airplay supports lossless with ALAC only when the source has sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. So Hi-Res will not be lossless. If you have the age old Airport express, then they support losless as long as your source has sampling rate of 44.1 kHz.
ATV resamples everything to 48 kHz. So it is not bit-perfect. It has been made for watching movies and the movie industry uses 48 kHz for audio. So forget about ATV ever supporting sampling rate other than 48 kHz.
macbooks can play bit-perfect if you use the earphone out (ha ha). Who does that?
macbooks can play bit-perfect to a connected usb dac if you change the sampling rate using 'Audio Midi Setup' app to match the source every time the source changes. The macOS is so dumb that it cannot change sampling rate automatically. I use mac mini and macbook pro and am terribly upset that my < Rs 40k linux laptop can play music better than my 2 lac+ macbook pro.
The only option you have is to use ipad or iphone (the one with IOS that support Apple Music) and connect to your DAC using the camera connection kit. Only the later IOS version have the ability to automatically adjust the sampling rate as per the source (which Windows and Linux had it for ages). But I think I have OCD. I can never imagine myself using a mobile device to connect to my rig in order to play music.
For a long long time, apple decided that what the users need is mp3 at 320 kpbs and anything more than that users cannot hear. That was the age of the IPODS. Now with streaming services overtaking digital sales, the giant has woken up. But it will take time for them to catch up. I have both apple music and spotify premium and I don't think I will renew my apple subscription next year unless they fix their lossless mess.
Part 1
This morning I've been testing Apple Music's new lossless and Hi-Res offerings on both my iPhone 12 Pro running iOS 14.6 and my Mac Mini (M1) running macOS 11.4. In my tests, I'm only concerned with playing the music bit perfectly, in other words without making any changes to the audio. If Apple ...
audiophilestyle.com
Part 2
Earlier this month I dug into Apple Music's Lossless and Hi-Res offerings, running several bit perfect rests on the audio output of my Macs and iOS devices. The results were less than stellar (link). This week I dug into Apple Music lossless over AirPlay. One would think that the results would be...
audiophilestyle.com
The promise of Apple's hi-res audio supply is strong but the reality unearths gotcha after gotcha.
darko.audio