I’ve a month left on my Apple Music 3 month trial and have tried every way I can think of to stream high res music:- the Apple Music app on a Mac Mini with losslessswitcher (glitchy); An iPad connected via a Dragonfly Red to my SuperUniti (no remote control) and AirPlay 2 to a WiiM Pro (lossy). Even if they work none of them have the same ease of use as Qobuz, Tidal, etc.
The only things that keep me trying are a) the convenience of using it alongside Apple TV in a mostly all Apple household and b) I do like the Classical app.
Has anyone had better luck or is it time to move on until Apple come to their senses?
I use iPad to connect directly to my Linn Klimax DSM/3 via USB-C (on iPad) to USB-B (input to the streamer) to play Qobuz Connect, Spotify Connect. Doing it this way allows me to use the Spotify or the Qobuz app on my iPhone or my MacBook as a remote control.
i.e.
iPad → USB-C → USB-B → Linn Klimax DSM/3
Spotify or Qobuz app running on my iPad
Spotify or Qobuz app running on my iPhone/MacBook playing on myiPad.
The problem is that the Apple Music does not offer this flexibility as the Connect technology.
I have enjoyed Apple Music, I was using it a lot when I was doing a lot of travelling for work.
However I do find the fact they don’t licence their libraries and APIs to other platforms (other than PC) ultimately limiting… and I think that they, Apple, are missing a trick.. and I suggest you might want to move on..
We are not in the 1990s any more with our streaming, most of us don’t want bits and pieces cobbled together.
It has always been like that. Apple prefers a more or less closed ecosystem (hardware, software, protocols, standards etc.) that they control. They have this policy for all their products.
Yeah, but world has kind of moved on, and there all sorts of industry methods of protection now and Apple use standard protocols when it suits them… but this limits their commercial opportunity to my mind in quality music replay.. perhaps it suits a company with more than enough money… and gives its competition a continued great opportunity… Apple’s loss and as a consequence is not really taken seriously in the quality/hifi music replay world, but for casual replay it is number 2 in the world behind Spotify so I read albeit a very distant second.
Thanks everyone for the replies. I’m a bit hesitant to buy extra hardware to play Apple Music - partly because I don’t trust Apple not to make changes that would render any such hardware obsolete.
I agree it is time to move on, probably to Qobuz or Tidal - they must both be hoping that Apple doesn’t come to its senses one day.
Ah, OK. Don’t use Spotify myself and I know Linn currently doesn’t support Qobuz Connect. It was hinted that they may be working on adding Q Connect at an audio show this summer, but nothing yet. They seem to me to be a bit behind the curve, but perhaps in their own good time …
I’ve seen that mentioned before, but not seen a source for the information. Qobuz had a stand at the North West Audio show this summer and I raised Linn’s lack of support for Q Connect with them. Whilst not explicitly saying it was imminent, they did give athe impression that it would be coming. But that was Qobuz, not Linn, so not sure how seriously to take it.
If you play Qobuz Connect via direct iPhone/iPad USB-c to USB-b or HDMI, you can see that the Klimax streamer displays true lossless streaming, for example I see PCM 192/24, 96/24, etc. from the screen, Spotify as PCM 44.1/24 as expected.
Spoke to Collin (Linn Helpdesk) a number of times regarding the Qobuz Connect support, no joy so far.