General 24bit Audio Now Supported?

[doberman211]

I have a few albums in my iTunes library that have never been able to sync over to my phone or tablet, all 24bit audio ALAC files. I'd need to either get a 16bit CD quality version or convert the files to 256kb/s (which I detest doing as it defeats the purpose). Suddenly in the latest iOS 11 beta they sync over! Could this possibly be hinting at Apple preparing to implement high-fidelity audio options in the iTunes Store? If so, I'm so down for that!

I've known for a while that the DACs in the iPhones support higher quality files, but you had to use third party workarounds to get your music to play on iOS. It seems this is no longer the case as I even have 96.000kHz 24bit audio files synced over.

It's always been a pain deciding if I want to convert things down just to have it playable on my device or keep my on-the-go music lossless as well.

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[Shirasaki]

24 bit support is always a thing, back to iOS 10 era. But 96kHz? Are you serious? I cannot make it through no matter how hard I try. I mean, I cannot play 96kHz file on native music app, or I cannot play anything higher than 48kHz.

 

[doberman211]

Well, it transfers now! I am not sure about anything past 96khz though. I know I have some green day at 192khz but I haven't tried it yet.

 

[GregE240]

Interesting! And I agree, great news. I’ve only ever been able to transfer 24/48 ALAC to my 6....if you try 24/96 or higher, you just get errors...

 

[Shirasaki]

Well, it transfers now! I am not sure about anything past 96khz though. I know I have some green day at 192khz but I haven't tried it yet.

For me, any file passing 48kHz is just an error saying the file cannot be played on device.
Therefore I am curious how could you sync 96kHz file to your device.

 

[Birkan]

Well, it transfers now! I am not sure about anything past 96khz though. I know I have some green day at 192khz but I haven't tried it yet.

Which device do you have? If answer is iPhone 7 or new iPad Pro, maybe it got to do with new A10 Fusion chip as GregE240 couldn't play on his iPhone 6. Also it would make sense for iPhone 7 as it has digital lightning as audio out instead of 3.5mm headphone jack.

 

[lemonkid]

Depending on the software I could stream 24bit 192Khz with my iPhone 4S. I never stored it on my phone because the files were too big. But you could. I can also stream HighRes music on my iPhone 6s now. But I am NOT using iTunes... I use VLC right now and I am sure you could use a lot of other apps. Tascam has some and my NAS is NOT altering the bitrate or downsampling. Just try the Tascam app or VLC.
[doublepost=1504866316][/doublepost]Oh yes and maybe ditch iTunes.....?????

 

[Shirasaki]

Oh yes and maybe ditch iTunes.....?????

I wish I could but I have a huge library with all tags, lyrics and unable to just ditch iTunes. I also need it to save my app library (becomes a thing when apple introduces that OMFG app thinning)

 

[doberman211]

Ok so 24/192 does not transfer over. It's on an iPhone 6s running the ios11 public beta. 24/96 seems to transfer over now. They could not on ios10.

 

[Shirasaki]

Ok so 24/192 does not transfer over. It's on an iPhone 6s running the ios11 public beta. 24/96 seems to transfer over now. They could not on ios10.

Really? Then I do not need to convert many of my 96kHz music down to 48kHz.
Seems correlate to album artwork size limit increase (from up to 5MB to up to 10MB) .
Good to know. Although the space taken is also considerable (one song can be 160MB)

 

[Shirasaki]

No. I have no luck syncing 96kHz music to my iTunes library. This MUST be an iPhone 7 thing and A10. Apple demands people to play hi-res music on A10 chip instead of A9. Got it. Down sample is with my rest life.

 

[fjarl]

Did some testing with hi-res music:
1. Both 24/96 and 24/192 will play on iPhone 7+ and iPad Pro 12.9 2017. So playback is supported at least on the very latest devices.
2. Did not try anything with iTunes, but Groove Music would gladly stream those files from my Onedrive.
3. Cannot confirm that playback is really hi-res, it might be down-converted on the fly.

...so no new information really

 

[Planky]

My iPad Pro 9.7" with PB9 now plays 24bit 88.2kHz music.

 

[DblHelix]

How do you play them? I tried clicking on a 24/96 flac on 2l music and got the unable to play logo. Tried saving to files and it just saved it as a txt file with the url of the file. Must it be wav or alac?

 

[Planky]

How do you play them? I tried clicking on a 24/96 flac on 2l music and got the unable to play logo. Tried saving to files and it just saved it as a txt file with the url of the file. Must it be wav or alac?

I converted mine from AIFF to apple lossles and they play happily on my iPad Pro 9.7"

 

[lemonkid]

Many players can play .wav or .flac or apple lossless. But I never tried to play them with iTunes. I used iTunes a long time ago. But because it for long did not support flac, I gave up using it. I then organized my music in my own Music map, and filed them in a map under the artists name and then in another map with the name of the album. Once you do this with all your new music it is accessible for most media servers and media players.

Up until now I never saw any reason to use iTunes. Apple offered only aac encoded music which sounds really bad compared with high resolution music. It could be that they will change this. Because iTunes suddenly supports flac and higher resolution files when your mac is High on Sierra. You can even play it from the finder.

Maybe these features will also come to iOS. But software to play high resolution files was available for a couple of years. And I mean on iOS. And you could also store them on your iPhone, just not in iTunes.

I never transferred the huge files because it is taking to long to copy and on previous phones I only had 16GB. I just tried to see if they play two or three times.

 

[doberman211]

No. I have no luck syncing 96kHz music to my iTunes library. This MUST be an iPhone 7 thing and A10. Apple demands people to play hi-res music on A10 chip instead of A9. Got it. Down sample is with my rest life.

Again, iPhone 6s here. So you’re wrong on that assumption.

 

[Ritsuka]

So you can copy your needlessly high resolution audio file on the iPhone, but if the iPhone audio out is set to 16bit/46kHz or whatever, what's the advantage of it (assuming there is an advantage in such high bit depth or rate).

 

[fjarl]

So you can copy your needlessly high resolution audio file on the iPhone, but if the iPhone audio out is set to 16bit/46kHz or whatever, what's the advantage of it (assuming there is an advantage in such high bit depth or rate).

Basically, yes From a purely technical standpoint, there's no real benefit to hi-res audio. That said, many hi-res versions are produced more meticulously, from better masters. This might make them sound better. Although, you could always downsample those files and still reap the benefits.

 

[doberman211]

The audio out on the iphone is not set to 16/48, try again. The bit depth is more important than the sample rate, and it’s not my problem if you can’t tell the difference. With 300$ headphones I can. I don’t want to have to keep 2 versions of the same album in my itunes just to have it on my phone. That’s the point.

 

[fjarl]

The headphone jack on an iPhone doesnt exceed the possible 106db dynamic range of a 16-bit file anyway, so it shouldn't matter much. Are there records with greater range? Wouldn't that hurt your ears?

 

[doberman211]

Decibels are units of loudness. Of course it doesn’t exceed 110db, that would mess up your hearing in a massive way. What does that have to do with sound quality?

 

[fjarl]

Decibels are units of loudness. Of course it doesn’t exceed 110db, that would mess up your hearing in a massive way. What does that have to do with sound quality?

Well, the bit depth of an audio file only affects available dynamic range. 16 bit gives you 96db of DR without noise shaping and dithering. With those techniques you can have 106db of DR.

Most pop/rock albums don't exceed 40db of DR and few albums have more than 60db of dynamic range.

So 24bit music shouldn't really add anything.

 

[davehutch]

Hi all, I posted separately but am copying my questions to this thread as it seems most relevant:

I have an iPhone 7 Plus.
I've tested it successfully with AIF and ALAC files at 24bit/96kHz and I've also seen that anything higher than 96kHz is still not working, with the error message that my iP7+ does not support that particular sample rate.

My question is, can you now play 96kHz files through the Lightning port to a suitable DAC, or is it still limited to 48kHz despite the actual sample rate of the file?
Does someone have a Dragonfly Red for example who could confirm whether it picks up the higher sample rate now (LED lights indicate sample rate)
If it is still limited to 48kHz, when can you actually play the 96kHz version? Is it only over Airplay for instance?

 

[Superhai]

iTunes have supported multi channel 24bit/96khz alac files for some time already. The funny thing is that you had to use m4v as file suffix instead of m4a. And airplay and syncing to iPhones were hit and miss. The higher bit rate and sample frequency is to me a wasteful gimmick however, but the multi channel is cool.