Apple Music Hi-res

[Austinforest]

Well, my understanding of AirPlay 2 is that instead of streaming an 16bit/44,1kHz ALAC conversion of the audio file, it streams/downloads (considering the better buffer and queue) the audio files as is (as long as the format is supported and all iOS supported format seams supported, which would mean ALAC and FLAC). And that it supports various bit depths and sampling rate.

Now that Devialet has finally done the job with AirPlay 2, it would good that Deezer, Spotify and the likes do their part to enable it full potential.

   

See "Introducing AirPlay 2" from the 2017 WWDC: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/509/ 

All platform-supported audio formats

• e.g. LPCM, AAC, mp3, or ALAC
  
• e.g. 44.1 kHZ or 48 kHZ
  
• various bit depths
  

Mixed formats may be enqueued