Airplay Tidal over Apple TV sound quality vs FLAC format

1

Hi,

Everyone, there is one thing that I am wondering I am using Roon for tidal streaming via my Apple TV, using my Synology 2 NAS DS 218+ so is this the correct way to receive high output or would it be better to use FLAC or any other format first installing in NAS and airplay it to Apple TV if so where can I find FLAC music normally where do you get it from ?

Thanks

2

I assumme you have a Tidal Premium subscription?
Tidal hifi streams flac.

Airplay is a communication protocol, not a music file format.

Dirk

3

If you are listening through an Apple TV, then the format you listen in is mostly unimportant. Tidal is lossless or MQA. Lossless will not be affected, MQA will do a first unfold and then be reduced back to 44/16 for Airplay compatibility. It’s all good, but if you want to experiment further the AppleTV would need to go in favour of a Roon Ready device.

4

I would use Lossless Flac over Alac.
Here is a chart but mainly recommend FLAC as it allows for error correction if corruption occurs in file you would be notified by your app it’s corrupt or not playback at all as opposed to hearing distortion or tearing sounds. https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison
When I did listening tests decades ago I found the sound quality the same as WAV not sure ALAC existed or at least was not something I considered not purchasing an Apple product until 2010.