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Oh… now we’re takling about smart features, could we also make it so playback from my MacBook Pro to my AirPods Pro using Music will not get interrupted/stutter/distort just because I use my Magic Mouse/Keyboard? That would be really awesome - especially because it has been working!
 
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There is literally no benefit to 24/192 outside of the mixing environment. 16/44.1 is enough to flawlessly reproduce any frequency in our hearing range.
Avoiding unnecessary re-encoding is a good idea anyway, if your network can meet the bandwidth requirements.
Music won't remember your play history across devices. Why do they make this fancy iCloud thing just to let each device be its own silo?
It does tend to eventually achieve consistency if you use apple music, but not for local libraries.
Me neither but it's going to be a long time before upgrade cycles bring this to a decent percentage of hotels let alone AirBnBs. Wish they'd thought of this a little earlier.
It does seem surprising that smart TVs don’t bundle shairport-sync, which is permissively licenced. Sure, it’s officially unsupported, but then ao are most features of your average smart TV.
 
Maybe, but most issues with AirPlay are caused by the local network. AirPlay with video needs quite some bandwidth and fast connection. When using wifi for video streaming you need at least Wifi 5 and a basestation that is placed on the right spot in the house. Video streaming usually doesn't work reliable on Wifi 4 (802.11n) or lower.

Some other factors that cause a lot of trouble:
- Many neighbouring wifi stations. Even mesh networks can be troublesome.
- Having a lot of wifi devices/clients on the same network. Especially when there are clients with wifi 4 or even lower on the network; that has a great impact.
- Base-stations, modems or switches that do not handle QoS/IGMP traffic correctly. I had a cheap switch that did not support IPv6 traffic correctly - that has great impact on AirPlay too.
Through the years, I've tried 3-4 various routers, 3-4 iPhone models, 3 Apple TV models, in 3 different homes. Always had the same problems. It's a hit or miss, basically. When it works, it's great, when it doesn't it's just very frustrating.

Right now I have a Wi-Fi 6 network and my Apple TV is next to the router and I think it's also connected with Ethernet. I do think I have ideal conditions, although as I said it's a hit or miss.
 
Regardless of your opinion on high resolution audio, and yes, it's your opinion, Apple Music offers many albums in the higher Rez format so it makes sense for them to allow said files to be streamed as intended over Airplay.

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Sorry to burst your bubble, but it is in fact not an opinion. It's how it works, quite literally. I happen to be an electrical engineer who has done some work in audio design. The people who picked 16-bit and 44.1Khz actually did their homework while creating that spec.

I recommend watching this video which does a great demonstration of the signal path from analog to digital and back to analog.

The only reason apple and others provide music in any format that is "higher quality" than that is because people who don't understand the science behind it ask for it and the technology can do it. Most companies will never turn away an opportunity to sell to yet another market or try to bolster their brand saying theirs is better.

I will add one caveat, some humans can hear up to 28khz, however that is a very small sample of the population, and falls off pretty hard at 15Khz for most. As you age, the upper limit goes down as well. Point being, yes there are outliers here, but the people who would notice are very few, and this is before considering what the playback equipment/room do to the sound. The only reason higher sampling and bit depth is useful for production is because it makes mixing and running through filters easier and less lossy so you can have a better 16-bit/44.1khz output in the mixdown.

If you want to go deeper: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
 
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But what if you want to AirPlay 4K movies with atmos soundtrack, as Wifi gets faster and faster Apple may as well let us stream audio in that quality. We are already up to gigabit wifi last I checked, as long as you have compatible router and devices.
What does ATMOS or 4K video have to do with the sampling and bit depth of an audio track? If there is no benefit though, why waste the bandwidth that could be used for something that's actually helpful?
 
while AirPlaying from my iPhone, the HomePod decides to take over the playback, i.e. streaming from internet rather than my iPhone playing to the HomePod.
This is actually the behavior I would prefer. It would mean, for example, that the music would keep playing even as I use my phone to do other things. Instead, far too often instead the iPhone is streaming to the Airplay target, and as I do things, such as browsing the web, it interrupts that play. As a iTunes Match subscriber, the only way my HomePod streams directly from the ‘net is if I initiate the music on the HomePod with a direct Siri command. Any other approach streams from the iPhone.

I find the Now Playing UX to be pretty bad in iOS. In trying to Airplay, I end up in several levels of popup screens with no clear way back, as dismissing each screen requires a different gesture. IIRC one of them has no way to be dismissed other than tapping outside its borders on the screen? There’s also the bizarre decision that reselecting the same target device turns off Airplay instead of having a “Stop Airplay” choice. Distinguishing Now Playing on/from the iPhone, vs controlling remote devices, is annoying.

I would never trust Apple to auto-connect to a speaker, that’s a recipe for disaster. This notion of “watch what you do and figure out how to order the list of devices” is also a step backwards, because not only will it invariably be wrong sometimes, but it means what you want is going to be in a different location in the list every time. You can’t even count on “Bedroom” showing up before “Den” for example.

I just want the basics to work. On MacOS, for example, if I start playing music then select an Airplay target (in Music), the current song won’t actually play, I have to fast-forward to the next song to hear anything. If I pause, then disconnect from remote, it starts playing locally instead of remaining paused. There’s also this bizarre behavior where it will blast at full volume on the Mac for about a second even if a remote Airplay device is the only output selected.
 
Sorry to burst your bubble, but it is in fact not an opinion. It's how it works, quite literally. I happen to be an electrical engineer who has done some work in audio design. The people who picked 16-bit and 44.1Khz actually did their homework while creating that spec.

I recommend watching this video which does a great demonstration of the signal path from analog to digital and back to analog.

The only reason apple and others provide music in any format that is "higher quality" than that is because people who don't understand the science behind it ask for it and the technology can do it. Most companies will never turn away an opportunity to sell to yet another market or try to bolster their brand saying theirs is better.

I will add one caveat, some humans can hear up to 28khz, however that is a very small sample of the population, and falls off pretty hard at 15Khz for most. As you age, the upper limit goes down as well. Point being, yes there are outliers here, but the people who would notice are very few, and this is before considering what the playback equipment/room do to the sound. The only reason higher sampling and bit depth is useful for production is because it makes mixing and running through filters easier and less lossy so you can have a better 16-bit/44.1khz output in the mixdown.

If you want to go deeper: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
Yup. I would like to see people hear the difference between 192 and 44.1 in a blind test.

And especially using ordinary listening equipment in a normal living room…!
 
Airplay to hotel TVs is way overdue. I don’t know why they didn’t do this after they opened up Wirplay to non-Apple devices.
 
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I’m still one of the people that would like to airplay audio from my AppleTV to my iPhone, just like you can to a Mac (or just like you can with a Roku device). I watch a lot of movies and shows with my long distance gf, who has and android phone and a pc, so we cannot use SharePlay. We talk with FB messenger a lot, and I need both the messenger conversation and the audio from the AppleTV going through my AirPods. Right now I am doing this by connecting to everything through a number of steps on my Mac, but it would be more convenient through the phone. (With a Roku device it just requires toggling a couple of buttons in the Roku phone app). Grateful for any improvements, though, including those mentioned in this article.
Tell your girl to get an iPhone & a Mac.

Or get a new girlfriend.
 
Is Airplay still limited to 24/48? I'd like to see an updated Airplay that allows streaming the full bandwidth of high resolution files in Apple Music (24/192). Also, Apple, please fix the auto sample/bit rate changing in macOS, why does it work in iOS but not macOS??!!
(24/192)??? tell me about it... which format will play it on ios? Ihave so much music on my computer - vlc just can't play it with the right quality... I would love it to have it on my phone ;-)
 
There is literally no benefit to 24/192 outside of the mixing environment. 16/44.1 is enough to flawlessly reproduce any frequency in our hearing range.
I think, you are mistaken. w/ high bitrates you can hear deeper into music. It just opens the room a lot. But - it must be a very good recording plus your ears must be very good to be able to hear the difference.
 
I think, you are mistaken. w/ high bitrates you can hear deeper into music. It just opens the room a lot. But - it must be a very good recording plus your ears must be very good to be able to hear the difference.
Can you provide any proof of this? Like a published study where an ABX blind test has been conducted on a bunch of people?
 
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During recording and mixing a higher bit resolution and frequency is nice. Compare it with a photographer shooting in RAW to have as many degrees of freedom as possible for his editing. If I record at 24 bit I have more headroom and lower noise floor during mixing.

But once it’s mixed and is to be shared with the red of the world it doesn’t matter.

Now we’re NOT talking about all sorts of lossy compression formats here. That’s a different beast and most lossy compression algorithms I have heard introduce some degree of audible artifacts


Edit: replaced but with bit. Thank you iOS for your bad autocorrect
 
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I think, you are mistaken. w/ high bitrates you can hear deeper into music. It just opens the room a lot. But - it must be a very good recording plus your ears must be very good to be able to hear the difference.
Nope. I'm not mistaken. There is another reply I did earlier on page 2 where I go into more depth as to why. The science is on my side on this one.
 
Yup. I would like to see people hear the difference between 192 and 44.1 in a blind test.

And especially using ordinary listening equipment in a normal living room…!
Yeah, and I would ask that the 192 mix to be downsampled to 44.1 so it's literally the same track (production end and all) just mixed down. Only then can you guarantee that the "difference" you hear isn't just a different mix job done on the front end which I would bet is actual difference anyone who has heard anything is actually hearing. If the 44.1 mix is brick walled with no dynamic range and the 192 mix is actually mixed to have some dynamic range then yes the 192 mix is going to sound better, but not because it's at 192khz but because they did a **** job on the 44.1 mix.
 
Is Airplay still limited to 24/48? I'd like to see an updated Airplay that allows streaming the full bandwidth of high resolution files in Apple Music (24/192). Also, Apple, please fix the auto sample/bit rate changing in macOS, why does it work in iOS but not macOS??!!
Believe me! You won’t hear any difference.
 
I have a pretty trivial request - make the AirPlay menu less annoying!

Depending on the device it is being display on, it might have checkboxes. Or not.

The number of devices might be 2, or 3, or 4 or 5. But if you wait to check it is stable, and click on entry 2, you don't expect it to suddenly find the other three, and push the one you were clicking on down to 4. Leaving you having just sent your stream to the wrong device because it changed at that precise moment!
 
AirPlay in Hotel Rooms should have the option to use cellular connection to stream. I don’t like connecting to random wifi if my cell reception is good.
 
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Regardless of your opinion on high resolution audio, and yes, it's your opinion, Apple Music offers many albums in the higher Rez format so it makes sense for them to allow said files to be streamed as intended over Airplay.

View attachment 2241692
It makes less sense to stream them because of buffering and bandwidth issues over Wi-Fi. If you think you really need something better than 16/44, then you will find a wired setup that works.

HOWEVER, I just want 16/44 to stream from my iPhone to any any AirPlay receiver. Right now, you will probably get 320kpbs AAC when streaming from your phone.

And, yes, it's hard to tell the difference between high-bitrate AAC and CD quality, but it's nearly impossible to tell hi-res lossless from CD quality.

 
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A bit of a shocker for me today anyway, when I found out that Airplay2 does not stream lossless as I thought, in fact it downsamples al audio files to ridiculous AAC 256bps before they are sent to other devices. I am shocked and angry that Apple is so limited in this regard, it’s not even funny. Apple please fix this and while you’re at please include more Apple Music Hi-Res files, like 24 bit and 96 or 182khz
 
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