Sorry if I am not current on the messages, but I just read that Lumin says AirPlay to Lumin device will be lossless if the volume is set to max on the i-device. This made no sense to me. Has the reason been revealed since then?
If you are using Lumin digital output to another DAC, you have to keep the Lumin / AirPlay volume to Max such that Lumin is not applying digital volume for output to the external DAC. Likewise re-sampling needs to be turned off.
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It quickly became Loch Ness, which is also another troublesome entity 
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Eh, there are no degrees of losslessness, itās like being pregnant. Either you is or you isnāt.
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Iām fairly confused by Appleās offering of lossless .
1)So using airplay from my phone to a music streamer is currently AAC and not Alac ? What about from my Mac ?
2) Would Apple Music listing 16/44 play to a dac that only shows 24/44 on Audio MIDI ( no 16 bit available as a option ) be up sampling or bit perfect . From a Mac computer .
3) Is using IPhone USB to connect to CarPlay in your car playing lossless when itās marked as lossless or AAC ?
Plus, the must clearly indicate everything about how the test was set up and conducted. Results of and by themselves are meaningless.
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I have noticed a behavior when uploading my own files that I did not expect. Some of my albums are not available on Apple Music. Therefore, I use the option to manually add albums to Apple Music in the cloud.
That means I take one of my FLAC albums (16/44), convert it to ALAC (16/44) and then add it to Apple Music. Then I have to wait until the sync with the Apple Music Cloud is finished. For certainty, I then check the āRemove Downloadsā option to be sure that the album is definitely streaming from the Apple Cloud.
Now I would expect that the ALAC file is now also streamed as āLosslessā. But since the āLosslessā icon does not appear, I am not sure about this. Has anyone already done more detailed analysis on the quality in which self-uploaded ALAC (16/44) files are streamed?
My chain is: MacBook Pro ->UltraSone Naos USB DAC ->Beyerdynamic T5p
Well, I left my feedback days ago.
Iāve seen no announcement of iCloud uploads being ALAC, so where is your expectation coming from?
Have you seen an announcement I may have missed?
Yeah, I believe library syncing yields 256AAC in other libraries, even if you started with ALAC.
Ok thanks for clarification. So (at least at the moment) itās pretty useless to add ALAC albums manually to Apple Music. It is uploading and converting to 256AAC. Maybe I was a bit suprised, because the status is just saying that it is uploading the tracks, so I assumed the files were uploaded in the quality I added themā¦
Not useless for listening at home for non-Roon users ?
ALAC at home can be nice ! 
But yes I know what you mean, for away from home.
Absolutely - if you use the ALAC files only locally, then it still makes sense 
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Unfortunately, MacOS doesnāt provided auto switch sampling/bit depth compared to iOS and IPadOS. Thereās no way to know the actual bit depth and sample rate in Apple Music app. More information is hereā¦
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so a dac set to 32/44 in audio midi will play a 16/44 file in bit perfect? the bit rate doesnāt matter?
Yes, it will use the first set of 16bit of the 32bit data. The output 32/44 bit rate is obviously higher than 16/44 as long DAC can handle. Maintaining the correct sample rate is very important here.
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Just curious, what happens when you change the iPad setting the high quality? Does MQA no longer work?
iOS 14.6 Apple music AirPlay 1 : ALAC
iOS 14.6 Apple music AirPlay 2 : AAC
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Wow thats weird. So playing the new Airplay protocol is lossy?
Apple Music Lossless sounds quite good (matches my Red Book transfers). But youāre restricted to a local DAC and amplifer. (Schiit Audio Modi and Mani here). Cymbals and toms are much improved and small stick work common of jazz drumming is portrayed nicely. Piano and guitar have proper transient attack and wind instruments are spitty when in need of a draining.
It is very difficult to get Apple Music Lossless over to the big rig. AirPlay is the only sanctioned method and it looses a good bit of air and depth compared to Google Cast or RAAT.
Apple Music Spatial Audio is a disappointment. I played a couple of the samples, didnāt like what I heard, and switched it off. Reviewers report results are highly variable from record to record. Apparently it is making a poor recording worse and exaggerating the spatiality in a good recording. The more complex the sound field, the more it struggles per one reviewer. It doesnāt like orchestral music. Small jazz ensembles fare well. Rock varies depending on compression, etc. Loudness war contenders were reported to fare badly.
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