Hey guys:
I might be late to the party here, or make a complete fool of myself but I just realized something. Since Apple is now touting their new HiRes lossless audio service and since now I've been able to transfer my lossless and HiRes lossless ALAC (converted from FLAC via foobar) files from itunes to my ios 14 iphone Xs, it seems like happy and joy and wonder. Of course I know itunes has this restriction for high sampled files (all files above 96Khz are not supported), and obviously I know the cables and official iphone dongle seems to only output 24/44.
Now, my issue is the following. I've used mconnect player for years to stream my FLAC files from my home server to my iphone (since there's no native way to play FLAC, or at least haven't found an apple app to actually fit my needs). Seems that the app just updated recently since now it has access to my apple music (app) library (I have been loading my ALAC and HiRes ALAC files to the iphone via iTunes).
Naturally I tried playing the files from the apple music library on mConnect, and what do I end up finding out, seems the damn iTunes is not passing the ALAC files untouched!!! Most of my recent albums are of course at least 24/44, with some exceptions in 24/96, they are pure HiRes ALAC files, and if I open the track info, iTunes recognizes them as 24 bit depth with the correct sampling.
For some strange reason, when I play any of the apple music library files, to my surprise and outrage the damn ALAC files are not 24 bit but downsampled versions of 16 bit (respecting the sample rate but not the bit depth). At first I thought well, perhaps mConnect doesn't support HiRes ALAC (which wouldn't make any sense) so, I tried the file sharing option and sent both 24 bit FLAC files and 24 bit ALAC files, to test files shared untouched directly to the app, both FLAC and ALAC are recognized as 24 bit with their appropriate sampling rates, that's when I realized the damn iTunes is meddling with my files!!!
Has anyone noticed this before? I mean, in typical Apple fashion, is just natural they would mess with things but I honestly thought since they now supposedly support HiRes lossless streaming I honestly thought the HiRes files would be transferred via iTunes as is (especially when I took the time to convert to their damn proprietary codec).
Now to all who are thinking "why on earth would you use apple music when you already have a dedicated HiRes app?" well, I switched back to the music app on iOS simply because the look and feel and because the app has a bult library. unfortunately on mConnect when I access the files transferred I only see all the files with no structure or categorization which is (at least for me) quite rudimentary and that's why I prefer to deal with the music app.
I'm attaching screenshots of mConnect that show how it reads the files transferred directly to the app and the files accessed from the apple music library, I honestly feel ripped off, the damn software shouldn't touch the files, just transfer them.
File shared FLAC HiRes file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gXidvnlgrxiQHkJ0eYH9mwO1nIRjq7hm/view
File shared ALAC HiRes file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dbI6aNM3Sgc7gvL9LM04-9vz7BIvqRIk/view
iTunes file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rRi-qL-JK-rHKdXvSNQjnRRi1rXa153S/view
iTunes transferred ALAC HiRes file downsampled:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w9GRraIEy3VjjAC6raYx7dBpJPsh_lmw/view
Sorry for the links, I tried embedding the images from my drive (shared globally) but the preview didn't seem to display them.
As you can see at least mConnect detects the original 24 bit file as a 16 bit file, which I'm definitely not OK with.
Has ayone ever noticed this before?
P.S. I tried relying on an apple answer on the support community but when I try to register, every single username I try just gets me back to the same screen and doesn't allow me to continue, I would've started there but seems no username I can think of is "appropriate" for the apple support site (and no, it's not showing any errors, in fact it shows the green check but doesn't activate the "Continue" button, then it reloads with the username field blank). Also to clarify, when at home I use my iPhone streaming music from my home server using a DAC, I only use the apple music app when I'm not at home.
HiRes Lossless Streaming... that you can't tamper with or export to other software. For copyright reasons.