Lovely and I don’t know about other markets but they are heavily reduced at the moment.
Just for @Skepical I do prefer knobs on audio equipment
How will you get the digital audio into that given most recent models don’t have Toslink?
HDMI to TV and digital TV out or AV amp and digital outputs?
Apple Music has supported better than CD quality on AppleTV for a few years but only over HDMI and not to the max available from memory.
We have a Family Apple Music subscription but I’m not particularly keen on the interface if I’m honest.
Oooh! 
Typo there. @Skeptikal
Odd isn’t it - that Neo was extremely good value at £599, I was wondering about getting one for the family though possibly upping SSD to 512GB. Not quite sure the screen is big enough for me with my ageing eyesight though. Might well be fine, I’ve always preferred desktops to laptops or tablets for some reason.
An extra £100 on a product that has sold unexpectedly well seems superficially like profiteering to me - £100 may not be a huge amount to some but I think it may put many people off, or at least reconsider what an extra £100 would allow for on a Windows machine.
1/2 price new (-:
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Yes, I have a NEO , there was a serious software issue with it and it took about two hours to sort out and some documents seem to have disappeared
Thanks for the @Skeptikal comment , I’ll repeat the comment
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Apple TV to HDMI Audio Extractor. Splits to TV and to DAC. DAC to analog amp.
Other
Apple TV HDMI to TV. TV audio output to DAC to amp.
I haven’t decided
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Having had a Macbook Air with 8GB and 256GB SSD some years ago I couldn’t recommend that spec to anyone with Mac OS. Barely enough room for the OS and a few apps, and 8GB of RAM is nowhere near enough. 16GB and 512GB are the absolute minimum to be usable IMO. It doesn’t look quite so sleek when you have an external drive permanently hooked up to it…
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you could live with the 256 of storage, but 8GB of RAM just doesn’t cut it. That said, it’s on the A18 pro chip - they could have tweaked it to run with less RAM
my guess is those are fine for a year or two, but then will become obsolete to a lot of apps - think Teams and such for VC
I have an M1 2020 Macbook Air and the Neo is .3 inch smaller, so not much difference.
Like you I was thinking it would be ok as a next move and yes I would have gone for the larger drive.
It would be nice to change but the Air still works well and they don’t need my money. They do well out of us as a family, but my wife is considering going another route as she won’t pay £600 for a iphone 16e (although it’s on offer at £500)
It’s like hifi, I’m in the market for some new kit, but even a Naim Atom is way beyond what I’m prepared to spend at this time.
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And I believe limited to 48/24, primarily the audio sample rate used for video.
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I use this mode… my digital audio bridge is effectively my LG TV and seems to be of a descent quality with its re clocking. I use Toslink between the LG and my NDX2/DAVE
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That was it, turned it on ages ago but don’t use Apple Music much.
I probably wouldn’t benefit much anyway as I use the main AppleTV via a pretty old BenQ projector which has poor audio and no decent audio out, so I generally Airplay any audio to the Nova and take its analogue out to the main system (never planned this as a system configuration but it works). Airplay sounds very good to me despite not supporting hi-res currently, but this is me potentially being distracted by the visuals which make any AV content more immersive.
Have an old Pioneer AV amp nwith 4k HDMI passthrough but connecting via that last time I tried was a chore and settings wouldn’t stick - something for another day maybe. The Pioneer is well over a decade old and I used to use it for 5.0 AV duties (no subwoofer), but these days I mainly watch AV stuff in stereo.
Agreed
The reason for considering option one is if I stick with my 20 old 720p plasma.
If i buy a 4k LG OLED, I want the ATV connected directly to the TV for optimal video quality, then audio out from there
AirPlay is fine… but it certainly is quite a distance away from a good quality SPDIF stream into a quality DAC .. even at 44.1/16 … for immersive, nuanced experiences and listens…it just sounds artificial.
It’s a shame Apple seem to limit the accessibility of their HD streaming… anyway I guess others gain… and I likely about to pull the plug on my Apple Music subscription… this being one of the reasons..
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I’m totally OK with Apple Music. It’s part of my Apple One Family package and my wife & kids use Apple Music as part of the package. I also subscribe to Qobuz.
Built in to Apple Music is Tunein
in Apple Notes I created an folder for hyperlinks to some of my favourite internet radio stations played through Apple Music. I’m all about the integration, especially for mobile use
I’ll be adding another 10 or so internet radio stations
This widget is on my iPhone home screen
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I’ve been tempted to ditch it too - Mrs AC and son don’t use it. I may have configured some old Alexa devices to use Apple Music as audio source since Amazon Prime Music went downhill and won’t play albums.
Daughter uses it a lot but apparently if I ditch the Family subscription she will lose all her curated playlists/favourites even if she takes on a student plan subscription. Maybe there’s a utility to get around this.
Bought loads of TV/Movies/music vids/audio in iTunes years ago which i can largely still access or have downloaded, but have purchased very little for many years, maybe the odd movie rental for the kids I’d not want to buy.
It seems ironic that the tech companies are contributing to inflation with price rises to help pay for their gargantuan capex plans, but the business model those plans are based on is damaged by inflation.
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I’ve used Amazon to buy renewed iPhones and have had no issues with the “As new” description of what I’ve received. The saving is about 10%, I think, which is useful. CEX too - and of course you can actually inspect a prospective purchase in your local shop with that retailer. Similar savings.
As to which model, you’ll find slightly larger screens are a given from your iPhone 11, without having to go down the “Max” route. The Max - I find - is too big to hold and type in one hand. I have a similarly aged iPad for when I need a larger screen. This seems a good compromise. The Pro models are a bit pricier, but invariably have better cameras, should that be important to you. If not, just choose the base model. For reference, I have an iPhone 15 Pro and feel no need to upgrade.
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