Music Services: add Apple Music?
Answered
Hi,
Just thought, let's drop the question again.
Does Bluesound expect (short term) to add Apple Music as a "Music Service" in the Node 2i?
NOT via Airplay2, but as a Music Service in the Node 2i.
Thanks!
Danny
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"Whats is doing Bluesound is much, much cheaper which will have a long time effect, pissed off customers wont buy their products.
And the login here with Cross Site Tracking Prevention enabled is still not possible.
Additional incomes Bluesound?"
Civility and calmness cost nothing, Node.
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Richard,
I am in total agreement with you. This thread is about support for Apple Music and Bluesound/BluOS. Since I work with Apple on a daily basis I understand fully how challenging it can be due to their culture of extreme secrecy. Furthermore Apple tends to address issues or add new functions on major operating system release boundaries. We may see some additional function in iOS 15. I also think that Apple is looking at the take-up of Spatial Music vs Hi-Res to see where they want to put their energies and investments. Lastly I do not expect that Apple will address Lossless streaming for 3rd party speaker manufacturers until after the fix it for their own HomePods first.
Like many of Apples partners Bluesound needs to wait until Apple provides a solution.Node's comments are not related to this thread and I agree the tone is not conducive to constructive conversation. We know Bluesound is doing as much as they can given the circumstances they are dealing with.
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I am able to play Apple Streaming music by connecting a MacBook and Powenode 2.0 with a 3.5 mm Aux cable. The sound quality is good, I am not sure if its Lossless , but am happy that its better sounding than BT.
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Venkat, does the 3.5 comes directly from the MacBook or does it come from a USB DAC such as the dragonfly?
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It comes directly from MacBook Pro
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In that case you are using the DAC in your MacBook, some may not prefer that. You should consider changing your MIDI settings to 24/96.
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Thank you S.
Makes sense. So it looks like I should get Belkin and use Airplay.
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Venkat, Airplay is capable of transmitting CD quality signal. But when you stream using Apple music, it looks like it converts lossless to 256AAC. Apple should have a fix for this (it was not fixed last month, but then I cancelled my subscription so maybe now there has been an update, I wouldn't know). The best is to get a USB DAC and connect your headphone jack to the DAC.
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Thanks for that info. I guess I understand this better now.
I see other benefits of Airplay, so will go with that. When this dust settles down, I will upgrade my powernode 2 to an equipment, that natively supports Apple Music, as I am hooked on that.
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For Apple Music native, only two devices for you to choose from. Apple TV and Sonos, they both don't do hi-res unfortunately. Whether these are upgrade from the Powernode or downgrade is another topic.
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You can also hardwire an iOS (or MacOS with some issues) device and a DAC which supports 24/192. See the Darko link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOVIfKpbwxg
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APPLE MUSIC SUPPORT — BlueSound vs. Sonos
Hi thereSome years ago I changed from Sonos to BlueSound with quite a big investment. Currently I‘m using Qobuz music service with my BlueSound devices, but I would like to switch to Apple Music, to simplify the usability (please don’t start a debate about this decision). ;-)
So I‘m quite in the same situation as the guy in this post: https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4404870600855-Why-does-Sonos-Support-Apple-Music-but-BlueSound-does-not-
Maybe I did miss it, but I didn‘t find an answer to the simple question, „why Sonos could implement native Apple Music support and BlueSound can‘t“ (as I understand currently) and „when BlueSound does support Apple Music natively“.
AirPlay or a Mac for streaming is no solution for me.
Do I really need to exchange all my BlueSound devices (module for NAD M12, several Powernodes, PulsFlex ..) and move to Sonos again or will there be a proper integration of Apple Music services within the next 6 month?
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soundy - I tried answering this some few posts before but I think some people may have thought it was a theory. Let me try to be slightly more specific this time. Back in 2005, Apple, along with many others, were looking at developing a wireless solution to transmit music all over the house. At the time there were a few solutions available including Apple's own Airport Express. But they were all only able to transmit to one device at a time. Sonos came with an elegant solution and beat them all to the punch. Later, Apple entered into a partnership with Sonos (I suppose it was because they truly had an elegant solution, and Apple likes elegant solutions). This partnership blossomed over they years resulting, at some point, in Sonos products being sold at Apple stores and also buyers of Sonos would get a free three month subscription to Apple Music (I am not sure if it was called iTunes at that time). So, this is how Sonos got access to the Apple native app. They provided something that nobody in the market could do at the time and Apple liked it enough to sign on the dotted line. Later, as time went, the streaming industry matured, many players entered the market, many products entered the market and Apple had a change of heart and decided that going forward, they will no longer allow native access to their store (Spotify made the same decision and is now using Spotify Connect as a link between their platform and third party devices). I believe Tidal is also moving toward the same direction and this is perhaps the reason all current Pioneer/Onkyo owners (which includes myself) have suddenly found that their hifi Tidal subscription can only transmit 96kbps AAC via the Pioneer/Onkyo app). So all manufacturers that were born after the change of heart of the main players (Apple, Spotify) will not have the native app on their platforms, and unfortunately Bluesound is a very young company formed way after this decision was made. This, I believe, is something that is not going to change no matter how much shouting there is. What is likely to happen though, is that Apple will create a Spotify Connect-like solution, which will then give full access to manufacturers like Bluesound and Bose and so on. Also, Apple might develop a DLNA-like solution (which effectively could just mean tweaking the existing Airplay) and allow connection only via wireless, but at full resolution. I am quite confident that at least one of the last two will happen, the question is when. So my advice to you is, keep your Qobuz sub for now and patiently wait for Apple to work through their issues.
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VERY nice input - totally agree; hopefully one or both of your predictions are soon to come....
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S - nice theory but I see nothing other than conjecture about what the deal between Sonos and Apple was. As Apple Music was only integrated into Sonos in 2016, your 2005 timeframe doesn't bear even the most cursory scrutiny.
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What an unnecessarily aggressive reply to such a detailed and well intended post.
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No, Edward, it was an entirely reasonable and appropriate response to misinformation being passed off as fact. It was not well intended at all, it was someone trying to pass off their theory as fact.
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Richard, there really is no need for such a dismissive tone
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“I tried answering this some few posts before but I think some people may have thought it was a theory. Let me try to be slightly more specific this time.“
All of that shouts “I know what happened and it’s fact not a theory!” However, it’s exactly a theory, and furthermore a theory that gets facts wrong about Apple Music integration with Sonos AND the date of Bluesound’s entry into wireless streaming.
Such misinformation needs to be dealt with.
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Richard Thomas, this is not a fight, we are having a conversation and I am not an Apple expert, I am recalling very old information, there maybe inaccuracies, I am human. Also, before 2015, there was no need for Sonos to integrate Apple natively into their controller because it was only selling music, not streaming. iTunes started streaming around 2014/2015 - then the integration became necessary.
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S - I appreciate your attempt to correct information, and this is indeed not a fight. However, your original post contains inaccuracies that needed addressing, as it suggests a much longer streaming history and collaboration between Apple and Sonos that is simply incorrect. Before 2016 the only integration between Sonos and Apple was Sonos’ ability to access iTunes via a Mac or PC network connection. Streaming only occurred in 2016, and at that point Sonos were hardly alone in the market.
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Cheers good people
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Soundy, I was the original poster of the question of why Sonos has Apple Music and Bluesound does not and Bluesound support totally beat around the bush on providing an answer and then closed the thread!
I will tell you what I did to get around the puzzling lack of streaming service support from Bluesound. I got a Sonos connect and connected the optical out to the input of one my Node 2i devices. For all of the missing services, in my case Apple Music and LivePhish (literally whitelabeled version of Nugs.net), I use Sonos. For Tidal, Roon and wife AirPlay, I use Bluesound. It is confusing with the multiple apps but it ultimately works quite well.
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Hi S & Craig
Thanks for your replies. :-)
@Craig: I would like to simplify my setup and using several apps does not go in the direction I would like. I agree, closing the thread was not a nice support action by Bluesound. They try probably to focus on one (this) thread only.
Usability: As an example I would tag sounds with Shazam and get the songs / albums without searching, copying or manually entering the songs into my higher end hifi system. Shazam is supporting Apple Music, Spotify etc. but not Bluesound (probably simply a too small company for the big players, sadly).
Of course, Qobuz and Bluesound are supporting higher bitrate than Sonos & Apple Music. But at the end the usability, also for less tech oriented users in the family, is getting more important to me as max. (theoretical) sound quality. In addition I'm not very happy about the rubber coating of my Powernodes2, which feels very low quality after some years.
Today I canceled my Qobuz subscription as a first step. Till the end of the year I will probably decide for my future hifi architecture. Maybe we get some helpful thought from Bluesound regarding native Apple Music support (and rubber coating quality), this could influence my decision. We'll see.
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Hi Soundy (et al)
We are eager and excited about Apple Lossless as well. Unfortunately, there has been no movement on this front. Not just for Bluesound and BluOS, but most of the industry;
https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360037270313/comments/15000011899810 -
I think the simplest way round this is to not use Apple Lossless, and instead buy physical media or high res audio downloads and stream them from a NAS drive on the network - which is exactly what I do. If you're desperate to use a streaming service, pick from one of those natively supported by BlueSound, and let's all get on with our lives.
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I have updated my Apple Music frankenstein system this morning. I’m using a headless AppleTV with an HDMI audio splitter to get an SPDIF output into an NAD 580V2. It appears that AppleTV will output Apple Lossless at 24bit/48kHz. I can also ‘control’ my headless AppleTV from the music app on my phone in a different way than AirPlay. This method allows me to manage the playlist from the Music app on my iPhone but DOES NOT take over any system audio in the same manner as AirPlay if the target is an AppleTV for whatever reason. This means I can continue to do things on my phone that invoke audio but the audio doesn't play throughout all selected BluOS zones. I also looked at my network traffic and confirmed that the AppleTV is the 'host' of the stream. I think this is as good as it gets for now.
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I am not sure if this has been mentioned before but I have connected a Google Chromecast Audio via an optical cable to my Powernode 2i and it allows me to cast Apple Music from an Android Tablet. I understand from checking on this that it supports up to 24/96 kHz which is a considerable improvement on Airplay. Unfortunately, this product has been discontinued but it is still possible to purchase one on eBay. It sounds like 24/96 kHz so I am hoping it is! Hope this helps.
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Nigel, do you have a DAC or could you look at the diagnostic page of your Powernode 2i (http://<ip address>/diag?print=1) to see if you are actually getting 24/96 kHz from your setup?
I just hit a snag in my AppleTV implementation in that AppleTV up/down samples everything to a fixed 24/48.
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Craig
My understanding is that is a confirmed limitation by Apple regarding the AppleTV
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