The guys and gals from the original audio standardization company, THX, give the simple answer. If you're like me, you've been spoiled with apps like Qobuz and JRiver or your iPhone even.

CoreAudio in all Apple OS products is flawless and Apple could have easily spent 5 min adding this feature to the Music App. What a betrayal! The company that brought us the iPod and iTunes - didn't do their homework and does not care about HiFi. I started using Apple Lossless and Hi Res with Apple Music on my M1 MBP and to my painful surprise, there was no Exclusive Audio Mode! I still can't believe it. The almost secret and half-hearted release of apple lossless music was no doubt an attempt to avoid difficult conversations with their more recent Apple AirPods Pro customers regarding its lack of hi-res support. Since the release if the second edition iPod I have been the crazy person purchasing CDs and ripping them to ALAC and using communities like waffles.fm for my Hi-Res Fix. I've been looking forward to Lossless and Hi-Res audio via the Apple eco-system since iTunes Launched. It is not a OS level issue, they just need to upgrade the Apple Music App to have an 'exclusive mode' just like what Roon has MacOS App.

Which is a shame on Apple how they have missed this on the MacOS Apple Music app.

I've tried connecting my iPhone 11 Pro Max to an external DAC and the DAC displaying matching bitrate of the track.

Playing on iOS, on the other hand, is bit-perfect, aka, no resampling. Using other player, for example Roon, which has 'exclusive' mode will ignore sampling rate setting from Audio MIDI Setup and play tracks matching the material sample rate, up to the max supported bitrate of your DAC. It will ONLY follow a fixed bit rate which you have set on Audio MIDI Setup for the connected DAC.įor example if you set Audio MIDI Setup for your $15k DAC from Nagra at 96k/24bit, all your music played from Apple Music App on your Macbook will be streamed at 96k/24bit, doesn't matter if the track itself is 44.1k or 96k.īottomline, playing music from Apple Music App using a Macbook is not bit-perfect, as it will resampled by whatever fixed setting at Audio MIDI Setup. Meaning, the application itself will not 'take over' and stream to your DAC with the native bitrate of the music you're playing via Apple Music. Apple Music app on MacOS does NOT do 'EXCLUSIVE MODE'

Jriver tidal