Wonder if my whole house fitted with Sonos will?
Hoping so. It would appear Sonos already supports 24-bit ALAC, so should really be able to take advantage of the extra bandwidth: https://support.sonos.com/s/article/79?language=en_US
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HomePod Will Support Spatial Audio for Apple Music, But Not Lossless Audio
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Hoping so. It would appear Sonos already supports 24-bit ALAC, so should really be able to take advantage of the extra bandwidth: https://support.sonos.com/s/article/79?language=en_US
I think Bluetooth technically has enough bandwidth, but maybe not enough when there is a lot of interference.
I think lossless audio is misunderstood as much as video qualities. For instance, 4K streaming quality vs HD Blu-ray quality. Maybe this is similar to having 12Bit Dolby Vision but only 10Bit panels. Maybe the Homepod doesn't have the resolution to reproduce the lossless audio although it could accept a lossless stream from a device over Airplay. And this would still sound better than an AAC stream, but to be on the safe side they don't want to say they support it.
...any current devices, is what I'm sure you meant to say! Timing is suspicious, almost like they have a device waiting to be revealed at an event in early June. An event like...WWDC!
(or they screwed up again)
A new upgrade cycle! Those who care about the quality of music will have to buy new Macs whose DAC supports higher sampling rates. There will be new HomePods supporting the lossless audio; that’s probably why Apple discontinued the full-size HomePod.
HomePod Pro. Now with lossless audio and Alexa. $899.99
192kHz sampling is truly unnecessary for audio delivery. It's waste of resources and a data hog. In fact, even 24 bit audio is completely unnecessary for listening and may be marginally beneficial for studio work. 16 bit is more than adequate for end delivery as it has orders of magnitude less noise than the best studio analog tape on the market. The difference in noise floor between 16 bit and 24 bit audio is completely inaudible to anyone that's actually humanoid. It's been proven in several double blind studies that nobody can hear the difference between 44.1k/16 bit audio and any formats with higher sample rates and bit depth. Extreme sample rates and high bit depths just suck up bandwidth with no audible benefit.
This makes no sense, hasn't HomePod ALWAYS supported lossless playback since launch? It was widely reported at the time of launch.
Apparently it won’t work over a wired connection either. At least with any apple products.
I’m confused too. What the point if you dont have any products that support it. Just a nerdy gimmick for people that have lossless setups?
Because like airpods, homepods are wireless. Lossless audio rarely supports wireless devices.
Sonos is wireless. Sonos supports lossless audio. Bluetooth cannot support lossless, but anything that operates on Wifi should be able to handle the bitrate with no problem, unless your wireless router is REALLY old. (Like Wireless B old).
The Homepods should absolutely be able to support lossless audio, and the fact that they don't is a huge miss if true.
I always thought they were selling it as a hifi speaker as well. Guess it was just an expensive speaker
Any wired pair of headphones can play high resolution audio, it’s an analog device. The bottleneck would be the drivers on the $20 headphones, but there’s no limitation or anything preventing a wired cable from carrying high res music.
The limiting factor here is the built-in DAC inside the HomePod, Not the wireless connection itself.
You can stream lossless over WiFi. There’s no excuse for not supporting it unless the S5 in HomePod mini and a 7 year old A8 chip in the HomePod can’t support it.
probably not, unless apple extend the AirPlay spec. as far as im aware (may be out dated) but AirPlay (just the audio one) transmit audio at 44.1KHz 16bit ALAC and whilst that's technically lossless, its not the 48KHz/24bit of apples lower lossless their and a bit farther from their higher one
The HomePod may be great and all, but it was never a true Hi-Fi system. There's no use streaming lossless unless your speakers can benefit from it. Otherwise the only change is how much data is used while streaming. If you want to listen to and appreciate lossless audio, you need either a high end set of speakers (Klipsch, Pioneer, AudioEngine, come to mind) with a receiver, or else high-end headphones with a *wired* connection to a quality DAC.
Streaming lossless has always been like this, it's nothing new. Apple just doesn't really have any Hi-Fi products. They've targeted the convenience market over the audiophile market up till now. Audiophiles who already have Hi-Fi systems will benefit from Apple Music lossless, but for anyone else the overhead for enjoying lossless hasn't changed.
Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio will be the big difference for the average user.
Streaming lossless has always been like this, it's nothing new. Apple just doesn't really have any Hi-Fi products. They've targeted the convenience market over the audiophile market up till now. Audiophiles who already have Hi-Fi systems will benefit from Apple Music lossless, but for anyone else the overhead for enjoying lossless hasn't changed.
Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio will be the big difference for the average user.
Why is the DAC inside a $350 speaker worse than an iPhone?
The LSX allows 48KHZ/24bit wireless connectivity, 96KHZ/24bit when wired.