I can’t reproduce it with → in the AirPlay destination’s name.
Edit: OK, I got it working. It shows → (and the lossless logo) only if I select another AirPlay device first and then switch to HomePod. If I choose HomePod directly it doesn’t work.
There’s still some inconsistency, though. On Mac it has always shown the lossless logo when streaming to HomePod via AirPlay. If I choose another receiver the logo is gone (on iOS/iPad, instead, it’s shown).
Basically, it’s not yet clear how Apple Music lossless handles AirPlay.
I am suspicious of the Atmos claims too. I have an Apple TV 4K which is connected to an AV receiver, and which plays Atmos soundtracks from movies just fine with centre and left and right channels. But when I played one of the Atmos tracks from Apple Music all I got was left and right stereo, no centre channel. I thought the point of Atmos was that the playback system worked out how best to map the audio objects onto the available hardware, so that you would get a different resuot if you played to headphones, a stereo or a multi-channel system. Maybe all Apple are giving you is the Atmos stereo headphone mix. Anyone know more about this than me?
I had a similar experience (only got the Apple TV this morning). I then thought I would force a software update……. Holy crap! Blown away with the Atmos stuff (Folklore- Taylor Swift especially). Compared to headphones from iPad and iPhone via lightning-3.5mm jack and Sennheiser HD25’s for Atmos it’s a different beast.
AV gear- Denon 3600 and SVS bookshelf’s in. L,C,R ,FRH,FLH, sub, RR and RL setup.
AirPlay 2 has two transmission modes: Realtime and Buffered.
The former uses ALAC, the latter AAC. The Buffered mode is used by Apple Music.
I suppose Apple Music currently sends AAC through AirPlay regardless the version (1 or 2) and the receiver. Naim confirmed it from their side.
There are sources on internet claiming that HomePod can receive ALAC despite officially isn’t supported yet. These claims are based only by the presence of the lossless icon, which seems unreliable.
Updating my Apple TV seems to have fixed it. I spent half an hour or so listening, and watching some of the videos - including a rather strange one of a mastering engineer cutting a vinyl master all the while eulogising Atmos!
Initial impressions of the sound are that it is initially impressive, but fatiguing because there are all sorts of strange phasey effects - I can’t localise things properly. But at the moment there seem to be few genuine Atmos from scratch recordings, most seem to be reworkings of (in the case of classical at least) ancient recordings. So time will tell if it is adopted as a recording medium, rather than a post-process afterthought. In the early days of CD, bad CD remasters of old recording didn’t do the new medium much good; I hope the same doesn’t happen with Atmos. The possibility of being genuinely immersed in sound would be wonderful for classical music, though all previous attempts to offer more than two channels, like quadrophonic, have failed.
Check out the Naim forum for screenshots from the Naim tech. He also confirmed if you played Qobuz over AirPlay it will play back as ALAC 16/44 even with a 24/96 file.
Apple Music app sends out aac 256k regardless of the high quality vs lossless settings over AirPlay. So seeing lossless in the app only shows original file is lossless and if you hooked up directly, you’d be capable of playing it back at that rate. This must have been something overlooked by Apple in their rush to get lossless out before Spotify. I asked the tech to check if MacOS has same issue with Apple Music using AirPlay. Waiting to get a response.
It’s also been mentioned if you turn on Spatial surround, even if file is hires, will only play back in aac 256k. Think this feature is only good for cheaper closed headphones. Sounded pretty good on my cheap wireless headphones but terrible with my Focal Utopia’s compared to standard version.
This article is completely wrong and it’s no wonder he couldn’t tell aac from lossless using AirPlay since they were both playing in aac regardless of the settings.
CUPERTINO, Calif.–Apple® today announced that the recent Apple Music Lossless launch was in fact a massive social experiment to prove conclusively that people cannot hear the difference between lossless and AAC audio.
The experiment was conducted by programming Apple servers and apps to flash the lossless logo on randomly selected tracks while still delivering our perceptually lossless AAC streams. Despite playing the same compressed files as before, customers were convinced it sounded “better” when the lossless logo was displayed.
While scientifically impossible, Apple product managers and engineers are excited about the ramifications of this new technology for future product development and marketing. The possibilities are endless.
select an airplay device in Music, there’s no lossless icon, listening on Devialet 440 via Airplay.
select ‘my computer’ in Music, there’s a lossless icon, listening on internal speakers.
select ‘my computer’ in Music, but route the output to an airplay device in the system preferences, there’s a lossless icon, listening on same Devialet 440 via Airplay.
So, is the lossless icon a sham, or is there a difference between Music’s Airplay, and the OS level Airplay?
I experienced the same, like said in a previous post:
Actually, I feel like a broken record because I’ve mentioned this inconsistent AirPlay behavior several times these days on various forums.
Seriously, the only way to check it objectively would require an AirPlay device that provides informations about the incoming stream (bitrate or AAC/ALAC format information).
I tend to believe that it’s always AAC and that the lossless icon isn’t right now reliable when AirPlay is involved. Glad to be proven wrong.
Just to add that with Apple TV (which is currently an AirPlay 2 device) and Xcode it’s possible to debug and get informations about what it’s receiving:
