He means actually getting actual hi-res to your devices. Right now, from what I’ve read, it’s a mess of half solutions and menu diving, esp for non-Apple devices. Most people probably don’t care anyway about the format and are fine with asking Siri (or Alexa) to just play whatever.
I’m referring the whole chain, from the streaming service to my speakers. For example airplay can’t make my speakers to sing hires, and having a directly connected computer in the audio chain (in order to send the stream to an USB input) it’s not something that i want to do. But we live in a marketing driven world, so as we have 5G phones without a decent 5G network, we can also have hires without the tools to enjoy it…
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Of course, but we’re also discussing this on a niche audiophile site, not a food stamps forum. So it is all relative. Music fans have always been willing to spend more for their passion (and have you seen the cost of live tickets lately, esp coming out the pandemic 
) so I think it’s i portent if one is passionate about music, esp. in regards to more esoteric artists, it’s important o vote with one’s wallet, even if that means dropping something else or a bit of ‘hardship.’ (I’m quoted in Everett True’s book on Nirvana: “While other’s my age were buying their first houses, we were buying record collections.”)
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Artists need paying for their art. We all benefit from that.
Why, oh why does life always need to be a ‘race to the bottom’?
IMO you should PAY for the pleasures that our favourite artists bring us, rather than finding ways to avoid paying them for their brilliance.
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It just happens that I’m one of those 
, but guess what: there it’s always an enough is enough moment!
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Lifetime Roon user here.
I don’t consider myself greedy about spending money on virtual things like subscriptions or services.
I spend over 5,000/year in services (mixed things, serious and frivolous).
On another thread here (Apple Music High Res) a user replied pointing out that the Apple’s lossless upgrade is free, probably implying that complains should be weighted considering how generous Apple is.
I’m Apple Music subscriber since day one. If Apple had introduced hi-res lossless tier for, say $ 15,00, I’d have upgraded the subscription in a blink.
Currently, Apple Music isn’t the best choice for audio enthusiasts mainly due to the limits of AirPlay and macOS Audio MIDI Setup.
AirPlay has a great potential, in my opinion, even for so called audiophiles.
I don’t expect to play one day DSD files through AirPlay. I leave this to Roon. I’m confident that lossless hi-res streaming will be possible eventually, though. And that’s will represent a big plus for me.
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Hello,
A fair point… I had maybe to explain more.
And, no, it is not a question of chasing the shiniest new things.
Spotify / Qobuz / Apple Music are not the same services and, so, do not have the same avantages or issues. IN the past, before having Roon, I was using iTunes and abit of Apple Music. But I was a bit disappointed by the fact that Apple alogrithms only propose new music within your own taste and mainly too industrial. So, within time, I had this bad feeling of being narrowed on my own taste.
Qobuz was too expensive in my mind. But, after a test offered by Roon, my mind was blown by seeing so many unknown new artists with a very qualitative music proposal. The main strength was the combination of Qobuz editorial and human’s made playlist combined with Roon Valencia AI. Even if too expensive, it convinced me of the value for money.
On the other hand, if you like techno/trance/bunker electro, Spotify offer a far best choice than Qobuz and Apple Music.
So, it’s not a question of what’s best but more the best fit to your usage.
Apple Music :
Best for all my Apple devices but music algorithms not so good.
Qobuz :
Best for music discovery but more expensive
Spotify :
Best for electro music but not yet lossless
So, in my mind, Roon should do like Sonos and propose more services to their customers and let them choose vs their proper needs. Having only Qobuz and Tidal is a bit too restrictive.
Does this explanation fit your question ?
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Hi,
Yes, certainly, all good points. But it’s been said again and again that Roon can’t integrate with Apple, or at least in a way that would bring the most important benefits of Roon/Valence to it. It would have to be a standalone pass through (and maybe only available on iOs or Mac OS devices as Roon isn’t web based) and you would be back to the Apple recommendations for that ‘section’ of Roon. It’s really a first world conundrum to have, but for now, there it stands unless Apple change their API standing (doubtful).
Everret True, now he used to be one of my favourite reviewers when he was at Melody Maker.
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Ok,understood. My expectation is there will be a change to Airplay that would allow it to play hi res files, very much like RAAT. This is not rocket science. What can be a little more tricky is the other stuff RAAT does like controlling the volume of my DAC from the Roon volume slider. That requires some implementation on the DAC side that is unclear to be possible or rather that Apple would bother with.
Airplay is already available in many DACs. Even my dCS Rossini has Airplay (an old version with some issues, actually). So Apple producing a version of the client that would handle higher bit rates is very likely not hard for them to do.
Apple needs to figure out how to make this new business of lossless something that can be used. I would expect them to be motivated but who knows with Apple. If it were Google I wouldn’t bet they would even finish the rollout…
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Actually, I find Qobuz is free! 
I subscribe to Sublime+ and this means I get a hefty discount when I buy albums with a resolution higher than redbook. The thing is: I would buy these albums regardless, as I want to own everything I really like - music disappears from streaming services ALL THE TIME.
So doing the math, I have already saved more than the cost of the yearly Sublime+ subscription!
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Exactly the same reason I upgraded to Sublime. I buy 5 albums a month (on average) and save about 25-30 pounds a month off the cost - covering the cost of the Sublime subscription.
i am on the verge of dumping TIDAL - just checking the catalogues at the moment but there is not much I like on TIDAL that is not on Qobuz it seems.
There’s one thing I missed here: Airplay has the stream going through the device controlling it. So for example if I am playing music from my iphone to an airplay device, the stream goes to my iphone then to the airplay device. Spotify Connect, TIDAL Connect and ChromecastAudio are different: your phone app is the “remote” but the stream is fetched by the endpoint directly from the server. You can turn your iphone off and the music keeps playing. This is important for stability as well as possibly sound quality.
I was actually expecting Airplay 2 would include this feature but I don’t think it does.
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I didn’t know that - awful, and yet another example of Apple taking the market back years by making existing technology worse and putting it in pretty packages.
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Every time I want to ditch Tidal, I find an album or two that are not available on Qobuz. I hate them so much that I keep giving them my money.
I gather the decision is due to multiroom - you can’t do multiroom in a “connect” scenario.
I am sure Apple considered this and decided multiroom is more important.
Obviously one solution would be to have a device, a computer or ios device, dedicated to streaming to the multiroom solution. This is where I think Roon might fit in the Apple ecosystem. However, Roon probably spends an inordinate amount of effort curating metadata, and I am not sure Apple would care for that.
BTW… For any geeks out there you can find a python implementation of the Apple Music API. I have not tried it yet but might, just for fun. It is unclear to me whether the API allows you to get a stream, what I’ve seen done is data queries.
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Which was my point exactly: they don’t care about usability, implementation and stuf like that, the only thing they care about is to attract people in, the more from other streaming services (which may happen or not to give a … on the bigger hires picture) the better, hence why starting the service without all the necessary hardware support and offering it for free (or whatever). And they get a huge support in doing that from a very large amount of users who also have no idea or don’t give a … on SQ and HD. Have you ever heard somebody explaining super excited what Ultra HD (Amazon) is and how much of a revelation it is and how it will change your life? It can be a very scary experience!!!
I have compared the song “Exitus” of Bob Marley in Dolby Atmos (Apple Music) with the same song via Qobuz on Roon: The Atmos sounds artificial, the stage was a bit narrower, there was a background noise and the Hi-Hats were overdriven and harsh, they hurt the ears. Quite different and better in Roon: natural HiRes sound, no background noise, the HiHats sounded normal and the voices didn’t sound so far away.
I am very disappointed about Dolby Atmos… So I don´t need the integration of apple music.
Best
Frank
Dolby Atmos versions is not something I would compare to. It’s apples and qobuzes (ha!). I would compare like for like.
I listened to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” in 24/96 from both Apple and Qobuz on my headphone rig (iPad Pro M1, Chord Mojo, Aeon2 closed) and frankly Apple’s was just as good.
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