[Steve999]

If I have a choice in a music service app on my iPad, am I better off streaming to my receiver using AirPlay audio or Chromecast audio (both are built in to my receiver), or is there no practical meaningful difference?

I truly don’t know what goes on behind the scenes to make all of this magic (to me) happen. Any insights would be welcome, both from the point of view of technical curiosity and in terms of differences in sound quality.

Between AirPlay audio and Chromecast audio, does one support higher bitrates than the other?

It seems like either takes place over wifi—am I just using the music service app to facilitate a WiFi connection straight from my router to my receiver?

Thanks for any help on this.

 

[bigshot]

As long as it isn't bluetooth and the sound doesn't skip, it should be OK.

 

[h1p8r10n]

Both Airplay and Chromecast are usually lossless, except when using Android "screen sharing" feature (in this case you get MP3 192kbps quality, but it's designed for screen sharing, not for music).

Chromecast is much more recent and sophistcated than Airplay, so it support higher bitrates, but both can do 48KHz/16 bits which is already above human hear capabilities.

So both are perfect and can't be improved.