For those in the Apple ecosystem, especially with families, it makes no sense to not have the Apple One plan, as Greg also mentioned. I haven’t yet tried a single lossless or high-res track on Apple Music, but will do so later in the week hopefully. Might even take my kid’s macbook and try 192 files via USB to see what gives.
I can just imagine Roon pulling their hair out trying to insist that Apple needs to feed them with daily database updates in the format that Roon wants. 
Yeah, if they thought Spotify was difficult…….
Has anyone tried feeding Apple Music to their dCS from an iDevice via USB? A friend on the Naim forum is reporting that he is rather happy.
Best
Gregg
Tried my iPhone to Bartok the other day, worked rather well, albeit a little clumsy with the Apple lightning adapter.
Anupc
Thank you for the reply. While I realize there are different masterings I wonder how it sounded via USB input vs. the same 24/96 streamed via Ethernet by way of Tidal or Qobuz.
Best
Gregg
I haven’t done any real sonic comparisons as such (in the case of that that Art Blakey album, on Qobuz it’s in 24/192, whereas on Apple Music its 24/96, so not quite a fair comparison).
By the way, for people who want to use an iDevice on a more permanent basis with their dCS, the Apple Lightning Docking Station works quite nicely! 
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I have just made painful contact with a major point of the Darko article mentioned by @Ermos a few posts up. I streamed a CD Samplerate recording to my Rossini via USB and didn’t notice that the Midi Settings of the MacBook Air were on 48kHz. Just garbled Audio - until I switched to 44.1. Now it sounds ok.
Given you have to switch Samplerates manually, one would think Apple would indicate the album’s samplerate very visibly somewhere. Either I am blind or they don’t…
Am I missing something here or do I really have to try different samplerates until I find one that plays cleanly?
Rudi, you are writing as if Apple really know or care about hi-res audio. They don’t. It is just a marketing need. The competition have hi-res so we must have it. Can we say we have hi-res? Yes, box ticked.
Well most music consumed on iDevices is likely during activities or as background so hardly a need for high-res. In fact, give me lossy at lesser bandwidth and decoding processing overhead and let me keep more of my battery charge.
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Apple’s native “Music” app on Macs always go through Apple’s mixer/sample-rate-converter; bit-streams are re-sampled based on the Audio MIDI settings. 
iDevice don’t have this issue though. So, ironically, if you want bit perfect playback of high-resolution Apple Music content, (for now at least), use an iDevice with your dCS DAC.
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It’s unbecoming of an audiophile and a gentleman 
The bit-stream doesn’t care 
Think of an Apple iDevice as a mini Touch-screen Apple Music Streaming Server, connected over USB (so, out comes all the Audiophile USB isolators, converters, etc etc ).
Nah. I’ll stick with Qobuz and Tidal and a one-box solution called Rossini.
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Apple currently does not work with hardware manufacturer directly, the only way you can play HighRes audio via Apple Music is to use USB from a Mac or iphone / ipad
I’ll give that a try. I have used my iPad connected to the Rossini (using the Apple OTG adapter) to play back Sony 360 material on Tidal. Works fine.
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Got my iPad working after a few initial glitches (using powered hub). Listening to lossless Apple music now.
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Unfortunately, that’s still too Apple-centric. Built on Swift means runs on Apple devices only. Doesn’t help for outboard streamers like dCS.
That’s a bit of a cynical overstatement. It’s true at one level, but not across the board. Yes, it’s necessary to check the boxes, but you’d be mistaken to think Apple does that because of the competition. They don’t see those folks who have hi-res audio as competition, because they don’t think that hi-res by itself is competitive with what they are offering. I have several friends who work at Apple Music. They care a great deal about audio fidelity, as did Steve Jobs. Where and how they implement it becomes a matter of choice and execution. Ironically perhaps, it’s much more important to get it right on the iDevices, where ease of use and “just working” is paramount. Macs, whether desktops or laptops, have software that can solve the issue of bit rates. And the folks at Apple don’t see their desktops/laptops as music consumer machines. They are creative machines; That’s a dichotomy of long standing. The consumer machines are the part they got right first. No one has mentioned the AppleTV so far, but when I play Apple Music Spatial Audio through the ATV, and over my AirPod Pro earbuds, it is an impressive immersive experience. (Non-Apple outputs like the Vivaldi Upsampler over Airplay are still limited to lossless 44/16. But they don’t sound bad.) Same with my iPhone and iPad. I don’t listen to music through my Mac Pro, mini, or laptop. It’s no surprise to me they focused on getting the iDevices right. So as @Anupc wrote, if you want max fidelity, and ease of playback, use an iDevice. Apple fan that I am, it’s still not my preference for music. But there’s no denying how good Spatial/Atmos sounds over the Airpods Pro. Hi-res is simply an incidental piece of the Spatial Audio offering (search for “hi-res” on Apple Music, and you get taken to Spatial Audio results). So, yes, it’s a checkbox, but they happen to think it matters. And I suspect this is only step one in taking Spotify to school.
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