Apple lossless as a source

Welcome.

As you probably know by now, Apple Music isn’t well supported by the audio equipment manufacturers and for good reason.  Apple’s move to better quality streaming is pretty recent.  If products haven’t yet manifested, they probably will at some point.  I only use Apple to stream through my watch when I leave my phone at home.  Quboz is what I use for streaming.  Whatever you do, go used to keep costs down.  That most likely would mean letting go of your attachment to Apple.

Yeah, I did some reading after posting this. Ridiculous how hard it is to use apple as a source.  I’m not attached to it but just made the bad assumption there would be a straightforward way of feeding it to an amp.  
if I remove the apple assumptuon, what’s a good way to get a full catalogs fed to a. Amp? Again, without spending 5000$ to do it?

Try Bluesound Node X for $749. Good stable app and streamer / DAC that offers many options to stream music.

You can attach a PC or and iPad or iPhone to your amp. They all have low quality DAC contained within . Then depending which device you choose you may need an adapter of some sort. I would take whatever device you choose to the Apple store and let them help you. If you already own the PC or portable device this is the least expensive option.

Sound quality can be improved by upgrading the DAC in the source. The simplest way to do this is to buy a DAC that looks like a usb flash drive that will attach to the source and then attach to the RCA input on the amp.

If you have a component that accepts Bluetooth, AirPlay, or Google Chromecast, then you can send Apple Music wirelessly to that component. I listed the 3 wireless alternatives in ascending levels of sound quality. You will need a DAC, but most have these devices come with an included one. The most common term for these components are streamers, but the terminology for digital can be ambiguous.

I have tried to make this as simple as possible. It can get very complex. I always think that beginners should go slow. However $5K is a healthy budget that can buy a quality set up

if I remove the apple assumptuon, what’s a good way to get a full catalogs fed to a. Amp? Again, without spending 5000$ to do it?

Simplest would be to get a streamer with a decent built-in DAC like the Node X or the Eversolo DMP-A8. Moving up the performance scale you can get a separate streamer and DAC that can run from around $1000 up to big $$$, so it really depends on what level of sound quality you’re looking for and your budget. IMO if you’re willing to spent at least $1500 in this you’ll get much better performance with a separate streamer and DAC. If you share your budget you’ll get more specific recommendations here.  Incidentally, what are you using as a source and preamp now?