The Lightning to 3.5 mm Audio Cable was designed to allow AirPods Max to connect to analog sources for listening to movies and music. AirPods Max can be connected to devices playing Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless recordings with exceptional audio quality. However, given the analog-to-digital conversion in the cable, the playback will not be completely lossless.
Iām not sure Iām getting your point.
Whatās the problem as AM does provide hi-res via an external DAC?
Itās a FREE upgrade.
Airplay will evolve or a new transport codec will be implemented (similar to Spotify or Tidal Connect).
Wired headphones do allow fir hi-res.
(To my surprise and delight, Iāve discovered quite a few albums that AM offers in hi-res and Qobuz only in CD quality.)
Currently to enjoy in a simple way Apple Music in its whole potential (lossless up to 192 kHz) is to connect an iOS/iPadOS device via a Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter to a DAC.
And thatās all. Itās the way Iām using it now.
I absolutely donāt complain the free upgrade. 
Everything else is more or less a compromise.
If a Mac is used then the sample rate has to be manually matched in Audio MIDI Setup for every sample rate change.
Wired headphones can reach lossless hi-res only through an external DAC. It honestly doesnāt bother me because I already listen with headphones via a DAC (I mean, serious listening ā on the go I use AirPods Pro which are fine for the task).
AirPlay probably and hopefully will evolve. Right now is only a speculation: a new protocol (AirPlay 3) will come out or an update for AirPlay 1/2 or both will be released.
AirPlay seems to convert to AAC when chosen in Music app. If AirPlay is chosen system wide then it streams ALAC. My only experience is on Mac. I wrote āit seemsā because AirPlay behavior isnāt consistent: streaming to HomePod, for example, shows ALAC; streaming to a regular AirPlay 1 streamer shows AAC.
This added variable/complication/call it how you want has somehow disappointed me.
AirPlay stuff is what Iām most interested in because itās very convenient. I was confident that I could finally play CD quality (44.1) songs to my streamer from iPad. Unfortunately the AAC conversion arose and Iām still trying to figure out how is it handling lossless music.
Ideally Apple should introduce exclusive mode to Music app on macOS and hi-res AirPlay (or, at least, 44.1 as is now without any AAC conversion).
I donāt want to sound pessimistic or a whiner. Iām confident that with time at least one of the two ideal solutions I described above will be fixed.
I just sighed about how technology is sometimes convoluted.
Freddie Hubbard-Ready for Freddie . Sounds pretty good in Spatial.
Dannyās new yacht if Apple buys them:
Thats strange , my right one went , i phoned them bank holiday Monday, they sent a box that arrived on Wednesday, on Thursday i got tree texts, we have them, we have fixed them, we have dispatched them, on Friday I had them back before lunch.
Now they may have a technical issue but Apple are standing by its product and delivering good customer service even on an out of warranty set.
I checked with John Lewis who sold them with 2 yrs warranty and they quoted 28 days.
I donāt think you can fault apple customer service.
Roon is probably less than hours worth of apple profit. Way to small for them.
Dream on. Roon is way too complicated for Apple and way too nerdy. No innovation for Nasdaq company. Too realistic and probably for silver economy, not for hipsters.
Roon is probably at better fit for Spotify.
Yes indeed or a good match with Qobuz, Deezer, Tidal.
A Roon/Qobuz merger would make the most sense. Except Iām guessing Roon is profitable and Qobuz is still hemorrhaging money.
Every time I dealt with tech support it was the first time they had heard about it. Maybe they are supposed to play dumb. I never had to pay for any of the replacements but they have a problem in their noise canceling circuitry that apparently is not solved yet.
Iāll take it !
There may exist a magic number of annual Roon subscribers where this makes sense to do.
Roon have the calc - is it 300k annual subscribers? 600k? 1milli? 2milli?
Maybe theyāre still too far from that magic number or maybe theyāre close. Only Roon know.
It will come down to money.
If Roon tries to add support for ALL streaming services they need more money, simple.
My son uses Apple Music and I asked him if he had tried the high res service.
His replyā¦āSorry what dad?ā
I think take up might be slow or be limited unless Apple default this option and AAC is user selectableā¦which I canāt see happening because of mobile usage charges/experience.
But also for the Airpod/Bluetooth wearing youth (Ok a little flippant as most of us use them) the fact that Apple only supports AAC at 256KB makes it useless to them at this point.
If you are OK with 24/48, an Apple TV 4K works great for this.
Youngsters from 30 years on down donāt give a hoot about audio quality. They think Iām crazy with my Dacs,Amps,etc.
I would love to see the demographics of Roon users. Im sure its mostly older folks.
Been using Apple Music since the lossless launch. People complained about the curation and interface of Tidal. It is light years ahead of AM.
On head-fi, the user demographics is much younger than with Roon. It is similar in the audio groups on Facebook. There are more digital natives there and donāt have the diverse offline catalogues to leverage Roon.