[Nellie75]

Afternoon all.

Have been uploading some of my music to AM (see recent post).

On about 20% of my albums, the audio quality text below the progress bar is missing. Seems to be random and I've no idea why.

All albums are my own FLAC rips from CDs and transcoded to ALAC in dbPoweramp.

Thanks for any help. It's annoying me more than it should!

Edit - just noticed that it's the same within albums too - some tracks display it, some are blank.

None of my uploads showed Lossless or Hi Res text labels. I figured it was just the way it is. However, I just ripped through iTunes at 16/44. Does ripping at higher bit rates give better SQ? Doesn’t it have to upscale and mess with the ratios?

Out of 1000 CDs I own, I only had to rip about 25 CDs (mostly soundtracks) as everything was already there in lossless. I was surprised, and only 4 CDs were actually missing completely.

 

[pilgrimbilly]

None of my uploads showed Lossless or Hi Res text labels. I figured it was just the way it is. However, I just ripped through iTunes at 16/44. Does ripping at higher bit rates give better SQ? Doesn’t it have to upscale and mess with the ratios?

Out of 1000 CDs I own, I only had to rip about 25 CDs (mostly soundtracks) as everything was already there in lossless. I was surprised, and only 4 CDs were actually missing completely.

I read your post about ripping your collection - glad you didn't have to do all 1000!

I have 1800 CDs ripped, but did it over 2 years in 2013-2015.

Maybe I shouldn't sweat it. They sound fine, and the bitrates are as they should be.

Will do a big batch and throw in some purchased downloads from Qobuz and HDtracks and see what happens.

 

[cinemakinoeye]

[...] I just ripped through iTunes at 16/44. Does ripping at higher bit rates give better SQ? Doesn’t it have to upscale and mess with the ratios? Out of 1000 CDs I own, I only had to rip about 25 CDs (mostly soundtracks) as everything was already there in lossless. I was surprised, and only 4 CDs were actually missing completely.

There is no logical reason I can think of at the moment to rip an Audio CD into anything other than Red Book format (16-bit values sampled at 44.1 kHz sample rate). Upsampling will not improve the audio quality contrary to some myths circulating to that effect.

 

[cinemakinoeye]

Between Apple adding Lossless audio to Music and their recent updates that have made ye olde Airport Express devices into Airplay 2 nodes, Apple has made a lot of improvements to the music listening experience. I hope to see more Airplay 2 compatible devices.

 

[Failed Engineer]

I'm tiring of Tidal's continuation of its library's mqa-ification and having less normal FLAC each successive day. Now testing out Apple Music in my home setup. I'm happily ensconced in the Apple ecosystem I already use it in the car and out and about so generally comfortable with it. I'm pleased with the lossless audio quality out of iOS devices airplayed to my shairport endpoints. Battery drain on airplay is a real drawback but no dealbreaker.

The stumbling block I have now is replicating something near to the music discovery features of Roon. I know there's nothing like Roon and Apple Music does have some of it (similar artists linked on artist pages, etc) but Roon takes it to another level on album pages and with other features.

The Apple Music API has allowed for some developers to create nice apps, like Marvis, Miximum, and Soor, but those focus more on slicing and dicing your existing libraries and data. I'm looking for more for auto playlist generation from few inputs (artists, albums) and jumping from albums to similar albums while browsing (like how you can from artist to similar artists). Also a better way to find recent album releases and be able to sort them by date which Apple Music puzzlingly can't do.

Anyone have some hidden gems for music discovery that integrate with AM?

 

[avgonzalez77]

Anyone know how Apple's music library compares to Spotify or Tidal?

 

[bfreedma]

I'm tiring of Tidal's continuation of its library's mqa-ification and having less normal FLAC each successive day. Now testing out Apple Music in my home setup. I'm happily ensconced in the Apple ecosystem I already use it in the car and out and about so generally comfortable with it. I'm pleased with the lossless audio quality out of iOS devices airplayed to my shairport endpoints. Battery drain on airplay is a real drawback but no dealbreaker.

The stumbling block I have now is replicating something near to the music discovery features of Roon. I know there's nothing like Roon and Apple Music does have some of it (similar artists linked on artist pages, etc) but Roon takes it to another level on album pages and with other features.

The Apple Music API has allowed for some developers to create nice apps, like Marvis, Miximum, and Soor, but those focus more on slicing and dicing your existing libraries and data. I'm looking for more for auto playlist generation from few inputs (artists, albums) and jumping from albums to similar albums while browsing (like how you can from artist to similar artists). Also a better way to find recent album releases and be able to sort them by date which Apple Music puzzlingly can't do.

Anyone have some hidden gems for music discovery that integrate with AM?

Will be interesting to see what, if anything, gets posted about AM integration. I also like Roon's interface and music discovery capabilities, so have stayed with Qobuz.

Apple is on record stating that they won't be opening up the API for Roon, so unless Apple buys Roon, not sure much will change for me in the mid term. With Tidal and Qobuz bleeding money and the big players (Apple/Amazon) entering the market in competition with Spotify, I think it is a real possibility that Roon will be acquired as Tidal and Qobuz seem to have poor long term prospects.

 

[avgonzalez77]

Does Apple Music work with Roon at this point?

 

[cinemakinoeye]

Anyone know how Apple's music library compares to Spotify or Tidal?

CNET published a comparison of the two services recently. Both Apple Music and Spotify have a similar breadth of coverage when it comes to popular music but each has some exclusives here and there but the biggest difference is Apple Music does not offer a free tier. I have Apple Music and sticking to it, my wife has Spotify and sticking to it. We each like the quirky aspects of the interfaces we've used for years. When we compare notes, there are occasionally some titles that one service will have that the other does not. For example, Spotify has Kora Jazz Trio Volumes 1 through IV, but Apple Music only has Volumes I and IV.

 

[kumar402]

Does Apple Music work with Roon at this point?

No, it doesn’t

 

[avgonzalez77]

CNET published a comparison of the two services recently. Both Apple Music and Spotify have a similar breadth of coverage when it comes to popular music but each has some exclusives here and there but the biggest difference is Apple Music does not offer a free tier. I have Apple Music and sticking to it, my wife has Spotify and sticking to it. We each like the quirky aspects of the interfaces we've used for years. When we compare notes, there are occasionally some titles that one service will have that the other does not. For example, Spotify has Kora Jazz Trio Volumes 1 through IV, but Apple Music only has Volumes I and IV.

Thank you!

 

[Failed Engineer]

I think you can pretty confidently say that Apple will never give Roon the type of API that Roon needs from its partners.

I'm just wondering how much of Roon's capability I can replicate with AM integrated sources, or AM itself.

 

[Nellie75]

Does Apple Music work with Roon at this point?

No

 

[lamsta]

Hi Head-Fiers,

Are there any audiophile level streamers / players (Innous or Antipodes level) that integrate with Apple Music?

Thanks in advance

 

[cinemakinoeye]

[...] Are there any audiophile level streamers / players (Innous or Antipodes level) that integrate with Apple Music? [...]

When you think about it, the ultimate Apple Music streamer is a Mac. Really. Seriously. Consider this:

From my perspective, in terms of maximizing subjective pleasure vs. expense ratio, a system built around a Mac (e.g. MacBook Air starting at $999 USD) is better than any streamer if you choose to swim in the Apple Music ecosystem. With a Mac as your central node, you have a huge amount of storage for AIF and ALAC files, along with access to Apple Music via high-quality streaming or Lossless file downloads. From this as your base node in a system, you can send high-quality Redbook and 24/48 files via USB to the DAC of your choice connected to the Mac (e.g. JDS Labs Atom +, Schiit Modi, etc.) or you can stream via your WiFi network to one or more Airport 2 compatible nodes on your WiFi network. At the moment, a used Airport Express makes an excellent Airport 2 node with digital optical and analog SE outputs.

Now a numbers-oriented audiophile might say that this does not support exotic "high-resolution" formats, and that is true, so if those are important to you the Apple ecosystem and Apple Music might not be in the running since Apple does not always play nice with the other children (e.g. their cold shoulder to Roon). But as someone who has listened to music and film soundtracks on several high-end systems (in people's homes as well as a couple of CES high-end audio shows) and a variety of mixing studios in Boston, Los Angeles, and New York, my Apple Music and Airport 2 ecosystem in my home sound pretty good in comparison to the memories of those experiences, and the key has been putting money into better speakers and/or headphones rather than the pursuit of exotic formats, as putting money into room treatments and transducers yields far more improvement to sound quality.

Whatever you choose, consider the entire ecosystem cost and the subjective pleasure of the whole of whatever you put together, the numbers, to me, don't matter if I can't hear a difference. I'm one of those people who can't hear the difference between [insert your favorite high-resolution audio format] and ye olde Redbook (16-bit/44.1KHz) audio files, but I can only speak to my own experience. I'm happily trapped in the Apple ecosystem, and the convenience of having my playlists across iPhone, iPad, and desktop is compelling, ruling out most other streaming options. Whether something is audiophile quality is the most subjective of evaluations and to me, what I've described is audiophile quality and depends more on the headphones and speakers as long as the other components (source files, DAC, preamplification, amplification) measure up to quality standards.