Apple’s wi-fi platform for audio and video streaming — AirPlay — is without doubt one of the greatest methods to play music from an Apple system to a wi-fi speaker. When at dwelling, on a Wi-Fi community, it outperforms Bluetooth because of its wider bandwidth. The traditional knowledge has all the time been that AirPlay units a tough restrict on audio high quality: iPhones and different Apple units can solely transmit lossless CD-quality audio, at 16-bit/44.1kHz, to an AirPlay-enabled speaker, leaving the know-how incapable of supporting the higher-res streams now being provided by Apple Music and others. However evidently AirPlay can truly do 24-bit audio. Type of.
The brand new second-gen HomePod, which Apple launched in January, can stream lossless 24-bit/48kHz audio immediately from Apple Music, utilizing its personal Wi-Fi connection to the web. This isn’t information: Apple added 24-bit lossless playback (by way of Apple’s ALAC codec) to the first-gen HomePod and HomePod mini in 2021, together with Dolby Atmos help.
Nonetheless, I used to be shocked to be taught that the HomePod may also stream this better-than-CD-quality 24-bit/48kHz audio utilizing AirPlay. I used to be so struck by Apple’s obvious enlargement of AirPlay’s functionality, I checked to see if the specification had modified. It hasn’t. How is that this even potential?
It seems that there’s a nuance to the HomePod’s use of AirPlay. It stays true that while you stream from a tool like an iPhone to an AirPlay speaker, the stream is restricted to 16-bit/44.1kHz. Nonetheless, when a HomePod grabs a stream natively from Apple Music, it could share that stream with a number of extra HomePods (for the needs of multiroom or stereo-pairing). It does this utilizing AirPlay and may achieve this at as much as 24-bit/48kHz.
The shock right here isn’t that two HomePods can share audio wirelessly at 24/48. That’s how a number of HomePods can play the identical stream in sync with no loss in high quality. What’s stunning is that they use AirPlay to do it.
So we’re left with one thing of a thriller. If AirPlay can handle higher than CD high quality when streaming from one HomePod to a different, why can’t it do the identical factor from an iPhone to an AirPlay speaker, even when the speaker in query is a HomePod?
As a Wi-Fi-based streaming protocol, there’s by no means been a bodily cause why AirPlay ought to be restricted to only CD high quality. In spite of everything, Chromecast has lengthy been in a position to help as much as lossless 24-bit/96kHz, and DTS Play-Fi makes the same declare. Denon’s Wi-Fi-based HEOS system can go as excessive as 24-bit/192kHz.
Why, you could be questioning, can we even care about 24-bit audio? Isn’t CD high quality completely superb? No query about it, CD high quality is mostly thought-about glorious, even by among the most ardent audiophiles. And but, that hasn’t stopped the business from shifting to so-called hi-res audio, a degree of high quality that many regard as being noticeably higher than good ol’ CD high quality.
Whether or not you’ll be able to truly hear the distinction or not will rely on all kinds of things. I received’t get into that debate right here. As an alternative, I’ll merely level out that there’s a disconnect between the standard degree Apple has chosen to help by itself streaming music service (Apple added 24-bit lossless tracks to its Apple Music catalog in 2021) and the standard degree supported by its different audio applied sciences, together with AirPlay.
If Apple sees match to broaden AirPlay past its present CD high quality constraints, which it appears to be like like it’s able to doing, it is going to go an extended approach to serving to individuals hear what they (might have been) lacking.
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