understand the distinction re: not actually streaming from your phone. I was under the impression that a lossless AIFF file stored locally on the iPhone when streamed via the WiiM app (under the My Library -> My Music -> iPhone) would stream at the highest quality the Wiim was capable of. Sounds like you're saying that even the Wiim app is limited by the AirPlay 2 standard.

 

[DryTortuga]

I can’t really say in your use case - I don’t store music files on my phone. I assume that if the WiiM app is using some built in UPnP server to “send” local files on your phone to the WiiM then the file is sent lossless up to 24/192. If you’re using Airplay then that standard doesn’t go past 24/48. Are your local phone music files greater depth than 24/48 anyway?

 

[DryTortuga]

I guess the other question is why wouldn’t you put the files under LMS on your Mac and save your phone battery?

 

[daniel.jay]

Good point, the majority of my tracks are AIFFs at 16bit/44.1khz. As for streaming from phone, it's just part of my workflow of getting new music, using the star rating system in the Music App.... compounded by the inability for Wiim to play nice w/ the Music App (as well as LMS's inability to play nice w/ playlists or the Music App or AIFFs for that matter). For example, because the Music App doesn't play nice w/ the Wiim's you can't use the Remote App to kick off music from a wired computer (tho we've now discussed that you could set the computer sound out to a wiim)

 

[DryTortuga]

Not sure whether you really mean AIFF or ALAC (basically lossless compressed AIFF), but I’m pretty sure modern LMS uses FAAD to be able to handle ALAC files. I really haven’t seen AIFF in the wild since the advent of ALAC. And the LMS Material plugin and artist/song info plugins would give you a pretty robust remote control (plus lyrics, album info, artist info, so on - poor man’s Roon) to play out to the WiiMs. I use XLD on the Mac to rip CDs to FLAC and 256K AAC at the same time. Master FLAC copy goes to LMS, AAC to the Mac Music (iTunes) library to be sucked into the cloud by iTunes MusicMatch. But the latter step is done less and less since Apple Music has most of what I would rip as long as I’m a subscriber. If I purchase digital music files, I usually go with the Qobuz store during their sales. They provide downloads in both FLAC and ALAC up to 24/192 (depending on the album). Have you tried the very old LMS plugin for iTunes to see if it still works with the latest Mac Music app for playlists?

 

[daniel.jay]

Sadly I do mean AIFF. The DJ world still loves AIFF, and it beats taking your downloads as WAVs (and Apple Music App is fine with AIFF luckily) I run a similar setup... FLACs have a dedicated library on the network, XLD is used to put things in Apple Music App. I still have iTunes Match, tho I've actually started manually syncing the iPhone to preserve full quality.

The LMS plugin now longer worked for my Apple Music needs b/c the xml file is no longer visible. You can manually export the xml, which is Ok. But some of my playlists are updating weekly (daily?) and so it isn't a great solution right now.

 

[DryTortuga]

I almost said that I don’t see AIFF’s anymore except in music production and DJ work. I did radio in Key West where a lot of the catalogs were still in MP2.