![]() Use of these higher bitrates requires an external DAC to decode the digital audio and convert it to an analog signal before sending it to your amplifier -> speakers/headphones.Apple is a high-end luxury brand and has recognized that there is strong enough demand for high-resolution audio amongst it's customer base - or else why both offering high-resolution audio above 48kHz at all?.It has been known for a while that higher bitrate/bitdepth audio - if recorded and engineered properly - has the capability to sound noticeably better than music encoded at the traditional RedBook CD standard of 44.1kHz/16-bits when played back on appropriately capable equipment.Supporting high-resolution lossless audio but not providing an option to ensure the digital output matches what was downloaded without modification is a huge miss by Apple and I truly can't understand why they would do this! There are third party apps for purchase that will do this for you (ensure the output format matches the audio file being played to ensure the signal is passed through unadulterated), but this shouldn't be necessary! This is the only way to ensure that the digital audio signal isn't modified by your Mac before being passed to your DAC! Not exactly a great user experience. Since the bitrate for lossless music could be any of (all in kHz): 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192 but the digital audio output format remains fixed, one must click on the lossless logo to check which format is being used, then go into the separate Audio MIDI Setup app and set the matching output format - for *every* song/album that I play on Apple Music. I hope I just haven't found the setting for this or it's coming soon? ![]() iTunes doesn't provide this option.I'm super happy that Apple Music finally supports lossless audio, but the lack of a 'bit-perfect' digital passthrough option is a critical gap that prevents me - and likely most folks who care enough about audio quality to bother with high-resolution lossless audio via external DAC - from adopting it as my primary source of audio enjoyment. We want to avoid this by using ASIO drivers, WASAPI, or OpenAL, which bypass Windows audio DSP. Our conclusion so far: Depending on the Windows version and configuration, Windows might or might not apply dither, bit depth and/or sample rate conversions. ![]() sample rate are not supported by the hardware.Įdit 3: Found a lot of information about ASIO and how Windows handles audio here. It is up to the developer of the application using WASAPI to see to it that the properties of the audio file and the capabilities of the audio device do match Bit perfect playback is impossible by design if the properties of the audio file e.g. I found a really interesting page about WASAPI hereĬonclusion: WASAPI is a low latency interface to the driver of the audio device. ![]() So far there are two alternatives to bypass this: ASIO drivers or WASAPI. Still many things to clarify, but this is an awesome start point! But is this really everything there is about the infamous non bit-perfect reproduction issue in Windows? If we set 44.1 kHz as default sample rate, we will get bit-perfect playback on any software? Then, after all, this was not an iTunes related issue?Įdit 2: Seems that the issue comes from the DSP applied by all versions of Windows and Windows API, and the inability of iTunes to bypass this. source If you are going to pick reasons not to use iTunes, let it be because it is proprietary software over open source, supports proprietary formats discourages use of open source codecs (flac), is sluggish, and supports a medium monopoly. ![]() It really isn't a big deal, but if you insist there is documentation to help you out. This means windows goes from 44.1-44.1 for your music, and downsamples or upsamples anything that isn't 44.1. Playback devices window, click on your sound card, advanced, set sample rate to 44.1 if you are playing cd audio. When it does this windows has to resample everything so that it can be properly mixed. There is a windows api to play audio through that mixes all audio that a program wants to play. Is there any DSP going on? Dither, re-sampling? And why would they do that? Is there any proof?Įdit: we got this really interesting reply from Jo3M3tal (it's hidden because of the downvotes of other comment): I keep reading that iTunes running on a Windows system is not bit-perfect, but I can't find why is that. ![]()
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