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David Roberts

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 10, 2017
1
0
I have discovered playing my 'Purchased' standard music albums on Apple TV through my 5.1 surround sound system set to Music gives a full 5.1 effect similar to the very expensive SCAD discs I have purchased from Amazon. Thinking of signing up to iTunes Match so I can import my full music collection for the same result. Anyone experienced this - how does it happen?
 

JeffPerrin

macrumors 6502a
Jul 21, 2014
671
696
For whatever reason, your audio is being routed to your surround speakers when listening through your Apple TV, but iTunes Match itself should have nothing to do with this. (The original music files themselves are still the same stereo tracks as before.) The surround music is most likely due to a "surround effects" setting on your receiver for your Apple TV source input.

If you like the way your stereo music sounds in your surround speakers, look into this surround "music" setting on the Apple TV input for your AVR. (You probably don't want this effect enabled for the SACD player so you can enjoy the true surround mixes on those discs!)

Hope this helps!
 

lemonkid

macrumors regular
Dec 23, 2015
188
52
There is also no way to match the quality of SACD or high-resolution files with your Apple TV4. It has the most obsolete treatment of sound that I have ever seen (and heard). Even the 'normal' cd's signal of 16bit and 44.1Khz are degraded by this device into 16bit 48 Khz signals. This causes quality problems and sure enough a receiver is not able to 'sync' this, or other sample and bit rates.
So imagine what will happen to audio with higher higher sample or bit-rates. It sounds like 'nothing' because of the Apple TV. A player like MrMc, that can play a lot of different audio formats, is severely restricted in it's audio quality because of Apple's preference for bad sound in it's consumer products.
But it may be that there is a change. Recent MacOs 10.13 is capable of playing high resolution flac files even in the finder. Let's hope that such improvements will also come to the output signals of Apple TV. (and the input signals of AV receivers .......!!!)

I don't know if you also played the SACD files without the AppleTV. But you should immediately hear the quality difference when played through proper devices. Just Try!
 
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