Hifi music player for mac mini update#
Hifi music player for mac mini android#

The AudioQuest DragonFlyвЂ™s LED colour coded LED glows magenta to indicate 96kHz. Punching in Neil YoungвЂ™s Rust Never SleepsВ puts AppleвЂ™s вЂhi-res losslessвЂ™ logo on the Now Playing screen but it tells us nothing about the streamвЂ™s sample rate or bit depth until we press that logo. There are only lossless (CD-quality) streaming services with a sprinkling of hi-res-encoded titles - typically less than 10% of the total library. If youвЂ™re frustrated by the paucity of hi-res audio content on Apple Music, consider this: there is no such thing as a hi-res streaming service.

Neil Young is a good starting point but only a few of his albums are marked as вЂhi-res losslessвЂ™. Apple Music gives us no way to slice their catalogue by sample rate so we have to go a-huntinвЂ™ and a-peckinвЂ™. The next step is to find some of that hi-res lossless content.

Hifi music player for mac mini update#

(LetвЂ™s get it out of the way early: the Apple Remote app cannot control Apple Music streaming, only locally stored audio.)Д«efore we hook up the hardware, we must update to iOS 14.6 and then activate the вЂhi-res losslessвЂ™ option in the Apple Music settings pane: look for the drop-down menu item that indicates access to 24bit/96kHz and 24bit/192kHz content. What follows will also work with an iPhone but I think the iPadвЂ™s larger touchscreen is better suited to hifi system hookups, largely because Apple MusicвЂ™s album cover art display is more easily seen from the listening position. iPad Pro and 2020 iPad Air users whose devices rock a USB-C port can skip out on the CCK. The latter is sometimes referred to as the Camera Connection Kit or CCK. That leaves us with one way to tap Apple MusicвЂ™s вЂhi-res losslessвЂ™ content: an iPad, connected to a USB DAC with AppleвЂ™s Lightning-to-USB adapter.

Hifi music player for mac mini android#

To recap briefly: AirPlay and Apple TV OS are limited to 24bit/48kHz, macOS doesnвЂ™t offer automatic sample rate switching, Android resamples all audio to 48kHz and Google Chromecast doesnвЂ™t do gapless playback. In my previous post on hi-res audio on Apple Music, I detailed how AppleвЂ™s вЂhi-res losslessвЂ™ content вЂ“ 24bit/96kHz or 24bit/192kHz streams вЂ“ can be downsampled or resampled by the playback hardware before it reaches the DAC, often unbeknownst to the end-user.