John Darko did a deep dive into Airplay a few months ago. It is lossy. At best it provides 320Kbps .aac files and often goes to less than that depending on how close you are and other factors. A very long time ago when Airplay first came out, it wasn’t lossy, but upon realizing that it was killing the iPhones’ batteries quickly they changed it to be lossy so the amount of data being transferred is far less. It also now sends data in short bursts and is buffered, not continuous, to free up the bandwidth for any other tasks needing attention.
They should have called it "Airplay 2" but didn’t, hence the confusion on some people’s part. I’d opt for Qobuz over Wi-Fi every time. Airplay isn’t even as good as LDAC Bluetooth. But hey, for convenience, and not critical listening, why not use whatever is easiest for you? I use Airplay via an iPAD to stream music from webpages, such as the Internet Live Music Archive to my streamer. Works fine.
Qobuz vs Airplay
Good Evening,
Seeking input on streaming music on Qobuz using Simaudio Mind 2 streamer on 390 Pre/Dac/Streamer vs Apple music on Apple Airplay over the Sim 390. (Speakers are Magico A3, amp is Sim 330A) Do you notice a material difference between Qobuz and Airplay? The differences on my system do not seem significant. Possibly it is the music used, which is primarily rock or EDM (and for which Apple Music has a much broader selection than Qobuz). Appreciate any input.
Regards,
Dokosan
.