This is not true. I have a first generation Apple TV 4K with tvos 14.6 and can enable both lossless and Atmos in the music app settings of the Apple TV. Most likely he lives in an area where it hasn´t roll out yet.
I´m from Spain.
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No Lossless audio for Apple TV HD?
- Thread starter Ikertxo40
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This is not true. I have a first generation Apple TV 4K with tvos 14.6 and can enable both lossless and Atmos in the music app settings of the Apple TV. Most likely he lives in an area where it hasn´t roll out yet.
I´m from Spain.
I was a bit disappointed to learn lossless@CD quality isn’t supported on Apple TV HD/4th gen.
It appears it is limited artificially and can be initiated if you start airplay from another app e.g. youtube, SoundCloud etc. And jump back into music.
Once setup the lossless stays and you can use your phone to control playback.
The TV seems to be grabbing the alac file directly on its own thereafter.
if you found this useful please report back. Goodluck!
![E4AD9F6F-70B7-470D-8910-1AAA9DFA3855.jpeg]( "E4AD9F6F-70B7-470D-8910-1AAA9DFA3855.jpeg")
![74FC1AD2-3825-431F-8D12-B535D065420E.jpeg]( "74FC1AD2-3825-431F-8D12-B535D065420E.jpeg")
It appears it is limited artificially and can be initiated if you start airplay from another app e.g. youtube, SoundCloud etc. And jump back into music.
Once setup the lossless stays and you can use your phone to control playback.
The TV seems to be grabbing the alac file directly on its own thereafter.
if you found this useful please report back. Goodluck!
I have that screen if I Airplay to my TV but you still only get the maximum sound output that the TV is limited to-24/48 on the 4K and 16/48 256 AAC on the HD. I have confirmed this on my receiver and the limitation is shown when you go to that audio quality settings menu. All the UI is doing on that screen is showing what the phone is getting.
Thanks for that!
In my case I was hoping to just playback 44.1/48khz CD quality based on my current equipment.
I have some DIY DSP processing engaged so having 24 bit source where available is good too but what I am really after is 16 bit/44.1 lossless for the most part.
how did you confirm that ATV HD is playing back AAC while displaying lossless in the UI?
I can’t update my mac to the latest Big Sur Otherwise would have been nice to confirm with xcode/dev tools.
The device is perfectly capable of playing back “CD Quality” alac files for many years now.
If you select audio quality settings in that menu, it shows “High Quality AAC 256”, and on my receiver I get stereo linear PCM 48khz and two channels play. On the 4K it adds the 24/48 option but I still get linear PCM 48k on the receiver, for Dolby tracks then I do get the Atmos on my receiver and all my channels play but still at 48k. My receiver is definitely capable of 192k an I can get that through my fire TV cube on Amazon Music HD. I agree with you that 16/44.1 would be plenty but all the TV’s resample to 48k and always have and I’m not holding my breath that that is going to change. I’m on beta but I’ll reinstall the dev tools tonight and see what it says on there.
EDIT: I installed developer tools on my TV but the HUD doesn’t show for the Music app.
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Thanks so much for reporting back.
I don’t see the option of “High Quality AAC 256” on the TV settings(maybe we have different versions of TVOS)
Try running the console through xcode for the apple tv
There might be some useful information e.g. what file it is playing.
For the time being we can’t confirm if it is or isn’t playing back lossless atleast 16/44.1
Hope everyone is enjoying their music regardless in the meantime.
You’re right on the HD you don’t get that screen or option, I forgot which TV I had hooked up but on the 4k you do get the option of 24/48 or AAC 256 even though the banner for lossless or hi res lossless comes up when you Airplay from an iPhone, all of them are showing 48k on my receiver however which tells me the TV’s (both 4k and HD) are resampling to 48k no matter what.
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DACs and ADCs won’t matter, it’s the DSP engine for processing where the limitation is. That’s where all the surrounds modes and room correction systems such as Audyssey or Dirac perform their magic. Those are limited to 48kHz. So any input is downsampled, processed and then upsampled again. For more than 48kHz, you either need to bypass any type of processing (if your receiver/processor allows that) or a processor with a custom DSP, such as Meridian, Trinnov (full software implementation), Theta Digital, Lyngdorf or Steinway Lyngdorf. I think the Datasat does it as well, but I’m not 100% sure. The Trinnov Altitute 32 is the only one that allows processing at 192kHz, but can’t do it on all channels (falls back to 96kHz) due to processing power. So it won’t work with full 32 channels or 48 channels with the Ext48 connected.
That being said, I’d rather take 48kHz with room correction + custom filters than 96kHz or 192kHz without room correction or filters where the bad acoustics of the room kill the experience.
I recently bought the 2021 ATV. We have an older Samsung 4K TV with ARC, but not the full sound options, but we have a newer Philips B95 Fidelio soundbar with all the sound options and 4K passthrough.
Am I correct in understanding the ATV (and a Sony Blueray) to be plugged directly into the soundbar's HDMIs and the soundbar HDMI ARC into the Samsung TV's ARC?
Am I correct in understanding the ATV (and a Sony Blueray) to be plugged directly into the soundbar's HDMIs and the soundbar HDMI ARC into the Samsung TV's ARC?
which is why i run my Pioneer receiver in "Pure direct" where analogue and PCM sources are heard without any digital processing. i just wish it displayed what kind of PCM signal it is processing so i could see what type of audio my apple tv, iPad etc is outputting to it either via HDMI, USB, or lightning digital AV adapter (last 2 for iPad)
Yes, that can be done if it's implemented that way. Analogue sources are not encoded and LPCM is limited to 7.1, so this can be passed 1:1 without any type of processing involved if no room correction or other filters are required. Dedicated processors could be used for this, such as LM44 which has an internal sampling frequency of 96kHz.
It should be LPCM (up to 8 channels max), so there shouldn't be any type of processing is going on as anything else might result in downsampling again, despite the active mode. If you want to know what signal is coming in via HDMI, check out some of the HD Fury devices. They allow to extract this type of information.
Are the new models more capable in this area?
The Vertex I have, can only properly display PCM info. All dolby and dts audio is simply shown as "bitstream" or "HBR bitstream", so I can not get detailed info about the audio format of the stream.
I don't think so. Reading detailed information about the bitstream would require decoding. And since decoding in a processor/receiver would likely mean DSP processing involved, it's limited to 48kHz anyway in most units, except the ones I listed. That type of info is most likely only usable with LPCM. I'm not using it myself, as my audio processors can handle all of it including more than 48kHz.
But only a very limited decoding of metadata from the frame headers. Atmos is a bit different, but also basically just finding the metadata from the stream. One would not need to decode the full bitstream.
But are you actually getting 24 bit output from the ATV4K, i.e. is whatever it's connected to actually receiving 24 bit. I have my ATV4K connected to my receiver which is capable up to 32bit/384kHz via HDMI, but even when playing a 24bit lossless track on the ATV, the receiver is only receiving 16bit. I hope it's a bug.
How do you know that the track is 24bit lossless?
A lot of tracks are lossless but at 16/44 CD quality
Jason
If you download the song on a Mac you can see the available formats by looking at the Playlist-master file in the data directory (Taylor Smiths' Fearless):
#EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=AUDIO,GROUP-ID="audio-alac-stereo-44100-24",AUTOSELECT=YES,CHANNELS="2",NAME="songEnhanced",SAMPLE-RATE=44100,BIT-DEPTH=24
so you know that 24 bit is available. Since there are multiple formats available for each song I have no clue as to which version is played when you actually select a tract.
#EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=AUDIO,GROUP-ID="audio-alac-stereo-44100-24",AUTOSELECT=YES,CHANNELS="2",NAME="songEnhanced",SAMPLE-RATE=44100,BIT-DEPTH=24
so you know that 24 bit is available. Since there are multiple formats available for each song I have no clue as to which version is played when you actually select a tract.
Navigate to and click the little lossless wave symbol on the bottom right of the screen (on ATV4K anyway) and it'll show you the track quality. If you're looking for a specific one to prove to yourself, the first track "Hello" in Adele 25 is 24/48.
Just tried that on my AVR and it shows the sampling frequency as 48KHz, but doesn’t show the bit rate at all. It’s just got a dash where the bit rate should be, so something odd happening there
Jason
Yeah definitely something odd... hope it gets figure out. the atv resamples everything to 48kHz, that I believe is a known/established fact, but Apple's totally silent on the output bit depth. My theory/speculation is it's got something to do with HDMI/EDID and the whole chain of that, i.e. ATV-AVR-TV and multi-channel vs 2 channel, and who's telling who what... or apple is indeed dropping output to 16 bit for everything. In typical apple speak, they say ATV is capable of playing up to 24/48, but leaves out anything about output... so technically probably correct, but not necessarily the whole truth.