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Apple Music on iOS 26

I uploaded iOS 26 Beta on my iPhone 16 Pro Max yesterday. Along with my iPad I use this phone in conjunction with the EverSolo DMP-A6 Signature Edition (as streamer) feeding the digital signal via USB or Coax to an Auralic Vega DAC or Denafrips Pontus DAC. My hi-fi is transparent enough to allow me to experience subtle (or not so subtle) changes in associated upstream-downstream hardware and the music streaming service sound quality easily. As standard, I use both Qobuz and Apple Music streaming services. To date, I have found the sound quality of Qobuz to be, in general, a bit higher than Apple Music. I have two choices to stream either service, first is using EverSolo’s Control app therefore engaging EverSolo’s unique sample bit-rate algorithm. The iPhone / iPad has the EverSolo Control app which serves as the music selection interface, then signaling the streamer to retrieve the music from Cloud-based servers via Ethernet. Again, note that with this method everything is selected and controlled via EverSolo’s app.

The second alternative is to search and select via the Qobuz app or Apple Music app directly, then select sound out using wi-fi to connect to DMP-A6 streamer. 
 

I am greatly impressed with the evolved Apple Music streamer experience. Most important to me is that sound quality seems to my ears clearly better, or I should more correctly say, more musically engaging. The sound is subjectively bigger and soundstage more layered with greater separation (less homogeneous sound presentation) or as they say, more fully fleshed out. Dynamics are better. Overall a major step forward for Apple Music in my book. Important to note the sound I describe is only to be had by accessing music direct from the native music streaming app on mobile device, and not through EverSolo Control app. I am confident that this will be duplicated by the EverSolo team in a future software and firmware upgrade.

Why does it sound better? Not sure, but it could have something to do with a more universal adaptation of the Spatial Sound technology? What I can say is that it sounds better streaming Apple Music  in my hi-if system now.

in addition to sound improvement another very compelling feature is the Dj-like mixing of one song into another. Just brilliant! So engaging. 

 

Anyone else had a chance to try this out?

 

By the way, huge appreciation for the EverSolo DMP-A6 Signature Streamer / DAC. It is superb both as a streamer and a DAC.

Peace, out.
Aki

4afsanakhan

Showing 1 response by engineears

engineears
40 posts
 

The Apple Music subscription service has had lossless for 4 years, since June of 2021, so I think maybe there are some folks here sharing experiences that go back until before then. Which sort of proves the argument that people remember negative experiences like they happened yesterday.

It’s also worth noting that the bit depth and sample rate are limited on an album by album basis to what the content provider offers. Apple can’t force a record label to upload 24-bit/192 KHz files to the server cluster, but some have! This is easier to see if you’re playing tracks in the Music app on a Mac where clicking Lossless or High-Resolution Lossless will tell you the actual stream characteristics.

It is true that an Apple TV 4K streaming box has a 48 KHz sample rate limit on it, probably imposed by the choice of HDMI controller chip but I have no idea there. This means that audio above the 48 KHz sampling rate will be downsampled, although it is not clear whether the Music app tells the server it’s running on an Apple TV and the server sends a 48 KHz master of the song or if the Apple TV 4K downsamples it on the fly. Apple hates to waste things like energy and bandwidth and I wouldn’t be surprised if they do the former instead of the latter. When you have hundreds of millions of customers those wasted bits add up!

One thing to note is that in the TV app on Mac computers Apple has added a setting for HDMI Passthrough for Dolby Digital and Dolby Atmos content that bypasses all processing in the Mac.

If you want a feature like this for Apple Music, and you want it for all content not just Dolby encided content, the best way to get Apple to listen to you is to go to https://apple.com/feedback and clearly articulate your desires there. Apple reads all that feedback and they have taken action on it in the past!

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