Qobuz vs Airplay

Airplay is limited to CD quality (16/44) last I knew.  According to ChatGPT, it is not limited to 320kbps, fwiw.  Regardless, you can’t get what you’re paying for out of Qobuz or any high-res service.  And its playback isn’t perfect. Furthermore, your phone is the player, which is problematic for many reasons and I suspect the phone may introduce degradation of its own.

I believe Tidal has caught up to Qobuz for quality since Tidal ditched MQA.

I have a Marantz Model 40n and I love it.  It has Tidal Connect and Qobuz Connect, so it will play those services at full resolution, and it connects to them directly itself - your phone is just the controller, not the player. 

@sextantcv4 Marantz is part of the Denon HEOS ecosystem, so you can add that to your list.  With my 40n I’ve got a high (enough) end class A/B amp for my main listening and small Denon Home speakers around the house for whole-home audio.  I feel this is superior to Sonos and Airplay.

With B&W 606 S2 mains my setup is perfectly adequate for my aging ears.

Yeah. Arcam tells me I have to control it and through Chromecast or UNDP To gain above 44 on Qobuz or Tidal.   I can check back on what they say about Apple Music   My impression was Apple Music was limited to 44 but I see someone said otherwise

Apple Music is high res, but like Tidal and I think Qobuz, their library ranges from 16/44 to 24/192.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/118295

Honestly I have to really try hard to hear the difference between 16/44 and anything higher, and 16/44 is certainly sufficient.  I grew my audiophile ears on CDs, so that's my baseline.  I can hear the difference between 16/44 and many Spotify 320kbps tracks.  Unacceptable for anything but background music.  If Spotify ever gets off its fat ass and releases its high res tier, I'll probably switch to that because I already have a Spotify family account for my wife and kids, and I think it's "radio" functionality is better than Tidal's.

Prior system had Simaudio 390 NP with ARC VS115, ARC LS17, and Revel F32. Used Qobuz 95% to stream over other streaming apps. IMO, Qobuz sounded so much better than Apple Music/ITunes via AirPlay especially with Simaudio 390 NP.

Alpiner.  Thanks for that Apple support link    I can’t see how from the link one can listen to 192 lossless on Apple Music to other than an Apple device and even if I’m reading it correctly, an Apple TV won’t support lossless

1. Select or unselect Lossless. Apple TV 4K currently doesn’t support Hi-Res Lossless (sample rates greater than 48 kHz).

so for Apple Music, how does one listen to greater than 48 kHz on other than an Apple device?