Though presumably Spotify are the only service Naim could currently integrate hi res natively?
We have native high-resolution Qobuz already. If/when TIDAL and Spotify offer high-res, weād address that iām sureā¦ (and no, iām not getting into an MQA discussion!)
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Yes, sorry I meant only Spotify out of Apple/Amazon/Spotify. I already have Apple Music, Qobuz and Tidal subscriptions. Never used Spotify, by all accounts a good user experience though.
As noted previously, Amazon Music HD is on our wishlist, too.
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Just checked and my previous 14.99 a month has been reduced to 9.99 from next payment date.
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Iāve just seen that tvOS will be able to play hi-res audio, presumably over HDMI unless they open up the Airplay 2 specs.
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The more options the merrier I suppose. As a consumer it does feel as though oligopolies may be approaching when it comes to streaming providers which may not be so good. Lowering prices across the board will be beneficial, especially if we find some services complementary due to different catalogues as more people will entertain more than a single subscription.
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Certainly puts the ball in Spotifyās court re Spotify Hi-fi pricing, when that launches.
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@Richard.Dane With the recent rumours about a planned lossless Apple Music to counter Spotify HiFi, it would be interesting to learn what resolution and audio formats are supported by Apple AirPlay 2 and especially on the Naim Unity family. There used to be a specification of AirPlay on the Apple website, but with the introduction of AirPlay 2 it vanished. As far as I remember, AirPlay 1 supports 16 Bit / 44.1 kHz and 24 Bit / 44 kHz with lossless ALAC and would be good for CD quality but not real High Res.
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If Apple Music do release a 16/44.1 lossless stream AirPlay will be able to stream it.
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Best I could find after brief search in www is this slide referred to in following link
Slide is at 35 min 29 sec
It is referenced in a number of forums on this topic
@Richard.Dane please delete if link not allowed
Slide referenced in post above.
Most seem to accept/suggest an upper limit of 24 bit at 48 kHz
The references are a bit old so may have been updated.
@Orac, thanks for the link. On the slide it says ā All platform-supported audio formats e.g. LPCM, AAC, mp3, or ALAC e.g. 44.1 kHZ or 48 kHZ various bit depthsā. But I couldnāt find anything on the maximum resolution and what the iOS and MacOS devices do before streaming to the audio renderer. I.e. converting to ALAC or AAC 16 Bit / 44.1 kHz or stream in whatever format is delivered from the app like e.g. FLAC 24 Bit / 96 kHz.
@Joamato, if you do a search for something like Apple airplay2 bitrate you will get hits for various forums where folks are talking about your query. There is not much detail there and apart from the slide referenced nothing definitive from Apple. Some people indicate that there seems to be a bit of down-sampling going on when the stream presented is above those given in the slide.
Sorry canāt be much more help here. As indicated above perhaps some of the techie types from Naim can give more detail as to how it might work in a Naim centric environment.
As long as Apple priorities ease of use over functionality, I would be surprised if they increase bandwith. However, displaying the Audio format and bitrate in AirPlay Mode in the Naim app and internal website would be helpful.
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Not sure if bandwidth is the issue here. Airplay2 WiFi can facilitate video so the bandwidth should be fairly large. It is more about which codecs/containers the link can facilitate. Appleās previous take on this is more aligned to their environment and less on what is available. Just my take and hopefully Apple will be more accommodating in this.
Youāre right. Bandwith and bitrate shouldnāt be an issues with modern mobile devices and 802.11ac WiFi. Even battery shouldnāt be an issue any more. Most probably the only reason for not supporting High Res is missing customer demand, because the majority of customers do not have the equipment to hear differences between a good mastered AAC, ALAC and High Res audio and Apple might just following the industry trend Tidal, Amazon and Spotify started.
AirPods Max although with interesting technical features might be too expensive but not expensive enough for the audiophiles and as John Darko recently remembered us, Bluetooth - even with AptX HD - is not lossless. And then thereās the design ā¦
Anyway, I am curious to compare Apple Music HiFi with Qobuz HiRes on Naim streamers. Therefore the question to Naim about the potential limitations of AirPlay 2 on Naim streamers.
Tested that of course. So far there is a substantial difference between ānativeā streaming of Qobuz through the Naim app - sounds best - and the Qobuz app streaming via AirPlay.
What even surprised Damien Plisson is that Qobuz streamed with the Naim app sounds better than streamed through Audirvana which decodes Hires FLAC to PCM and streams PCM through UPNP to the Unity Nova.