Apple TV Airplay Audio Quality

[Simm0nS777]

Just a quick question I hope someone can answer for me. When streaming to the Apple TV 2 from a computer or iPhone is the song quality downgraded?

Basically I want to know if all my music is in Apple Lossless format is that what I'm getting when I stream to my Apple TV or is it being downgraded to a lesser quality like 256?

I'm an audio noob so this may be common knowledge but I have no idea so thanks for the help!!!

 

[Simm0nS777]

Anyone?!??!?!

 

[T5BRICK]

I'm no expert on audio quality, I don't even have any lossless files, but I did a quick google search because I'm curious about this too.

Apparently AirPlay doesn't do any transcoding, so whatever goes in, comes out the other side.

There is a little discussion about the AppleTV specifically, and I guess it DOES downsample? Like I said, I'm not exactly informed when it comes to this topic.

Here is one of the threads I found:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1304067/

 

[Roy G Biv]

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2630381?start=0&tstart=0

ALAC certainly doesn't seem to be a problem.

 

[steve-p]

If your music is lossless then Airplay itself does not alter it in any way. Airplay audio has always been converted to lossless on the fly anyway, it is designed to not degrade the audio at all. However, ATV2 and 3 can only output 48KHz and not 44.1KHz, so your 44.1KHz lossless audio is reaching ATV exactly as it is on your computer, but then ATV is converting it to 48KHz for no obvious reason. The effect may be negligible or inaudible, nevertheless nearly every sample is needlessly interpolated compared to the source recording. It's still better than any lossy codec of course, and it probably doesn't produce any audible difference, but it would be good if Apple would stop doing this pointless conversion, and just output the 44.1Khz audio, like ATV1 did. Then everyone would be happy.

 

[jtrenthacker]

If your music is lossless then Airplay itself does not alter it in any way. Airplay audio has always been converted to lossless on the fly anyway, it is designed to not degrade the audio at all. However, ATV2 and 3 can only output 48KHz and not 44.1KHz, so your 44.1KHz lossless audio is reaching ATV exactly as it is on your computer, but then ATV is converting it to 48KHz for no obvious reason. The effect may be negligible or inaudible, nevertheless nearly every sample is needlessly interpolated compared to the source recording. It's still better than any lossy codec of course, and it probably doesn't produce any audible difference, but it would be good if Apple would stop doing this pointless conversion, and just output the 44.1Khz audio, like ATV1 did. Then everyone would be happy.

I wish they would make the ATV capable of 24/96 playback. I would think that they could do that with an update, no?