It was in the Times on Saturday. ‘Biggest development in playback of recorded sound since the switch to stereo in 1958’ etc. I paraphrase, but not much.
There have been some comments regarding the SQ in Apple Music. I have been listening to Apple Music exclusively for the last week or so with Airpods Pro Max through iPad and in my experience, I can definitely say it has better SQ compared to Qobuz. There is a better sense of soundstage and a pleasing easiness, refinement with fullness to the sound.
Hello, I own a NDX2 and I would like to make the most of the new Apple music hires. If I’m not mistaken, I can get by airplay 2 a maximum of 24-48 ( which is already not so bad ). Otherwise I have to connect my iPad to the Ndx to get 24-96 or 192. But you can’t plug it into the USB socket. So what does it do to benefit from it and with what type of connection? I know dragonfly is a device to maximize sound on headphones
Thanks for helping me
There is already a very long thread about this - good luck
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Currently they only way to get hires in to your ndx 2 would be to use it as DAC requiring a Apple camera adaptor and a USB to spdif converter. Airplay 2 only supports aac currently in Apple Music so no hires support not even lossless currently.
You may not need the camera adapter if you don’t need to power the iOS device and/or the USB to SPDIF converter is self powered - you can simply use the standard Apple Lightning to USB adapter lead
No. From what I have read it requires Apple or Beats headphones with a W1 or H1 chip like the AirPods. It displays „Dolby Atmos“ in the Apple Music App if it is enabled. Surprisingly, it is also enabled when played over the iPhone‘s built-in speakers and you really hear a difference.
yep on MacOS it does appear one needs to manually set the word size and sample rate to match the media in Apple Music using the standard Audio Midi Setup utility - it does sound better when you do this as opposed to let forcing the Mac to resample - but hardly that user friendly - not like the current iOS implementations which do appear to change with the media. I suspect this will be addressed shortly
Better soundstage could be a result of Dolby Atmos with the AirPods Pro Max. As iPhones and iPads do not support AptX but AAC with Bluetooth (other than the Mac where it can be enabled with a developer tool) any differences should be in different mastering of the Music. My impression was also that Apple Music sound quality improved when streamed with AirPlay - where it’s also converted to AAC by the Music App. But it’s hard to remember what you heard a week ago, isn‘t it 
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it’s not related to Dolby Atmos… I turned it off as for me the execution on most albums I have listened to has not been satisfying so far and I had big expectations when it was announced. On movies Dolby Atmos does wonders through supported headphones though.
The ideal solution I think would be for Apple to work with Naim to allow native Apple Music integration into devices like the Uniti Atom HE just like there currently is with Qobuz and Tidal.
I know Apple is very secretive and Naim probably can’t tell us if they’re working on something like this with Apple, but I hope they can find a way to have native Apple Music integration. It would solve a lot of issues such as the current AirPlay limitations.
Actually it works on any headphones. It’s just the automatic settings apply to Apple. You have to turn on to always to use on other headphones. This part even works over AirPlay now since it’s really just an aac stream.
On cheap wireless headphones playing new St Vincent album it didn’t sound too bad. Headphones normally sound closed in and have terrible resolution, so it gives it’s the allusion of more space. I’m going to assume this is the target market for this setting.
Now when I tried with my Focal Utopia’s on the Uniti Atom HE, it made the already compressed AirPlay file sound even worse. There was more space but the music lost all its energy. It seems like that setting is more of a special effects setting. Artificial 3D. Perhaps if a live album was recorded with it, it might have potential but it’s still lossy. On a good setup, traditional recordings already have depth and soundstage. But on cheap flat sounding headphones, this seems like an improvement.
The Atmos setting makes thinks quieter on the few albums I tried, unfortunately turning it off I got a higher volume which was a bit jarring when listening on Airpods.
Think it’s only being promoted since it’s an easy one to tell the difference and can have a wow factor. You also don’t need special equipment. I can see how it could be used as another production tool to give cool sound effects, especially for electronic music.
Back in the 70’s my dad had a Quadraphonic Zenith stereo. He had a few special records that were recorded in 4 channel and was pretty cool at the time. So spatial audio in music really isn’t something new. It’s like how they keep trying 3D movies over and over each decade.
There’s already binaural recording that achieve spatial audio but that needs to be used in the recording process on a dummy head. Pearl Jam’s Binaural album is probably the most known album. It’s effects weren’t that great but the producer of that album has recorded other albums, like a live one from a cave and it’s an interesting listen.
It sounds surprisingly good on my AirPods which I usually use für conference calls but not to listen to music. Haven’t tried on better headphones yet.
So far I only listened to binaural Jazz. Thanks for the recommendation.
Not sure if you’ll be too impressed with the sound quality. Let me see if I can find the other one from the cave. I had to special order it. It’s an instrumental and more like binaural test where player are walking around and can hear the water dripping. It’s cool but not something you’d listen that often. The musicians are all famous. Bass player worked with Peter Gabriel and King Crimson.
It’s actually a nice listen on my current setup and haven’t listened in years until now. And now can just direct download from bandcamp.
Just tried “Dolby Atmos: Always On” on my B&W P7W headphones and it sounds terrible.