Apple Music Distorting over airplay

[Bmwtye]

I have a brand new apple tv 4k that i connected via HDMI to my receiver. i also have it connected via cat 8 to my router. i have 1gb internet so no issues with not enough bandwidth.

when i try to play audio from my apple music on my iphone, the music is always distorted. both devices are on the latest software.

The only time i have distortion is with airplaying from my phone. i am less than 10 feet from the apple tv 4k as well. This is a very high end system composed of Anthem and B&W’s latest 800 series speakers.

any ideas why audio distorts over airplay?

 

[waw74]

what exactly do you mean by distorted?
is it clipping (the signal is too loud, so it's getting cut off).
there's nothing in airplay that should cause it to do that, it's digital, it either works or it doesn't.


can you listen to the same songs at the same volume using the music app on the AppleTV?
try turning the amp volume off and the TV volume up, how does it sound coming out of the TV (this may or may not work depending on your system layout)
if you hook the aTV up directly to your TV does it still have issues?

you can have your phone act as a remote for the Apple TV, if you go into the airplay settings, and choose control other speakers, and then pick your appleTV on that list, Now the music app on your phone directly controls the player on the appleTV, so no audio is being relayed through your phone,


this Is only a guess, but sometimes audio amps will give you different settings depending on what kind of signal is going in. music will be sent as stereo, while most other things on appleTV or not, so it's possible your amp is doing something strange to stereo.

 

[Bmwtye]

Here is a link to the video so you can hear it. The volume on the receiver is turned wayyyy down:

The same result occurs whether I airplay from my phone, or go into ATV and select music and play there.

If I airplay to a different TV in the house that has built in airplay 2, there is no issues with this occurring.

Given this only occurs with music (doesn't occur with Netflix, Apple TV, and doesn't occur if I steam a video from my phone via airplay) what is occurring here?

 

[waw74]

in the audio settings on the aTV, have you tried changing auto format, and audio mode, and seeing if that changes anything?

have you tried rebooting everything, aTV, TV, receiver

can you try YouTube? see if it happens to all stereo sources
does your amp have a way to see what kind of signal is coming in? and see if the problem only exists for certain flavors of audio.

also the aTV does audio a little weird, it converts to PCM, you might want to look around in the settings in your receiver.
I pass audio though my TV, but it has settings for the HDMI inputs and E-ARC outputs related to sound format. Might not apply to the receiver though.