Article: What AirPlay 2 Means for Your Listening Setup

[The Computer Audiophile]

I did a bit more digging on this, as streaming audio through the phone is my pet peeve. It appears that AirPlay 2 as of right now doesn't really help and requires the phone still be heavily involved with playback in most cases.

 

The HomePod can stream right from the cloud under certain circumstances, but all other audio routes through the phone. Spotify and Tidal have had this nailed for years by sending audio straight from the cloud to the playback device. 

 

 

For the geeks, here is a link to a developer video and PDF.

 

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/509/

 

509_introducing_airplay_2.pdf

 

 

Paging @DarwinOSX - It seems AirPlay 2 still requires the phone pretty heavily. Do you have any other information?

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 hours ago, Archimago said:

Curious Kirk...

 

What's the limit of AirPlay 2? Is it native 16/44.1? Will there be some upsampling to 48kHz?

 

I can't seem to find any clarity about this. I assume since there's no fanfare about "hi-res", Apple's still not interested in 24-bit or >48kHz.

 

We need to get an AirPlay 2 device with digital output to do actual testing. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

5 hours ago, kirkmc said:

 

There is nothing to suggest that the audio is any different now than before. The only digital output on supported models is HDMI; the 3rd generation model, which had an optical output, is not supported. However, it still works with AirPlay, just not the newer iteration, and the audio will be the same. 

The AirPort Express doesn’t upsample like the AppleTV. I want a similar AirPlay 2 device just to look at the digital output. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hopefully one of the AirPlay 2 HiFi devices will have optical or coaxial output. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I think a clarification should be made that AirPlay doesn't do the resampling to 48 kHz but rather the resampling is device dependent. Streaming via AirPlay to any number of HiFi devices will pass 44.1 kHz no problem and even the AirPort express is 44.1 kHz. Only the AppleTV resamples the audio to 48 kHz.

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 hours ago, new_media said:

I'm not following. What does the history of these devices have to do with AirPlay passing a lossless digital audio stream?

 

I believe Stereophile reviewed the original AirPort Express way back when (2004?) and found the digital output to be bit perfect. 

We did it in 2012