I’ve just started using Roon - on a 14 day trial. Still figuring things out, however on the whole enjoying it, fantastic UI, lets see where this journey goes.
Anyhow, I need some clarification on something. When I play through AirPlay, it shows the signal path as High quality, however when I plug in my DAC and play, it shows Lossless
So from what I’ve read on this forum I understand this is because AirPlay although it is 16/44, can’t be guaranteed to be Lossless. Is this correct? And is my assumption AirPlay serves music at 16/44 (I was hoping I could see somehow, but it doesnt show the codec/rates Airplay is playing, well I can’t find it).
A little more context in why I’m asking this:
I currently connect my Laptop via USB to my DAC. Its fine, but sometimes i want to dock my laptop on the other side of the room, 6metres away.
I hear USB cables greater than that length can be flakey, so avoiding that.
I could run a long RCA, but again, a little concerned of noise, also if I can avoid hiding the wire I’d like that.
I’m only really interested in CD-quality - 16/44. The world above that, hi-res lossless etc doesn’t really interest me.
And that’s why I’m wondering if I could just get a cheap Wiim Mini and optical into my DAC, then AirPlay everything - would that serve my music the same sonically.
Hi, AirPlay is lossless with 16/44 content, so don’t worry and have fun listening to your music. And avoid falling in the famous audiofoolery with higher is always better and the right color of indicator has to be shown. Enjoy your listening and don’t try to solve problems you not have.
No that’s only for Apple Music when using AirPlay 2 and not AirPlay in general and is a well known issues or feature purely of Apple Music
Roon defines it the way it does as some devices such as an Apple TV will resample to 48k and it won’t report it and also AirPlay relies on two clocks not one like most transports. So it uses the oneon the sending device and on the receiving device and they might not be exactly in sync so AirPlay can alter try the output to fix this. It is however more often lossless at 44.1.
Welcome to Roon. I’m just a fellow user but here to offer help where I can.
Airplay via Roon is lossless at 16/44.1. It shows as high quality because it has to repackage it to the airplay protocol (that’s the easy way of looking at it).
as per both @AE67 & @Simon_Arnold3 Apple music lossless from an iPhone to a Airplay 2 speaker down samples to 256kbps AAC.
As @AE67 says, don’t worry too much about the light colour etc. Enjoy the music.
So from what it sounds like it’s how individual players handle the process that matters. For example in case Roon is doing what I want 16/44 just fine. If I decided to use something like Plexamp I’d need to check how that does etc.
Btw - if had a ‘roon ready’ endpoint it’d serve music over RAAT and I wouldn’t have to care about AirPlay - is that understanding correct?
Interesting Apple do that, on their own product, with their own protocol, seems like a mess.
Thanks again - Will continue my listening and exploring Roon.
I would not call it a mess. Apple simple don’t care about the audiophile histeria.
I would bet that nearly no one would notice the difference if they wouldn’t know in before that there is any.
PlexAmp uses the devices system AirPlay it does not actually have any code itself for AirPlay unlike Roon. Roon reversed engineered AirPlay so they can send to any AirPlay device from any operating system the core or remotes run on. Plex can only AirPlay from a Mac for the main app or via aniOS device.
Roon also has the option to group endpoints so they play the same music. This works as long as the endpoints are using the same protocol. And you can set each volume level separately.
I have 2 AirPlay capable speakers grouped this way. One in my living room and one in my kitchen. Nice for some background music if I don’t want to use my full hifi.
