Apple Music service (Sonos app plugin) lossless coming soon?

Sonos have made no announcement about this so it’s a waiting game at the moment.

And it would rely on Apple to update their feed to Sonos for the Sonos controller, or AirPlay 2 for playing from Apple’s own app. Not really in Sonos’ hands. Remember, the controller app that Sonos uses only points the software on the speakers to Apple’s servers, and plays whatever Apple provides to them. 

To be honest, I would expect that Apple has their hands full in preparing their own release, and haven’t had time to set up a new Apple Music Classical connection for Sonos to use yet, either. Or do anything about hi-res for Sonos. 

Hopefully the Era release and this Apple announcement will bring regular CD quality lossless streaming, as it should. I’m crossing my fingers for good things on 3/28 or at least the very near future…

FWIW, I did a side-by-side comparison vs. Idagio and Apple sound quality is distinctly inferior.   Signal was delivered through Sonos connect, B&W 805 speakers.  Source was Chandos recording of Schubert String Quintet (Brodsky).  I played this directly from the S2 app, not using airplay.

In case anyone from Apple (or Sonos) cares, Apple Classical has several advantages and I’d probably switch, but its lower sound quality on Sonos is a deal-breaker for me.  (Or is there some way of improving Apple sound on Sonos?

I believe the loss in sound quality is because you are probably making the playlist or selections on Apple Classical and then playing the playlist through Apple Music on Sonos. I did that as well and sound quality is dependent on airplay, which is not ideal. I think that when Sonos and Apple can get the classical app onto sonos, it will be much better than using Airplay or moving a classical playlist to Apple Music within Sonos. Im hopeful

As far as i know at the moment airplay still is the only way to hear apple music content with hifi 16bit/44,1 kHz on Sonos speakers. But better than nothing… this works 😉

 I‘m sure Apple is working on getting hi res up to 24/48 for Sonos system.

Even the standard Apple Music, not just Apple Classical?

Apple Music app supports different lossless quality. Hifi quality with 16bit/44,1kHz is one of them and can be used with airplay. 

Except Airplay 2 using Apple Music on iOS does not and converts it to AAC. However if you use a Mac then you can set the system wide audio output and lossless is transmitted using the Apple Music App over Airplay 2.

@Belly M 

Yes… strange that Apple just uses AAC for using airplay on ios. But on the other hand i compared this with using airplay on my iphone playing flac 16/44,1 from Deezer. For my ears no difference… 

So if the result is ok, why not using AAC!? It really sounds much better than mp3 HQ. 

Internal testing at Apple showed that most members of staff could not tell the difference, and personally I do find AAC on Sonos hardware perfectly acceptable.

@Belly M 

Maybe we can hear a difference on the „big“ Sonos speakers  if Apple Music will be able to play 24/48 directly to Sonos. But this won’t be an airplay issue any longer. 

I was suprised recently to read that airplay 2 actually downsamples to AAC. That was really disappointing. I also believe that apple does not play lossless natively on the sonos. It is actually really hard to figure out a way to hear lossless with apple unless you plug your computer/ipad/iphone directly into a DAC. Even listening over apple’s own wireless headphones is not lossless. 

Lossless refers to just bits and bytes, nothing is being lost in the heard sound quality. Don’t just take my word for it, the head of Apple Music said so about a year ago. At the time of the Apple Music lossless release, which would suggest that this release was just a check the box marketing exercise for Apple.

Worth a read:

https://markellisreviews.com/apple-music-lossless-sounds-better-because-its-louder-a-follow-up/