Avid Contributor I

Answered

Does Sonos now stream lossless from Apple Music?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
June 12, 2024
37 replies
12843 views

I did not think this was supported before, due to Apple. For example, I once asked a BluOS dealer why they force you to AirPlay if you want to listen to Apple Music and they said it was because Apple does not support lossless streaming to non-Apple devices, only 256kbps AAC.

I have an Era 300 and it's logged into my Apple Music account, like before. But now on the new app when I see what the speaker is playing it now says “Lossless”. I don’t remember ever seeing that before. So…. am I now getting lossless music to my Era 300?

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Best answer by Rhonny

Yes, Lossless from Apple Music on Sonos has been supported for about a month now.

Show previous replies

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Rhonny

Prodigy III

All I know is that the difference between streaming Spotify and Apple on Sonos is night and day to me. The deep warmth generated by the sub, the purity of the hi-hat from the Arc, the fullness of the music, and the clarity of separation in the room when streaming Lossless Apple tracks is so much more emotionally rewarding than anything streamed from Spotify on Sonos.

Edit: To be clear, this isn’t to dispute any of the more complex discussion around me. It’s just a comment on Lossless vs not.

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bjuraszAuthor

Avid Contributor I

I guess my ears lied to me when, many years ago, I upgraded from a Yamaha CD player to an Arcam CD-23. The difference was staggering, and that was Red Book CD, the only difference being the quality of the DACs.

jgatie

I guess my ears lied to me when, many years ago, I upgraded from a Yamaha CD player to an Arcam CD-23. The difference was staggering, and that was Red Book CD, the only difference being the quality of the DACs.

I didn’t say anything about the quality of DACs, it doesn’t enter the equation. And many years ago, the quality of CD mastering was garbage, due to recording engineers trying to apply analog techniques to digital mastering (also covered in the Xiph link above). Better CD players handled the garbage mastering better than others. That doesn’t apply to streaming files.

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bjuraszAuthor

Avid Contributor I

Sorry I misunderstood you!

jgatie

All I know is that the difference between streaming Spotify and Apple on Sonos is night and day to me. The deep warmth generated by the sub, the purity of the hi-hat from the Arc, the fullness of the music, and the clarity of separation in the room when streaming Lossless Apple tracks is so much more emotionally rewarding than anything streamed from Spotify on Sonos.

Lossless is definitely an advantage over lossy. However, with a lossless sample, there is a point where a higher sampling rate gives no advantage, and even can make the sample sound worse due to intermodulation distortion in the playback electronics. That threshold is the Nyquist-Shannon rate, defined as 2x the highest frequency required for playback.

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Rhonny

Prodigy III

All I know is that the difference between streaming Spotify and Apple on Sonos is night and day to me. The deep warmth generated by the sub, the purity of the hi-hat from the Arc, the fullness of the music, and the clarity of separation in the room when streaming Lossless Apple tracks is so much more emotionally rewarding than anything streamed from Spotify on Sonos.

Lossless is definitely an advantage over lossy. However, with a lossless sample, there is a point where a higher sampling rate gives no advantage, and even can make the sample sound worse due to intermodulation distortion in the playback electronics. That threshold is the Nyquist-Shannon rate, defined as 2x the highest frequency required for playback.

I added an ‘edit’ to my post, potentially just before you started writing this, I think! It was to say I’m not disputing any of the technical elements, as I bow to people’s knowledge - I was just making a comment on Lossless vs not. I agree that there comes a point beyond which any more data or bits or kHz don’t make a discernible difference to humans!

I opened that link you sent earlier for further (after work) reading. 👍🏻

jgatie

I added an ‘edit’ to my post, potentially just before you started writing this, I think! It was to say I’m not disputing any of the technical elements, as I bow to people’s knowledge - I was just making a comment on Lossless vs not. I agree that there comes a point beyond which any more data or bits or kHz don’t make a discernible difference to humans!

I opened that link you sent earlier for further (after work) reading. 👍🏻

Monty (the author) is a pretty cool guy. His videos on audio sampling are great for the layman. There’s one where he actually generates a sine wave on an oscilloscope, samples it to digital at varying sample frequencies, then converts from digital back to analog and sends it to another oscilloscope for analysis. He proves that even down to the level of analysis on the scope, the analog output is exactly equal to the input as long as the sample frequency is 2x the bandwidth of the input signal. It’s pretty eye opening.

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twarn

Contributor I

Forgive me if I am beating this horse to death. Two questions related to this:

Does using apple music and listening to a “lossless” song through the Sonos app on my Sonos One Gen 2 speakers, play lossless/better than CD quality music out of the speakers?
If yes, can I replace those speakers with my own speakers and amplifier connected to a Sonos Port, playing the same apple music and “lossless” song through the Sonos app and have lossless/better than CD quality music play out of the speakers?

Thank you.

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craigski

Local Superstar

Technically, yes to both. I was guided to this link in another thread on similar subject:

https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/services/apple-music

I am listening to 24bit/48kHz Apple Music using new Sonos App with Apple Music service.

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Yenzi

Lyricist III

I’m a little bit surprised with introducing the lossless for Apple Music in Sonos app (waiting so long). Thanks for that Sonos team!

I’m just wondering if via AirPlay from Apple Music we also are getting the lossless quality now (I have a lossless badge as in the attached screen)?