I was kind of hoping the ios15.1 would have also made a change to how Airplay 2 works with Apple Music. What would be nice if if they allowed other companies to use HomePod streaming as an Apple Connect type thing instead of using Airplay. Maybe they’ll at least improve HomePod to have digital outputs to be like how that chromecast puck device used to work.
They have scraped the Homepods though I thought?
Yes they have… I have 4 HomePod minis (never had the larger HomePod), and they are very slick and super handy, but pointless in terms of being “lossless” or “hi res” capable… simply not resolving enough to make a blind bit of difference.
However, what I can do with them (and what gives me some hope for a better Apple Music implementation) is this:
On my iPhone, I can pick and choose what to play from Apple Music on one of the HomePods, without my iPhone actually playing any part in the streaming path (like Spotify/Tidal connect functionality).
All it would take is for Apple to get that capability to third parties. A long shot, for sure, but one which I am hoping will be realised.
Well it seems if they went thru the effort of making them lossless, shows they have some kind of future plans. As you said, lossless on those little speakers makes no difference. Perhaps they’ll use this tech for lossless wireless headphones. I know lossless bluetooth is coming out but seems like Apple like to use their own tech instead. Or perhaps they give us lossless over Airplay eventually. For now I’ll stick with roon/Qobuz and patiently wait for Spotify Hifi. Seems they’re in no hurry at this point.
Thanks for explanation.
I recently acquired a new iPad Air with 3 months free Apple Music but the drop in quality playing to my ND5XS2 via Airplay2 instead of any source via Naim app is considerable. A deal breaker for me for Apple Music, free or not, compared to Deezer, Qobuz, or Tidal.
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I prefer Qubuz via the Naim app and found it considerable better than compressed MQA Tidal when I had both on a test subscription. However, Apple Music on the iPhone with AirPlay, CarPlay and Bluetooth headphones wins for convenience and functionality especially on the move, so I end up with two subscriptions and are still waiting for Apple to enhance Apple Music App and AirPlay to support HiRes.
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I have subscribed to Apple music for many years and use airplay to stream music from MacBook to my recently bought nd5xs2. I love the ease of use and satisfied with sq but when I get round to it I will certainly try one of the other providers. I don’t use wired connection so it will be interesting to see if noticeable upgrade in sq.
So will Apples update to 15.1 next week on iOS solve the Airplay 2 problem of only playing AAC and not lossless?
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MacWorld.com writes
“…
Lossless audio for HomePod
Apple previously announced that lossless audio support for Apple Music would be coming to HomePod in iOS 15, but after making an appearance weeks ago in the third iOS 15 beta, it disappeared. Now it’s back. The HomePod beta is invitation only, but 9to5Mac has confirmed that in the 15.1 beta you can find the option inside the Home Settings of the Home app, then tapping the Apple Music tab.
…”
We’ll see if this also works for other devices like the Naim streamers. The challenge here is that we can’t see it in the Naim app, because it does not display the format and resolution for AirPlay and we have to ask @Stevesky again. I found it hard to decide in a blind A/B comparison with HighRes Qobuz because AppleMusic with AirPlay is a bit louder and you can’t easily switch between the sources.
It’s for Homepods only. They don’t use Airplay for Apple Music it’s a direct stream from AM to the device.
Really? Why did they do that if AirPlay is available?
Because you don’t need to keep you phone or iPad alive to stream on them and this follows.what other speakers all do that don’t use BT or Airplay. Which is the poor thing about airplay you phone dies so does the streaming.
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I don’t have a HomePod, but from what I read it supports:
- Direct streaming from AppleMusic
- Stream music from an Apple device (iPhone, Mac, …) with AirPlay - lossless available in 15.1 beta.
From an Apple user‘s point of view - if your phone dies, you die. 
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Airplay streaming is still not lossless and remains unchanged the direct streaming via the Homepods is know lossless in 15.1 beta. Don’t get the two confused they are very different.
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Moving very slightly off-topic, I had now found perfect streaming solutions…3 of them 
Quite seriously, I have an iPhone / iPad Pro and a 2015 MacBook Pro (with optical out), all of which give me perfect lossless streaming into my SN3 via a Qutest which I find superb.
Arguably, the sound from Optical out on the Mac is marginally better, but I have to manually adjust the bitrate in the Midi App, so it is easier to use USB (via the Apple Lightning > USB adapter) and the iOS device’s output bit rate is detected by the Qutest and clearly visible via the coloured lights. To me, the output from the iPad Pro is also better than that from the iPhone, although output bitrates are identical. Apple Lossless is varying between 96hz and 44hz, depending on the track, but comparing directly with qobuz, I would say it equals, frequently exceeds qobuz for sound quality. Apple also has far more tracks that are higher bitrate so I no longer feel the need to pay for an annual qobuz subscription.
For anyone looking for streaming, I would suggest that an iPad Pro, used or s/h is a very versatile option that can be very useful for many other things too. It will also support Qobuz and Tidal for those that use it.
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So I’ve installed HomePod OS version 15.1 and it can play Apple Music in lossless. What I’m intrigued about is whether I can stream Apple Music from the Homepod to an Airplay 2 compatible client such as my Atom or ND5 XS2 in “lossless” (I know the maximum possible airplay stream quality is lossless 16bit 44.1 khz). There doesn’t appear to be anyway of observing the output quality in the Naim app (nor other equivalent apps I have such as Sonos for my soundbar).
The answer is no. The homepod doesn’t stream via Airplay2 it pulls streams directly from AM it can’t send out it’s a receiver only. You ndx2 will be getting stream via Airplay2 from the sending device so will be aac.
This method just seems such a backwards step and much like how we all had to do things before streamers with streaming services where a thing.
Hi there, if I issue the Siri command “Hey Siri, play [song] on the Atom”, the HomePod streams Apple Music to the Atom via Airplay 2 (the HomePod can be a source). I just want to know if the streams derived from the HomePod are lossless as clients conceal that information about airplay streams.
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