Gus141
100+ Head-Fier
When Apple released Apple Music (AM) with support for lossless and high-res, I really wanted to know, what are the best DAPs for playing Apple Music lossless, high-res, or ATMOS (personally, I’m not interested in ATMOS, but bit-perfect lossless is enticing). But the volume of posts to sift through for the candidate DAPs that I don’t follow on Head-Fi was so huge I thought I‘d ask in a separate thread: who’s DAP is working with AM lossless/High-Res/ATMOS?
We know the latest iOS devices support AM-lossless/ATMOS. And early on in June there was the beta release of the Android version of AM that supported lossless, and some folks sideloaded it to test it out. But now we have the official public release of the latest Android version of AM with lossless/high-res support.
So… who have tried it on their DAPs? What’s working? Is Android source-rate-converting (SRC) Apple Music to 16bit/48kHz or is it bit-perfect on your kit?
PLEASE POST YOUR EXPERIENCES.
I’ll start in the next post from me about my experiences with the Sony ZX507.
Cheers,
Gus
Obviosly, the best source for Apple Music right now is an Apple device. My experiences with that have been very positive. I have an iPad Pro 12.9” 2020 (USB-C output to external DACs) and an iPhone 12 Mini (Lightning to external USB DACs); many wired IEMs and headphones, and wireless Airpods and Airpod Max; plus AppleTV4k 2021.
But I also have a couple of Android-based DAPs. Sadly, my FiiO M11 Pro has never supported Apple Music sign-in due to the antiquated Samsung SOC it used (plus it’s stuck in Android 7). But my Sony ZX507 (on Android 9) has been a very solid, bug-free, Android-based DAP for streaming for some time, so I decided to try the latest Apple Music app from the Google Play store.
Everything worked as planned. But with the Sony ZX507 there is no bit-perfect streaming from any service: they either pass the audio to the Android mixer for SRC’ing to 16/48 or they do their own upconversion to 32bit/192kHz (what they call in the settings: “High Res Streaming”).
I played several of my favorite high-res and CD-quality tracks through the Apple Music app on ZX507, and after an hour I was very surprised at how HOT the zx507 was. I have never experienced the zx507 get that hot before (even after 5 hours of high-res streaming through Qobuz). I had never played AM through the ZX507 before (just local files, and streaming from TIDAL and Qobuz), so this surprised me.
Anyone else finding AM app makes their DAPs run hot?
I heard from a friend that his FiiO M11 + LTD (Android 10) is playing Apple Music tracks at the native sample rate without Android SRC, as indicated on the status bar. So I would assume other DAPs that bypass the Android mixer (e.g., Shanling M8) are also playing Apple Music bit-perfectly.
Can anyone confirm?
Here is a little explanation for this thread:
I wanted to start this thread after switching to Apple Music. That’s not a very accurate statement though—I never was not an Apple Music (AM) subscriber— and maybe some of you will associate with my experinces; but, I did switch to AM for lossless and high-res.
I was an iTunes music purchaser for years; maybe from the beginning. Playing my music on various iPods until the first iPhone, and the rest is history (I’ve owned so many iOS devices I lost count).
I was quick to jump on the iTunes Match train to get my rips on the cloud. Then, when Apple Music came out (which included an iTunes Martch functionality) I cancelled iTunes Match, and became a subscriber to AM and have been paying for it ever since. BUT…I rarely every listened to it: it was AAC 256Kbps and I mostly listened to local FLAC, and as new high-res streaming services emerged, I joined, and eventually relied on them for all my listening.
But then TIDAL got too into MQA and I cancelled. And Qobuz was buggy and slow on Android (but great on my LUMIN U1 Mini and Node 2i so I kept it) but I wanted a fast, high-res service for a DAP, and so when Apple Music became lossless & high-res I was ready to go all-in.
I love DAPs though: the idea of a stand-alone music player not tied to my phone. So I hope to find an Android DAP that plays Apple Music as well as my iPad Pro.
Anyone find the perfect Apple Music DAP?
Cheers,
Gus
We know the latest iOS devices support AM-lossless/ATMOS. And early on in June there was the beta release of the Android version of AM that supported lossless, and some folks sideloaded it to test it out. But now we have the official public release of the latest Android version of AM with lossless/high-res support.
So… who have tried it on their DAPs? What’s working? Is Android source-rate-converting (SRC) Apple Music to 16bit/48kHz or is it bit-perfect on your kit?
PLEASE POST YOUR EXPERIENCES.
I’ll start in the next post from me about my experiences with the Sony ZX507.
Cheers,
Gus
Obviosly, the best source for Apple Music right now is an Apple device. My experiences with that have been very positive. I have an iPad Pro 12.9” 2020 (USB-C output to external DACs) and an iPhone 12 Mini (Lightning to external USB DACs); many wired IEMs and headphones, and wireless Airpods and Airpod Max; plus AppleTV4k 2021.
But I also have a couple of Android-based DAPs. Sadly, my FiiO M11 Pro has never supported Apple Music sign-in due to the antiquated Samsung SOC it used (plus it’s stuck in Android 7). But my Sony ZX507 (on Android 9) has been a very solid, bug-free, Android-based DAP for streaming for some time, so I decided to try the latest Apple Music app from the Google Play store.
Everything worked as planned. But with the Sony ZX507 there is no bit-perfect streaming from any service: they either pass the audio to the Android mixer for SRC’ing to 16/48 or they do their own upconversion to 32bit/192kHz (what they call in the settings: “High Res Streaming”).
I played several of my favorite high-res and CD-quality tracks through the Apple Music app on ZX507, and after an hour I was very surprised at how HOT the zx507 was. I have never experienced the zx507 get that hot before (even after 5 hours of high-res streaming through Qobuz). I had never played AM through the ZX507 before (just local files, and streaming from TIDAL and Qobuz), so this surprised me.
Anyone else finding AM app makes their DAPs run hot?
I heard from a friend that his FiiO M11 + LTD (Android 10) is playing Apple Music tracks at the native sample rate without Android SRC, as indicated on the status bar. So I would assume other DAPs that bypass the Android mixer (e.g., Shanling M8) are also playing Apple Music bit-perfectly.
Can anyone confirm?
Here is a little explanation for this thread:
I wanted to start this thread after switching to Apple Music. That’s not a very accurate statement though—I never was not an Apple Music (AM) subscriber— and maybe some of you will associate with my experinces; but, I did switch to AM for lossless and high-res.
I was an iTunes music purchaser for years; maybe from the beginning. Playing my music on various iPods until the first iPhone, and the rest is history (I’ve owned so many iOS devices I lost count).
I was quick to jump on the iTunes Match train to get my rips on the cloud. Then, when Apple Music came out (which included an iTunes Martch functionality) I cancelled iTunes Match, and became a subscriber to AM and have been paying for it ever since. BUT…I rarely every listened to it: it was AAC 256Kbps and I mostly listened to local FLAC, and as new high-res streaming services emerged, I joined, and eventually relied on them for all my listening.
But then TIDAL got too into MQA and I cancelled. And Qobuz was buggy and slow on Android (but great on my LUMIN U1 Mini and Node 2i so I kept it) but I wanted a fast, high-res service for a DAP, and so when Apple Music became lossless & high-res I was ready to go all-in.
I love DAPs though: the idea of a stand-alone music player not tied to my phone. So I hope to find an Android DAP that plays Apple Music as well as my iPad Pro.
Anyone find the perfect Apple Music DAP?
Cheers,
Gus
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